Notes
a little warm and humid, but not too bad. this course was much harder than I thought it would be. i did a good job of starting out easy, let a lot of people pass me. after a few miles i settled into about 4th place, and could see the leader, and was making plans to be in the top 3. I tried to go at a pace that I felt was reasonable on the first hill, which was 7:42 up and two miles sub 6 on the way down. That downhill was steep.
At mile 9 came the next hill at 8:25 pace. I was already starting to hurt on that one, and after it, the course just kept going up and up. I basically did 7:30s for the next 5 miles with a lot of elevation gain. I was hoping that 7:30s was good enough with the downhill at the end, but didn't want to go any faster because my legs were already hurting.
I started running with jake around 12, and got to the dip, and started walking. Walked up some of the dip, and then had some intermittent walking here and there. pace slowed to 8:00s and all hope was lost. at mile 19, i knew that was the highest point on the course. I made one final effort to start crushing the downhills and sneak under 3:05. Kept it up for about a mile, but my muscles were just no good. I never get sore quads, but my upper quads just couldn't take the downhills and I could barely run; I was hobbling. From there, it was just walking on and off and trying to get to the finish in whatever time.
Ran/walked with rachel starting about mile 23, and met another guy who was in about the same condition as me. We decided to finish together, and ran the rest from there, actually did a 7:00ish pace for the last two miles.
From about mile 19 on, the course was almost all steep downhill. If my muscles could have carried me to that point, there was opportunity to make up a ton of time there. Unfortunately I was already too spent by then.
This is the first run I can remember where I wasn't really too tired, but my failure was muscular. Including mountain races and such. Maybe I could do sub 3 on very little training on a flat course, but I just didn't do any hill work going into this, so I couldn't compete on this course. The steep downhill early was basically the end for me; my quads have never felt so bad.
I'm okay with it, I didn't go out too fast, I didn't really quit until my goal was completely out of reach. I went out trying to run sub 3, and it just wasn't possible.