About 110 minutes up at Alta doing my first double Alta run, it was pretty hard! I ran into Coach Murphy about 3 miles through the run and ran on some pretty steep trails around the campground for a few miles and then headed back down. Murphy is right, I need to enter this race humbly and not do anything I'm going to regret the first few miles. Its ok if people put a little distance on me in the beginning. Once I get a feel for things I can start doing faster miles if they are still comfortable enough, and then the downhill I need to crush. But I definitely want to be conservative the first few miles considering this race is going to be even harder than Jupiter Peak. Also I haven't been doing the mileage I was doing last summer up until the past few weeks, the good news is that I'm a year stronger, faster, and more developed than last year, especially aerobically. It will be a very good experience for me. After I got back down from the run the first time, Murphy said to run up the road to the top again, so I ran it, the way up I felt alright for a while, but once things started evening out my knees started hurting and I felt tired. But I continued to the campground, ran up it until the snow and then came back down the mountain. My legs were pretty beat, a double Alta run plus some steep trails at the top of the first will make your legs work pretty hard! And your lungs, but actually I think my lungs are getting better, I didn't feel the elevation that bad today. I'm glad I ran into Coach Murphy, I was thinking of the easiest way I could get in 12 miles up here but he got me to do a hard 14 miler which was way better! The race this weekend probably won't be too much harder than this run, just a little longer, and a couple thousand feet higher. But I will be fully rested and they will have aid stations with food and Gatorade, so its going to be a lot of fun! Watched Mcfarland USA tonight, I thought it was a great movie, and I really liked how they showed the way cross country packs spread out throughout the race. I didn't like how all the meets only had like 2-6 teams and no JV runners or spectators. But it was the first year of California cross country so maybe it was like that, and maybe it was 1A. Also I don't think the obese kid would still be obese if he was able to finish 5th on a state champion team, or beat people that weren't obese, that was my only big problem with the movie, the obese kid at the state meet. |