Full race report posted here.
My goal was to break 12 hours. I cut it a wee bit close and really had to push the last ten miles or so.
It was a spectacular, perfect running day on the island. This new course runs for several miles along the western beach and during loop 2 there was a cool breeze coming off the Great Salt Lake. It really felt like an ocean breeze, full of salt. Really neat.
My race went pretty well. The field was pretty competitive, some speedy runners entered the last couple days. My sore calves were not a problem, after a couple miles they felt fine. In fact I was the overall leader as late as mile 12. It was fun to run with the front-runners, even when we all went off course and went through a muddy march. We ended up all going in seperate directions to get out of it. When we finally run back out on the lake bed, Phil Lowry saw us come out with our lights and said we looked like Picket's charge at Gettysburg, all coming down on the lake at different points. Really funny.
I backed off my pace as usual, sticking with Phil until about mile 20 and then started to struggle with a bad blister, left over from that stupid half marathon last Saturday. It really slowed me down for the next 20 miles until I stopped, cleaned things out and removed tape that wasn't working.
I finished the first 50K at 5:15 and reached the 50-mile mark at 9:27. Around mile 48, I felt fantastic and turned on the jets. At that point I knew reaching my sub-12 hour goal was in major jeapordy. But I concentrated very hard and used my Garmin to keep my pace up. Crossed the finish line at 12:58 to really nice cheers. Brian Beckstead and others hung around until I finished. That was nice. This was a 100K race PR for me, mostly because there are so few 100Ks to run. I really loved the fast course with the varied trails and the four tough long, but runnable, climbs. I came up two minutes short of my 100K distance PR during a longer race. At 2008 ATY I reached 100K at 11:54 on a totally flat track.. By my Garmin today I reached 100K at 11:56, the course being a tiny bit long. (my off course adventure and a big detour around some buffalo added a little).
Looking at the Garmin data, my fastest mile was a 7:42 at mile 9 when I took the lead blasting down some switchbacks. Slowest was a 21:00 mile during the 1,000-foot two-mile climb on Loop 2. During Loop 1, it was a 17:05 mile at this same point. Looks like we only lost about 3 minutes going off course. Mile 62 was a 9:24 mile as I "sprinted" to get under 12 hours.
Looks like I only walked about 3.5 miles of the entire 62 miles. | 