Maureen Jasso's Staging Area

This was my third trail half with VR and my first time visiting this area. I felt pretty good while running the rim trail—small rolling hills on fairly packed dirt. It drizzled on and off but nothing too bad although the trail got wet enough in spots that the mud started sticking to my shoes, making them heavier. Great scenery that of course would have been better with fewer clouds but then again clouds were preferable to the sun beating down! Actually, the sun did show itself briefly at one point.
As others have said, getting off the rim trail around mile 11 into the deep loose sand was slow going. I had been doing pretty well time-wise up to that point but all that sand really slowed me down. Then when I was less than half a mile from the finish, it started pouring rain. If nothing else, that made me speed up just to finish! My Garmin clocked the route at 14.1 miles. The finish line was a bit anti-climatic d/t the pouring rain but one great bonus was the meal ticket for a range of choices from a food truck. The Hawaiian pizza tasted great!! Plus we got VR’s usual banana, chocolate milk and box of snacks.
More VR races to come for me!