our choices show what we truly are

This race has the goal to promote running among women, usually around here in your standard race women represent 20% of the whole field. In this race the race fee for women is 8 euros vs 10 euros for men, and basically all the women through the age group prizes will receive something (most of the prizes are really valuable, like gift cards from different retailers). Besides that it is a tough, hard core race that still recruits more than 150 people each year and this year the % of women approached 40%, meaning that it was a big success.

The course is brutal, just steep uphill then steep down hill and again and again (800m total altitude change) on a single track rocky/root infested trail.

My goal was to go out hard and keep it that way until the end. My splits per km say it all:

3:33, 4:09, 6:02, 13:27 (that was a long walk on four limbs up to the top of the hill), 8:18, 4:59, 4:41, 8:01, 6:38, 6:27, 6:09, 7:24 (for the last 0.3Km). When a single k it takes longer than 3k combined there is something really "funny" about a race, the race director did an incredible job on some steep hills digging  "holes" in the trail to improve the footing, but the race still remained incredibly hard. The course is really scenic because is completely in the shade of beatiful trees around the tallest peak around (1200m above sea level). In a few days they will post in the same website linked above the pictures that describe much better the beauty of this course. Overall for me a great race on a cool sunday morning.

I am just tired from yesterday, 8 easy km, my quads are still sore.

Except for a few downhill sections my legs were much better and I was going faster going uphill. Tomorrow it will be another easy run with some more km, on thursday I will resume some more regular training.

Easy run for 8k then I really pushed into the HM rhythm for the last 2k, my legs responded, I will try a more structured tempo run tomorrow night.

Tempo run night, 4k to warm up and I was already wet from the humidity, we had a big thunderstorm right after lunch that left the ground full of water. I started with the tempo shooting for a slower time, between 4:05-4:10/k, hoping that I would be able to sustain it for a 10k, the first 3 k were great, right on pace and easy, then on the next slightly downhill k I realized I couldn't push any faster and I had already reached my top speed, my quads were still useless, next one was slightly uphill and I did a good 4:04 then the last two slightly downhill it was a battle and at km 7 I stopped. I did 7k exactly in 29 minutes, I was hot and my legs were still shot from sunday race. I finished with an easy 5.5k cool down jog back to the car.

I was really tired tonight, after a 2k warm up I took a 200m short walk just to reset the system, with more energies I started again and finished 9 k.

A nice video about last sunday trail race has been posted on you tube.

After a slow, slow, slow warm up I started a series of 6X800 on a uphill section of the road completely in the shade, I traded the uphill with cooler temperatures and somehow it worked. To recover I jogged down the hill for the same distance. During the warm up I ventured in the full sun and at 9:00 was already unbearable. These were my splits uphill 3:19, 3:15, 3:16, 3:11, 3:14, 3:13 AP 3:14. The first three were controlled because after last night slow run I had doubts I could go fast but with the perspective of just three left I was really comfortable going faster. A couple of easy kms to bring the temperatures down.