Course Profile
Have you ever had a dream where you are running as fast as you can, and still you go nowhere?....well, more on this later.
Woke up early on Saturday and felt pretty good, somewhat nervous, but overall good. The weather was great, got some good rest...a perfect morning.
Myself, Andrea and Eliana headed out the door together for the 1 hour scenic drive up to Estes Park. I had only heard about this race a few weeks prior and it sounded interesting. I figure it wasn't too long of a race, but had some good climbs, was fairly local and great mountain views! It sounded like a good "feeler" race to really test out the progression of not only coming off an ankle injury, but also to test out my nearly 5 weeks of sedentary time as a couch potato...the entire month of August, and a tad in early September.
Arriving an hour early left me plenty of time to register, warmup and go over the race in my head a few more times. To my surprise, even getting there an hour early we had to park 1/2 mile from the start, as the road was crammed with parked cars all along the shoulder of the road and people walking and jogging back down to the registration table. A packed house!
After registering, clipping my timing chip to my shoe, and pinning on my race number I had a solid 30 minutes before the start. I took this time to jog the first part of the course up to the first climb of the day....ever so cleverly named, Piss Hill.
I sucked down a tangerine flavored GU and jogged back down to the start. With 10 minutes to go, I stripped down to my racing get-up, and hung out at the start line until it was time to race. The weather was great, low 60's, clear sky, and no breeze.
With a couple of minutes to go before the start, the race director had some last minute updates and noteworthy suggestions on the course. One being that he said that there were over 1,000 little flags all along the course to help prevent runners from going off course. This was a true testament to the hard work and preparation that the RD, volunteers and staff had made for us runners. I am thankful.
Toeing the line:
I toed the line and didn't really know what to expect, both from me and from the course itself. The race went off and a surge of runners took off, myself included. The first (and only) flat part of the course is the first 300m, before turning up Piss Hill. The first mile of the course is singletrack rolling stuff, nothing too technical (YET!), with loose sandy dirt as the main part of the trail. I actually ran most of the climb up Piss Hill just off the trail, bushwacking it, as the ground here was hard and packed. Got to the first mile in the top 10, about 20-30 seconds behind the leaders. At this point we were all running in a single file line up the mile long hill with about 2 or 3 strides separating each runner. Clear view of the leaders, not feeling over worked, legs and lungs feeling good....time to make my move and work up the line of runners ahead...(or so I thought!)
leading up to the first mile, a rare smooth section of trail
mile 1
Shortly after the first mile, the trail gets very technical in sections, which felt fine on the flats and the climbs, but it was pretty clear right off the bat that my ankle was no where near to being able to "drop the hammer" on these fast moving descents. By the time I got to mile 2 I was somewhere between 10-15 place. I lost track after awhile. Every technical downhill (launching 3 feet off a rock, landing on a large tree root, and instantly launching off that and landing on a awkward diagonal slab of rock and then launch back onto the loose gravely rock trail), left me losing valuable ground on the runners in front of me. There must have been over a dozen sections of the trail that I slowed up because the technicality of the descending trail. That, combined with a semi bum ankle, had me moving over off the trail to let runners pass on by (I was obviously holding up the stream of runners behind me, as I was getting passed in groups of 4-5 runners at a time). Generally speaking I can keep my position on the downs and actually enjoy the technical stuff, split second decisions...etc, but my ankle was not having it. I tried on a few occasions to surge and "let go" on these sections, but I just didn't feel like my ankle was responding like I would have needed it to in order to make up ground.
Then as soon as we reached the bottom of the descents the trail generally went back up (aside from a few "flat" sections here and there), and it was during these uphill climbs and on the rolling stuff that I was able to almost instantly motor on by the runners who just passed me on the downs.
Honestly, miles 2-4 were really a blur, I don't remember much aside from trying as hard as I could to make up time on the climbs because I was loosing so much ground on every downhill section.
I would then proceed to catch back up, pass some runners and then get smoked on the next down by the same runners I just passed on the climb. This yo-yo and back and forth running was pretty much how the rest of the race went.
I crossed the line in 41 flat. I was hoping for a sub 35 performance, but that wasn't going to happen while poking along down the descents. I am not sure what place I came in...top 25? top 20 maybe? During the last 1.5 miles, once I realized I was at least 6 minutes off of my predicted pace, I put it on cruise control and just tried not to crash and burn on the rocky steep downs, and took in whatever views I could manage during the micro-seconds I had to lift my eyes off the trail ahead.
The after race grub was great!
Hopefully I will be back next year...injury free.
I took some things away from this race. I got some things to work on, but overall felt like I gave it the best I could considering how my ankle was feeling. The course was more technical than anything I have ran on in the last few months since my injury. I felt great on the climbs and that was encouraging, on that front.
Total Time : 41 minutes + 20 minutes of Warm up
Thursday : 35 minutes easy on Pineridge
Friday : 30 minutes easy on Pineridge
Sunday PM: 35 minutes easy around town in the evening. asphalt action!
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