Mountain Park Classic
Jul. 11th, 2009 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaOMGDEAD. 7-mile trail race was seriously brutal, not least because I didn't sleep but 3 hours last night for some reason. Hot, although about half the course was shaded. And crazy steep like you wouldn't believe. Total ascent/descent was 1042 feet (according to my GPS watch, post-elevation correction which usually makes the numbers smaller but made these bigger) and there were a couple of stretches of ridiculously steep grades. Like, one spot went up 120 feet in .2 mile. Just brutal even to walk. And the trail wound around all these little curves and switchbacks, up and down, and at one point the marker had apparently gotten knocked down, so we all got lost (later we were told that just about everybody ran a short course - maybe 6.5 miles - but I don't know for sure because my GPS lost signal a few times) and just followed the people in front of us.
Even though I do lots of hilly training runs, I am apparently not so good at steep hills because I always end up walking when they get really steep and my heart rate hits the roof. But I am pretty fast going down them, and catch up again there. One woman in pink and I passed each other a few times, me passing her going down and her passing me going up, and then finally she just refused to pass me on the uphills because we were both walking - and then there was a long downhill toward the end and I thought I had lost her but no, coming up to the finish she is right behind me and starts yelling at me to hustle, and we crossed the finish line simultaneously, tying for 6th place (dunno out of how many, maybe 20 or so), and just fell into each other's arms, laughing.
Anyway, official time 1:18:31, and considering that the fastest woman did 1:17:05 I don't think that's too bad. No prizes other than for "best mud" and "best blood". My HR pretty much just hit threshold, 88-92% HRR (heart rate reserve = max HR - resting HR) and stayed there, although at the very end I hit 181 which is the highest real HR I have seen on my monitor (my max calculation of 183 is based on 180 during a 5K). UGH. Why do I do these races, again?
Two down in the series, one to go on September 20, incidentally 2 days after my 46th birthday. There will be a huge party after the race. I am going to eat so much food and drink so much beer, oh, YES.
*collapses*
Even though I do lots of hilly training runs, I am apparently not so good at steep hills because I always end up walking when they get really steep and my heart rate hits the roof. But I am pretty fast going down them, and catch up again there. One woman in pink and I passed each other a few times, me passing her going down and her passing me going up, and then finally she just refused to pass me on the uphills because we were both walking - and then there was a long downhill toward the end and I thought I had lost her but no, coming up to the finish she is right behind me and starts yelling at me to hustle, and we crossed the finish line simultaneously, tying for 6th place (dunno out of how many, maybe 20 or so), and just fell into each other's arms, laughing.
Anyway, official time 1:18:31, and considering that the fastest woman did 1:17:05 I don't think that's too bad. No prizes other than for "best mud" and "best blood". My HR pretty much just hit threshold, 88-92% HRR (heart rate reserve = max HR - resting HR) and stayed there, although at the very end I hit 181 which is the highest real HR I have seen on my monitor (my max calculation of 183 is based on 180 during a 5K). UGH. Why do I do these races, again?
Two down in the series, one to go on September 20, incidentally 2 days after my 46th birthday. There will be a huge party after the race. I am going to eat so much food and drink so much beer, oh, YES.
*collapses*