Turns out I shouldn't have been worried about the changes made and the changes in the course record bonus, because there was no way I was going to beat Nathan Peters anyway. Put simply he was just a lot better than me, at least on the trails. In order to have been able to compete with him I would've needed to put in a lot more time on the trails in July than I did. But, I raced on the roads every weekend in July so I wasn't well prepared for this trail race.
The way I saw this race it was divided into 5 sections as summarized below:
Section 1: Climb from North Fork Park to the saddle just at the base of Ben Lomand Peak. About 6.5 miles. About 3,000ft elevation gain from 5,800 feet to 8,800 feet. I wanted to control the pace for this section and was hoping to average about 9:30 pace (that is what I figured I needed to run for that section to get the course record). So I went to the lead from the start. Nathan Peters was right behind me with Matt Moncur right behind him. Mile splits were 7:44, 9:53, 8:53 (accidently hit my split so this was only .91 miles) , 9:54, 9:19, 9:58, 8:11 (this was half downhill). I was just a little slow going up this part but I was fine with it. It took a little more effort than I was hoping it would though to run that fast up that. Another problem with these trail races is that it is really hard to get into a good rythm.
Section 2: Descent from the saddle to the North Ogden Divide. About 6.5 miles. About 2,600ft elevation loss. Nathan and Matt both passed me at the saddle as I stopped at the add station just for 15 seconds to get some endurolyte tablets. I passed Matt pretty quickly and was content to sit on Nathan going down. I almost passed him about half way down because I was hoping to average 6:00 going down and we were going a little slower than that but I decided against that and decided to try and let myself recover after the difficult climb. Mile splits for this section were: 6:07, 5:59, 6:28, 6:53, 5:49, 6:28 (started the next climb in part of this mile). Not a bad section. We dropped Matt on this Section and he was no where to be seen.
Section 3: Climb from top of North Ogden Divide to the top of Skyline trail. About 3 miles. About 2,100ft elevation gain. This is the toughest section of the race even though it's only 3 miles because it is so steep. I planned on averaging about 14 minute pace up this but knew I needed to go faster than that at this point because we were behind my target pace. I was through the aid station on top of the Divide a lot faster than Nathan so I got a little bit of a lead on him, but he caught back up to me in a hurry and went flighing by me. This is where Nathan won the race. He killed this climb. Gaining around 5 minutes on me in just 3 miles. It was quite impressive. I was pretty lame up this part I stopped and hiked many times. In hindsite I spent too much of my climbing energy on the first climb and should have run that first section slower. My splits for this section were: 13:30, 12:25, 10:40.
Section 4: Descent from the top of Skyline trail down to Wind Surfer Beach. About 6.5 miles. About 3,000ft elevation loss. By the time I reached the top of the Skyline Trail, I had given up on winning the race. Nathan had a huge lead on me and was looking very strong. I had a huge lead on Matt at that point so I made a decesion to just try and get through the last two sections of the race as easily as possible and still take 2nd place. I was no longer worried about winning the race or running a certain time. So I just tried to cruise at an easy pace so that I could hopefully save a little bit and be able to recover for TOU 1/2 Marathon that's coming up this Saturday. So I felt pretty good going down this section until about a 1 miles left than I started hurting. I was fatigued enough that I wasn't picking my feet up enough and tripped several times but was fortunate enough to only fall down once. Luckily I just got a couple of minor scrapes and it wasn't a big deal. I was carrying a 10oz hand bottle which saved my hand from getting ripped up. I lost 3 more minutes on Nathan on this section but Matt wasn't anywhere near me so I was okay with that. Splits were: 6:10, 6:12, 6:40, 7:23, 6:20, 6:13, 7:07 (this had part of the next section in it).
Section 5: Rollers along Pineview Resevoir to finish line at Eden Park. about 4 miles. Elevation was about the same at the finish as at the start of this section. Any hopes of being able to just cruise and easily finish and save some for my race next week disappeared and just finishing this race at a slow pace was very difficult. I just haven't done any hill training except for back in June when I did some trail runs on Saturdays. I just tried to keep running through this section without stopping knowing I was about there. Splits were: 7:30, 7:40, 7:15, and 4:54 (.73 miles).
Total time was 3:31:54. 2 years ago I ran it in 3:35:41 and it was 1/2 mile further this year than it was 2 years ago so I improved by about 7 minutes which is good and while I am hurting and my hopes of saving some energy for the TOU 1/2 didn't work out real well, I am not hurting near as much as I was 2 years ago where I couldn't walk after the race. Nathan Peters finished in 3:19:57 so he beat me by about 13 minutes but I still consider a good race for myself considering the improvement from 2 years ago.
It is a really neat race with a lot of awesome views and a lot of great people. For me it is much more of an adventure than your typical road marathon. I'm not sure if I'll do it again though for the next several years. I think I will stick to the roads for a few more years.
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