Had wanted to do a half marathon in preparation for St. George, but it didn't work out. So I decided to do a simulated race this morning. My wife was kind enough to drop me off up by Flaming Gorge (the very north edge of it), and I ran back to her parents' house. The starting elevation was 6200 ft. The first mile of the race was downhill to about 6050 ft elevation. The next 8 miles were uphill. This was longer than I expected. But it was a great challenge. Some parts were fairly steep, but mostly it was a long, gradual hill.I was able to keep the pace better than I expected, especially at the higher elevation. The slowest mile was 9:05. But some of them were under 8:00, so I'm happy with that. There was about 4 miles of hard-core downhill. This was to simulate St. George. It was pretty steep at places. Average pace here was about 7:00-7:05. My overall time was just under 1:43. I'll take it. This course would actually make an excellent and fair course for a half marathon.
60 miles for the week. That's my 3rd time to get that high this year. Not sure what I'll do next week.
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