AM Total run time 1:16:56 (includes warm-up & cool-down) Woke up 2.5 hrs before race time, so I had time to brew some coffee, stretch, eat a little breakfast, take care of business, take Griffin on a 1.65 jog, take a shower, and off to the race....all in that order. No calf pain, which might be from the adrenaline of race day, as it feels pretty sore now....but everything feels kinda sore now. This course is tough! I had expected a big climb, and then just rolling hills back down the mountain, but there were decent hills the entire way thru the course. The trail is also pockmarked with horse tracks making it really uneven, and other parts of the trail is covered in soft grass. I felt a little off balance on my XC flats once I started to fatigue, but I really liked running in them! I manually tagged my splits so they're a little off, but no big deal.
Mile-1 7:27 A group went out swingin and i was in about 10th place from the line, but once we started climbing I slowly got up to 4th and the group had spread out. Total gain was 293 feet. Mile-2 6:31 Feeling pretty decent and began a very steep and uneven decent. 3rd place was about 5 seconds in front of me. Mile-3 7:21 Things started to come apart here. He were hitting steep ascents that I powered up thinking I would recover on the downhill, but the downhill was taking a lot of effort just to not wipe out! 3rd place had gapped me a little more. Mile-4 7:01 Got passed here. My breathing was labored, and the heat was starting to affect me. I started thinking that I should have ran a few tempos before the race, because my endurance based strength was not there. Started to really pump my arms on the climbs and keep good form. Mile-5 7:22 Another big descent, but I was feeling exhausted so could not take advantage of it. got passed by the 5th place guy towards the end of this mile. I tried to hang on, but wasn't happening. Mile-6 & last .28 9:47 This last section was a steady climb until a .15 downhill to the finish. I just tried not to blow up here. This was the hardest section of the course in my opinion. My legs were super tired, but I just kept telling my self to stay efficient as possible because the end is near. ended up finishing about 5 seconds off of 5th place. Went back out to run Lacy in as she did this race too. She tweaked her knee around mile 3.5 on a downhill so was hurting, but hung on till the end. She's one tough chick!
Overall I'm pretty happy with the results, and it has taught me a few things I need to work on for the future. I have also decided to do the Skyline 10k next weekend, and I think this was good practice for that.
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