It's on the same land as my big race in January, and it's essentially a 25 mile loop ( we run both directions) as opposed to January where it's a 31 mile loop (we run twice). The differences, the 25 mile loop runs all the hills in different order, and lacks the 6 miles of flat running. If you've been to Bandera, you know how it's a real bitch of a 25 mile course, full of rocky crap, and steep climbs.
here's a link to the 25 course. We run it out one way, then return on it the other direction. As you see, there's not much flat. And the course is rocky hard crap almost all the way through.
As a comparison, here's the Bandera 31 mile course that we will run twice. Still not sure if we run it in both directions... i don' think we do.
So as I said, I'll use this to see how I feel, test nutrition, hydration, water bottles, vs water pack. Clothing, trail shoe choice etc. i won't race this to try and win, but i'll run my regular long run pace and hope I have enough when i reach the Nachos aid station on the way back, to pick up the pace and see what I have left for miles 40-50. i also won't take it too too easy leading up to the race, like I will for Bandera, but instead decrease my mileage by maybe 15-20%. That's the plan. Then again, i'll just be happy to make it out alive.
I believe it will take me between 9.5 hours and 11 hours on a good day. If i'm having a rough time, expect a 12+ hour outing. Heck maybe 12 hours will be a good day! I have absolutely no idea.
Any way, all that nonsense to tell you that today I was going to take it easy for 4 hours, but after enjoying listening to Dan who just finished 3rd overall at the Palo Duro 50km last weekend, and seeing how good he felt for the 2.5 hours we ran, I popped some music in my ears and took off for the other 90 minutes. It certainly didn't help that JoeP and RobertH had their group out there on marked course, because I decided to hop on that marked route (with a 1 hr deficit) and crank away and see how i fared. I did veer off course after a while as I decided to finally test out some new trails I've always wanted to check out, then got back on caught some of their runners and proceeded to continue pushing the pace till I was done. Always fun to see other runners, instead of mountain bikers out there. It's so hard not to run fast and hard in perfect weather, on your own when others are out there! Its also hard to not push the pace when you feel like poop for the first 90 minutes thinking your legs are dead, but then they magically come alive and the bounce returns! An boy did I have BOUNCE!
So I ran hard, and I attacked the hills of Panty, Far South, Cedar Chop and pushed the pace on middle road, bologna, amazon and others. It was fun!
4 hrs, probably about about 22 miles. Awesome!
Oh, and the water at the damn is gushing over and creating foam and white water! It was fantastic!
Today's Lessons learned:
1- Remove some songs and reorder others off my playlist!
2- You may not see anyone for the longest time out there, but when you really want some privacy to take care of a nature call, mountain bikers will come out of nowhere. I'm just glad they showed up 3 shorts seconds after the Moon had returned to hiding. ; ) (I know, TMI... but i had to!)
No comments:
Post a Comment