Notes
Loon mountain race. Man what a mess. I spent all of yesterday just making sure myself and the bike were ready to get up there this morning. 7:30am start and an hour forty drive. Shoveled down my breakfast before heading out, then stopped quickly on the way to down my coffee before continuing. Rolled into the Loon parking lot at a little past 7 I think. By the time I found a parking spot, got my gear off, got in the bathroom line, stashed my stuff and got to the starting line it was 3 minutes before the race went off.
At this point, not just in the day but in the week (past 12-16 weeks really), I was just so exhausted from going-going-going non-stop from waking to sleeping every single freaking day. Running this race at any sort of hard exertion level would not have been a good idea. So I said screw this race, I'm just going to go at easy run effort level the entire time. So that's what I did. Just hung back and ran like I was doing a normal run.
I did want to run all the hills though. That didn't happen lol. The first really big hill we got to, I want to say about 3 miles in, I started running on it. But it felt so steep that when I experimented with powerwalking it felt like I was covering more ground faster. So I did that for this hill and sections of a couple others. So weird to think walking would equal running in speed.
However once I got to upper walking boss, I was determined to run all of that. Just to say I did. That was pretty tough. But it seemed to pay off. I didn't worry about pace, just if I was running or not, and still I passed a lot of people. I ended up catching up to Brandyn, who I hadn't seen all race. I'm sure it helped that I didn't try the rest of the race leading up to that, so I had way more energy relative to everybody else. Ended up with 40th overall in the race but 8th overall on upper walking boss. Neat.
I sorta regret forcing myself to get to this race given I had no mental energy left to actually try in it. But it was nice to at least know the course now. And it was a very pretty day up on the mountain. I took advantage after by taking a meandering route home on the new motorcycle. That was a nice stress relief after the week and made taking the bike up north worth it. Hopefully the next race will be better.