Notes
Headwaters Day 2
I got the first leg today. Everyday you start with a group so the first leg actually races other people. Of course that usually means teams put fast people on the first leg.
6:00am: Warm-up; I am very tired, not enough sleep and obviously worked hard yesterday. Glutes are the most sore but nothing feels great. The warm-up does slowly get me loose and ready though, about 1.5 miles.
6:30am: Leg 1; Starts out flat but this route was more uphill than I realized. I stayed back from the front 5 and that was a good idea, still I started fast and was feeling burnt out by 2 miles (leg was 5.7 miles). The front pack did eventually implode and I snatched some motivation to get back on track around 3 miles. For the next 3 miles I just suffered to run 6min pace and slowly chase the guys ahead of me. I almost caught 1, but I finished this leg feeling like I didn't have much left to give. 35min.
11:00am: Leg 10; an all uphill leg, 1000ft gain over 3 miles. So not as bad as yesterday, but this one was on a road which is a bit different than singletrack. I was pretty cautious after this morning of pain, but I actually felt good. Apparently my strength reserves were still alright as I could run uphill at 8min pace much easier than flatter 6min pace. Nevertheless I did not push incredibly hard until I knew I was done. 27min.
12:00pm: Leg 11; not my leg, I wanted more miles so I joined Luge for the last 1.5 miles of his. It was all downhill, so even though we were going fast, it felt easy. Some very steep downhills though, starting to wish I had other options, but if I joined someone on a flat route, it would have been fast.
1:30pm: Leg 14; another cool-down. Joined Jayne for the last 2 miles of her leg. I don't remember if I was planning on doing this or it looked like Jayne could use some help (I just carried water for her). But it was another 2 miles of downhill going just as fast as Luge did. All this downhill was probably not the best idea, and I feared for my quads.