The past two weeks of dealing with my hip injury/pain (now I think it is gluteus maximus tendonitis) started to get into my head a little as this race approached, I wasn't sure how it would do or if it would just get more inflammed as I ran. I iced it this morning, took some anti-inflammatories, ate breakfast, drank some chia/vitamin drink on the way to the race. I got to Timp Park fairly early so I could run a couple of warm up miles. I found Wes and had him set my skull after I adjusted my hips. The race starts of going straight up a hill, and hitting that hill cold just seems like a very bad idea. I ran into Jody who is running Squaw Peak 50 next week and he came to just run the race for a good shake out before next week. This was my first race using the Altra Lone Peaks. I decided that the possibility of some calf soreness, which I hoped to alleviate by using calf sleeves, would outweigh the toe pain from blisters from my other shoes, and I wasn't disappointed. We lined up on the hill and the race started. I took off up the hill and took the lead. There was a younger kid who stuck with me most of the way up the hill and then someone else (
Steve) pulled up next to me on the piperoad to the canyon glen turn off. He stayed behind me through the valley and once we hit the long flat road he took off in front of me. I kept him fairly close, maybe 50 feet or so, and once we started down the staircase I peeked behind me and saw someone running in black. I thought it was David, who came in 2nd behind me at Nebo. So I kept pushing the pace and trying to stay with the leader. I had noticed that I had gained some distance on him on the uphill through the valley, so I wondered when we got to dry canyon if I would have an advantage for that climb. We screamed down the staircase to the gun range and blew through the aid station. My heart rate was in the upper 170's most of the time and getting into the oxygen debt range, which was way too early in the race to be pushing that hard, but didn't want to lose the leader. As we made our way through the rolling uphill to dry canyon, I heard a voice behind me say my name, and realized it was Jody, not David behind me. I relaxed for a second, then realized that I still had someone to catch. We were just catching the leader as we got to dry canyon parking lot, and he took a left turn instead of a right turn, so we started yelling at him to turn around. Jody later mentioned that he took several more wrong turns during the next few miles which Jody was kind enough to get him back on track. As we hit the steep sections of dry canyon Jody as in the lead, which gave me a couple minutes to ease the heart rate a bit, but eventually I was feeling better and passed him. As I hit the steep concrete covering of the pipe at the rock outcroping I looked behind me down the hill and noticed that both Jody and the other guy were hiking up that steep hill. At that point I realized that as long as I built up enough of a gap before we hit the road again I should be able to hold him off. So I pushed up the next mile of hill or so trying not to totally red line, but ride the red line as much as I could. This part of the course feels so much harder when racing the first half versus how I felt on it a couple of weeks ago when we only went fast on the second half of the course. When I finally got to the end of the major climbing I had a sense of relief and hoped the lead would hold. Started blazing down the single track and holding speed as much as possible. When I hit the road I started to feel a little light headed and hoped that wasn't going to cause problems the last mile or two. I kept pushing down the road and saw Seth Wold who was out destroying the full course record by 35 minutes or so on the cliff trail below me. I had wondered if he would have gotten ahead of me with the perfect trail conditions that the full course had this year and sure enough he was killing it. As I turned down the cliff trail I knew I was in trouble and was just hoping I'd make it to the end of the race. I was pretty drained and light headed, and just hoped I wasn't going to pass out or soming on the cliff trail and take a tumble off the cliff. I slowed a little to make sure I didn't die, and finally hit the gravel road the just blazes down to the finish. Kept pace as much as possible and finally hit the finish line in 1:41:17. After stumbling around like a drunken pirate for five minutes trying to get my body and mind to respond properly, I was very excited to have the body work for the entire race and hit pretty close to the time I thought I could hit if all things went smoothly. I had figured that I should be able to go under 1:45 and be close to 1:40. I hadn't felt this spent at the end of a race in a long time. Eventually ran another mile cooldown with Wes. I love this race. The course is always beautiful, even if it could be marked a little better in places, maybe some ground paint or something. Going fast downhill there isn't much looking up involved to look for ribbons and many people made wrong turns. But the race is always run great. Starts on time and has the perfect venue. Feel grateful the body held together for this one! Will post splits and HR later. The Garmin app shows both + and - separately per mile and has the total ascent/descent at 2800 feet. Where sport tracks must combine them or something and shows 2100 feet total. Split pace HR Elevation change from Garmin App 1. 7:04 168 +288 -61 2. 7:01 172 +161 -53 3. 8:36 177 +377 -102 4. 6:46 174 +132 -97 5. 6:30 173 +68 -107 6. 5:41 173 +31 -295 7. 7:20 176 +207 -140 8. 9:41 177 +413 -65 9. 13:21 179 +893 -153 10. 7:08 176 +105 -229 11. 6:29 171 +37 -510 12. 6:37 172 +48 -270 13. 6:35 172 +25 -456 .45 2:19 170 +16 -217
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