This is the week of the Highlands Sky 40 Miler. It's been quite a few years that we've wanted to run the HS40 but the schedule didn't match up until this year. This is a race that fills up and you have to get in early.
My legs have felt pretty heavy lately and my HR data has been a bit erratic but this is the last "tune-up" race before the Tahoe Rim Trail 50 miler on 7/19.
6/10 - 6.6 mile loop and cool down. Legs felt heavy and HR was high.
6/14 - In an effort to let my legs wake up I decided to take the rest of the week off before the race. Race morning was cool and humid. I had a spreadsheet with splits and hoped to finish in the 7-7.5 hour range, which from prior results should land me close to the top 10. Another goal was to try to keep my non moving time to around 5-6 minutes, getting in and out of aid stations as quickly as possible.
Things were rolling pretty good to start, I was a bit behind my pace in the first 10 miles but felt OK. Somewhere in the 16 mile range I caught my right foot on a rock, went down, and strained my right hip flexor in the process. This would continue to be a problem for the rest of the race and ended up making me walk a lot of the miles to come. I just didn't have power in that right hip after the fall.
Over the last few years my ability to run more of a race and run longer into a race has gotten better. When I used to cave into the "it's OK to walk" desires, I have been able to push through. That wasn't the case in this race. I'm not sure what it was or if it was the combination of rocks, water, mud and the hip flexor, but I spent more time in this race with a "I've lost the will to push" than any race of late.
I would say that much of the course reminded me of the races and running we've done out west and I think on another day I would have really enjoyed the course, but today, it beat me, mentally and physically. This is like my Catoctin experience. The race beat me today and it makes me want to come back and give it another go to see if I can come out on top.
This is one of the reasons I lost my will to keep up to date on this blog. But that's why I'm writing this, as a first hand account of my ultrarunning experience, what I've learned, done wrong, and done right.
This was a very tough course with plenty of fire, gravel, and asphalt road that should really make for a faster finish time than what I had but I found that not only did the hiking have a negative effect but my leg turnover on the road sections wasn't there either. The last 4.5 miles were on road and my pace should have been much better but it just wasn't there.
Somewhere in this negativity I checked out of race mode and turned it over to a training run. No need to get too down or excited about how poorly things were going. The big picture is the race next month and all road since January go towards Tahoe.
The final stats are here - http://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/521688756
Finish in 7:32 and ended up 15th overall
No comments:
Post a Comment