Neither one of us woke up terribly excited to go for a long run that morning, but then again, I'm not usually excited to do anything that requires me to wake up at 5 in the morning! Our sprinter van was parked way out in the back of a dusty cow pasture, along with hundreds of other camper vans and tents. A few of them had tried to blow away the previous afternoon and the winds were forecasted to kick up again. We set Spot to guard the van while we were gone, and chose a portapotty that hadn't blown over the day before. LOL. They were compost versions anyway so no blue liquid everywhere at least!
The weather was windy, but surprisingly that wouldn't be a factor in the race. Most of the course was in pinyon pines between 7000-9000 feet, and the trees made a nice wind break. It was cool but not cold, cloudy but not damp, and the course ended up being perfect. If I ever designed a course it would have been just like this. Steep uphills and nice gentle runnable downhills. If you could catch your breath at that elevation anyway!
We started a few minutes behind the main crowd and had to run up through all the walkers at the back. I got stuck behind a bunch of slower people on the steep climb about 4 miles in, so my lowest heart rate for the whole race was on the steepest climb. Ha.
About halfway through, I heard my name and turned to find a paragliding friend Jonathon just behind me. We passed the last climb by chatting for at least 5 miles, and then the last sections was a lovely 7 mile descent to the finish. Wow. I loved being able to run fast yet still feel like I was taking it easy. In the end I was able to make 19.5 miles in 3:50, and Jim came in super fast in 4:06. If Jim gets any faster I'm gonna be in trouble!
Results are here: https://runsignup.com/Race/Results/42726#resultSetId-318614;perpage:5000
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