My kids look forward to this race every year since it is up at the Alta Lodge and there is a barbeque afterwards. For at least a month ahead each fall they ask me how much longer until we go up for it. As for me, I have doubts every year about running it since it's borderline suicidal. It really is a race that can mean the end of your season running if you are not careful with it. This year although I have been burntout pretty good with running in general and have been slowing down in the last few races, I have had some good downhill training with two runs at the Malan's Peak Challenge and some hard trail running, so I probably felt a little stronger with the downhill parts. I checked out the last two years of times I had run on this course and my average was a 4:42 mile so if I felt good at mile one I was going to aim at a 4:30 pace.
We met at Rob's house and drove up together to the Lodge. It started to rain a bit and I ran two miles for a warmup with a hoodie in drizzle. I was kind of curious to see if the course was getting wet which would make things a bit more fun. My kids had by now dissappeared with the Murphy's exploring the hills around the lodge. It always make things more relaxed if I know they are having a good time. Thanks to Rob's mom for watching them! At the start I could see that some of the fast guys were missing, which was dissappointing because this is a fun race to try and keep up with them. I generally run a fast downhill race comparitively for some reason. (fat) At the start the pace felt a bit slow so I passed Ken R and Riley C at about 1/4 mile and tucked in behind Teren since the wind was coming up the canyon. The first mile came by pretty quick and the time person yelled to us that it was 4:15. In another few minutes Ken passed me again just hauling and I didn't even make a twitch since he was going so fast. I was trying to focus on relaxing and getting some kind of rythm in. The rest of the splits were 4:24, 4:30, 4:39 and 4:28. The 5k was 13:46, definetely the fastest I've gone through 3.1. I passed Ken again and coming through the fourth mile it really hit me. My legs were just jello and my heels were just burning. Man did I ever want to stop. Now Ken blew by me again and I was just holding on begging for the finish line to appear. I backed off a lot and was surprised to see my Garmin showed a 4:28 for mile 5.
Great band and a fun post race evening. We stayed the night at the lodge and got little sleep.. | 