Today I ran a 50k trail race ... which ended up being 55k ... not cool! It was a 5 loop course.
Anyway, my time at 31 miles was 5:10:00, at which point I was pretty much mentally checked out & and my legs were trashed. This is where the course also enters a pretty tecnical rocky section & a big climb, which includes about 50 steps. I made an acquaintance with a nice girl who was on her 4th lap that I was passing right at the 50k mark. We talked going up the steps & then she was kind enough to pull me along the last 3 miles, which was pretty much a death march for me. She invited me to pace her on the last loop, and as much as I wanted to, I had to decline, don't think I could have made it! I ran the first 3 loops with TimP from the blog, as he had invited me to join him on this run, it is his birthday. Great company for 3 loops, it really helps to run Ultra races with a friend! Unfortunately, his ankle was bothering him, so he made a wise decision to pull out after 3 loops ... no shame in a strong 20 mile trail run, and as much as I know he wanted to finish, it is not worth aggravating an injury. As I figured, each loop was a little slower than the last, but stayed pretty steady ... at least until I hit the 50k mark! Probably could have kept pushing, but there was no one to chase & no one close behind me on their last loop. So, I was content to just try to keep moving, as long as that would suffice to hold onto 8th place overall. No sense in extending my recovery period by pushing hard on the last 3 miles. Loop 1 was 7 miles as we did a short extra loop on the road to let people space out a little, all other loops were 6.8 miles. Loop Splits were: Loop 1 - 1:03 Loop 2 - 1:04 Loop 3 - 1:13 Loop 4 - 1:14 Loop 5 - 1:18 Grand Total: 34.2 miles in 5:52:00 It was fun & I am glad I did it ... but I am not big on ultra running at this point in my life! If I am going to run over 20 miles ... 26.2 is plenty! The good news is that with the slower pace & soft surface running, my recovery will be much quicker than if I had raced a marathon on the road ... so it served as a great long training run. There was 2,700' of climb ... and descent.
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