Labor Day Weekend was quite the adventure this year!
Friday night, I drove to Crestone, CO to camp and Saturday morning hiked about 10miles with 5k of climbing to South Crestone Lake and back. Swam to the island in the middle of the lake (cold), ate lunch, and hiked back. I had a lot of fun hanging out with some awesome super-speedy ultra-runner guys recovering from Leadville. I'd be happy to do something like that with them again if they go slowly enough for me to keep up. My right toe started to hurt on the way down.
Near the trail on the way up.
Here is South Crestone Lake with Mt Adams in the background.
Saturday after the hike, I headed to Breckenridge for the Breck Crest Half Marathon. I woke up a little later than I meant to so no time to cook anything for breakfast. No coffee :-( Sore glutes and quads from the hike yesterday. Frost on my tent/car. I just drank a liter of gatorade on the way to the start. The plan was to push myself but not too hard since I can only take that about twice a year.
The opening road section went quickly. As soon as we turned on the trail I started walking the steeper pitches even though I seemed to the be the only one doing that and a never ending procession of people passed me. By the mile 4.5 aid station I think most everyone that was going to pass me had passed me. I continued to walk all the steep pitches and then I walked everything except downhill above treeline. I enjoyed the views instead of really pushing. The top of the race was just before the mile 7 aid station. 1h49 to the aid station. Here most people turned to do the marathon. Next year. I ate an entire package of shot blocks and drank 40oz of water on the way up. From miles 7 to 11 it was steep descending on a rocky road that I would not take my car up if my life depended on it. I had a ton of fun bombing down it. I have trouble with tight switchbacks, but these rocky sweeping turns were just fine. I put 20min on the girl from New York that was with me at the top. There was at last one mile under 7min in there. I thought I had a shot at going under 2:30 until mile 11. At mile 11 the trail switched to twisty turny singletrack that was not 100% downhill so I relaxed a little bit and jogged it in.
The winning woman came in at 2:22 (13min ahead). I was 2nd in my age group and 4th women. I suppose 2:35:13 a new half marathon PR by 1h12 since the only one I've done before is Pikes. I'm thinking I could take another hour off if I run a flat course at lower altitude.
I love finding fast-guy race reports for the races I do. Here is the one I found from 2008. 29min ahead of me on the up, 2min ahead of me on the down (with a small wrong turn).
A week later I took the nail polish off the toe that was bugging me. Here is the result:
No comments:
Post a Comment