Finally I met with the beast! What a stupidly awesome race...I say “stupid“ because I was pushing 5:50 downhills and 18 min uphills! Whaaaaaaaatt?! How crazy fun.
I woke at 4am (truthfully 12:30 because of the young one) and was out the door in 10 min making way towards the mountains.
I had wanted to go checkout the course on Friday, but 100 degree weather, construction, two large labs, a pre-teen, and a fussy 8 month old made me think twice about the for mentioned plans. ”No problem, I’ll go at it fresh and bathe in the excitement of the unknown.”
The course started out on an incline. Over the 6 miles there was 1,000 ft elevation gain. The hills were no joke. One of the competitors actually asked if I was okay on one of the hills because my breathing sounded like a freight train! Really... I’ve never walked so much during a race, and I’ve ran an ultra in the Appalachians. The 3/4 of a mile there was an aggressive climb on awesome single track, with the last quarter being a fast downhill. I finished 4th overall female, 3rd in my age group, and 11th out of 156 10k’ers.
Of course now I think I could’ve pushed harder... I easily could‘ve ran 3 minutes faster (goal pace for this race).
I feel good though- Real good! Watch out runners, I’m just gonna get faster :D
Kudos to Sandy Nypaver for being the overall winning female AND second overall with a remarkable time of 50:02.
Bình luận