What happened up there…
Wow! A weather riddled, adrenaline filled, fantastic weekend. I don’t quite know how to express the experience in words but I’ll do my best. First - I was rather scared I might re-injure my hamstring during the ascent on Saturday. In the last two months I had only run 12 miles (but biked many more). 12 miles of training for a 13 mile race is not ideal, but I made do. I wanted to get the top of the mountain so so badly - I’d been waiting for saturday for months.
I started much too fast for my own good. I ran the first 20 minutes at 190 - 195 heart rate. That’s no bueno. I knew that I had to slow it down or I’d bonk hard core. Two miles into the race I forced myself to walk to get my HR down in the 170’s. Once it slowed a bit - I picked up the pace for what I knew would be a steady two and a half hour climb. I ran into my buddy Claude an hour and a half into the race.
Me: Claude, what’s your goal for the race?
Claude: To run the whole thing
Me: I already blew that rule, good luck
Turns out Claude wasn’t able to - but he came darned close. Long story short - I had the time of life. I loved every second of that race. I crossed the finish line and broke into tears. My sister asked if I was ok - I could barely talk - but I let her know they were tears of happiness. I was so damned emotional that I missed Rachel’s finish.
Ryan - 3:03:32 (4th Place 20-24 Age group - nice consolation prize eh?)
Rachel - 3:10:19 (8th Place Overall - Pretty Damn cool huh?)
The pics below (which are no longer there) are from the Marathon course on Sunday. Our buddy Galen (who won the race last year) was aiming for a repeat. He lost by just 11 seconds to an Italian man.
More stories soon…
Filed by ryanroth at August 22nd, 2005 under Life