AM Got a free registration to this from my friend Cathy about 2 days ago. I knew I wasn't in shape to put down a really good time, so I worked a little harder the past couple days than I normally do before a race and just treated this as a workout/cool trail run. Woke up @ 5 and went for a 1 mile warm-up around the block. The sides of my glutes were a bit sore(I think from yesterday's drills) which is not good when you're about to climb a few mountains. Made it to the start and saw some people from work. The gun off and it's straight up the front of Park City Ski Resort. I felt pretty decent up the initial super steep part, but as we got on single track that was more technical and still rather steep, my energy started to fade fast. Around mile 4 I got stung in the ankle by a bee which was not the coolest thing. Hit Powerline trail and started hiking quite a bit figuring I'd save some energy for the downhill. About mile 5.5 one of my fellow Ragnar teammates, John, caught up with me. He was using this as a training run because he's running the Wasatch 100 next month. We scrambled up to the top of Jupiter peak(10,000 ft elevation) took in a quick view around us and started the dowhill. Here's where I really went wrong. We still had about 9 miles left and there was a quick climb up Tri peak and gnarly decent off of that, but I thought it would be pretty steep downhill the rest of the way so I turned it on as soon as we left Jupiter peak. John hung back(wisely) and I screamed downhill and hiked the next peak, which wasn't very difficult, than started my next steep, technical decent. I felt great until about mile 11. Here the trail flatened out as we traversed the backside of Scott's peak and was very rolling. This coupled with the rising heat zapped my energy. I was thankful to see a water station coming up, then BAM! Kicked a rock and supermaned down the trail. No serious damage, but I've got some wicked scratches that will probably bruise a bit too. The last 3 miles or so are really good/fun downhill singletrack on a trail named Spiro(I've biked this a bunch, but never ran it), but I had nothing left and actually walked several times. John passed me somewhere in here and tried to keep up, but it was a lost cause, so I just trotted in. Good time overall, a good workout and I'm thankful to Cathy for hookin it up with a free registration. Thanks Cathy! 15 miles in 2:37:21. 3,768 ft vertical gain
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