I wasn't going to run this today, as I haven't trained and am still nursing a bum leg, but I received my brand new FRB singlet in the mail Thursday and I was just itching to try it out. That, and I knew Jon and Cody were going to be coming down, and my old mission buddy from Riverton runs every year, so I called him at 4PM friday and he got me signed in with 15 minutes to spare. And then I also figured, I'm 47 years old, and you can only run the days of 47 race one time when you're 47. And my son was marching in the Mountain Crest Marching Band, headlined as a marquee attraction, and third position in the parade, (yeah, see this link) and I didn't want to miss that, so it all made sense to run.
I've run this race several times so I knew how fast it is and figured even with the lack of training I could probably pull of a sub 38 to re-qualify for the "A" wave at next year's Bolder Boulder. Got to the start line kind of late, not really any time for a warm-up but oh well. Found Cody and Jon and some other bloggers- easy now that I finally have my singlet, ha ha ha, I am pretty proud of my new look (see new picture).
OK, so I lined up with my friend Mark, Cody, Jon, Adam, and then Sasha joined us, it was nice to meet Sasha finally, he had his five fingers on of course. I was kind of intimidated in that company, but having run this race I know not to get caught back in the pack at the narrow start so held my ground and hugged the right outside edge behind Cody and tried to keep a low profile. I didn't bother to keep track of my splits, just ran fast on the downhills and tried to survive on the flats and uphills with my lack of training. The last push back up to Liberty was pretty tough as I was out of gas from lack of training, but I made it, pulling off a 37:19 giving me exactly 6:00 pace (averaged over the course). I ended up third in my age group, and would have been number two if I had run ONE SECOND faster (NOTE- JUST SAW OFFICIAL RESULTS- ACTUALLY I TIED FOR 3RD, 2ND WAS ACTUALLY 11 SECONDS AHEAD OF US). Adam, Cody and Jon did absolutely phenomenal as usual and local blogger Dave Scott from Preston turned in a very impressive time as well. Got some pictures of the group at the finish. Would have run a cool-down, but I suffered a HUGE blood blister on my right big toe into the forefoot, I guess the shoes weren't laced tight enough for the downhills, or the compression socks I wore for my stress fracture just don't do the blister control that smartwool does. So I met my daughter, drove to the parade route, and filmed the mountain crest marching band, then limped on home.
Overall I am glad I ran, it was really ideal weather for this race, much cooler than some previous years. I figure with training and a taper and a healed leg I can knock this down to 36:30 next year, I'll set that as my goal.
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