That was a blast.
I think whatever shoe choice you made, you probably regretted it at some point. I wore fairly short spikes and ran the original course and was happy with my choice.
A year ago, I was unable to go down stairs (for over 8 months at that point), but was talked into running to complete a team. It was horrible and humiliating. I cried. I couldn't run and could only hobble straight legged for about a half mile at a time. I wanted to quit as I was so unhappy.
After I switched jobs, i went to the doctor begging for an MRI. She said no and sent me to PT. After 6 months of PT and losing 24 lbs of pandemic/injury weight had me entering the race in better shape, though I was dead last in almost of the races this year and I hadn't made as much of an improvement as I'd hoped.
The crazy conditions on Saturday eliminated any nervousness and I raced as well as I had hoped I would. It was probably the most fun I've ever had racing. Maybe I could have eked out a few more seconds and taken down one more runner, but I really pleased with the effort, time and place. I ran more than 4.5 minutes faster over 6k than last year, and finally ran in the thick of things and in a large team pack. Our team won with 13 points (3, 4, 6, 8 and 10th). (Our women's 50s won, the men's 60s were 3rd)
The tree fell within 5 feet of our occupied team tent and understandably people were freaked out. One guy missed the 40s race completely, two others started the race 1-2 minutes late.
The race officials did the best they could faced with cancelling the race with probably 1000+ more runners who hadn't raced yet (men's 60+ and women's 40+ each had about 240 runners). I'm glad I got to run the "real course" and this one goes down as an epic memory and really a lot of fun.