Had the brilliant idea to run up to the Bountiful temple then come back home along the Beautiful Bountiful half marathon course. The extreme uphill followed by extreme downhill will help prepare me for Sogonapmit. I also wanted to get a feel for the 1/2 marathon course. I drove it over the weekend but it is really hard to gauge the extent of the downhill without running it. Running uphill would force me to put some honest work in. I felt very tired and lazy this morning and would have settled for an easy few miles if I didn't force myself to do this.
Achilles tendons were sore to start but loosened up and felt better a couple of miles into the run. I felt better going uphill than I thought I would. It was hard but I was in the right mindset so it went by quickly. Once I got to the temple and started coming back down I shifted into relax mode and just coasted down the hill. My legs were too beat up to push the pace coming down. A lot more lazy than I should have been but still felt good to get in decent mileage for the day.
As far as the course goes, I only noticed 3 sections with super nasty downhill. They put enough switchbacks into the course to minimize the grade coming down. It is still too steep for a really good time and isn't "beautiful" like the name suggests. There are also a lot of twists and turns and runners will get lost if they do not mark the course extremely well. I'm not going to complain because the more races in the area, the better. | 