Conquering the Rock Pt. 2
My race day experience.
Last week, I wrote about the week leading up to the race. Today, I’ll share what the race itself was like from my point of view.
I got out of bed at 4:00 AM for the 8:00 AM race. I knew that I needed to consume a lot of carbs, fluids, and electrolytes, so I got started on this immediately. I had two pieces of toast with peanut butter and honey and filled my Nalgene with 32oz of water and LMNT hydration powder. I did some reading and voodoo flossing before loading up for the hour-long drive to the trailhead. Around 6:00, mid-drive, I had a banana. We picked up our race packets around 6:45, jumped back in the car to hang out, and snacked on a Gu waffle. At 7:30, I started warming up with some lunges and jogging in the parking lot. At 7:50, we received our brief on the course and other race instructions before heading to the starting line. The national anthem played, I took down a Gu Roctane packet, and it was time to get started.
The course starts with a loop around the park’s campground, so the majority of the first mile was paved and relatively flat. After saying good morning to all the campers and their dogs, we hit the trailhead and started making our way up towards Pinnacle Mountain. At mile 3.5, we started an out-and-back to Mill Creek Falls; it was a tight squeeze getting past the runners going the opposite direction, but it led to a great waterfall view and a lot of typical trail runner encouragement. I took another Gu around this point.
From the falls, runners make their way up to Bald Knob (mile 5.5) and then summit Pinnacle Mountain (mile 6.1). This part of the ascent is just brutal in ways I can’t describe, climbing 600ft over .6 mile. Take a look at the AllTrails course map to get an idea of how steep this section is. I took down some more Gu as I hiked up. From the top of Pinnacle, the course turns into a fun and fast traverse of the Ridge Trail over to Table Rock–this is by far my favorite part of the route. The Table Rock ascent, another out-and-back, is less steep than Pinnacle but quite narrow and features a lot of trees and wet rocks to navigate around or over. I had a Gu waffle on top of Table Rock (mile 9) and filled up my 1.5L Osprey hydration bladder with Tailwind at the mile 10 aid station before heading down the mountain–I had already emptied the 1.5L of water I started with.
Unfortunately, by this time, my right quad was cramping. I was looking forward to speeding down the mountain and using the descent as an opportunity to pick off some of the runners ahead of me; it didn’t quite happen that way. I was definitely hurting, but the Tailwind put some life back into me. I made it to the Nature Center at the bottom of Table Rock trail with no issues, though slower than I’d hoped for. From mile 12.5 or so, it was another small climb up Carrick Creek and some smaller waterfalls back towards the finish line. I probably walked more than I ran for the last two miles and was pretty much ready to just be done. The encouraging part of this last portion of the race is seeing a lot of day hikers who will stop to cheer you on. I hit the finish line at 3:38:05, finishing 24th of 79 males and 27th of 124 overall. Not a bad day’s work.
Overall, I am pretty pleased with how my train-up and race went. As I’ve written before, I went from not really focusing on running to a pretty decent race performance–I also did it in the months following a hernia surgery, plus I didn’t have to give up strength training to do it. Not being acclimated to the warm weather of race day played a part in slowing me down, and I definitely still have a lot of learning to do in order to dial in my nutrition, training, and race strategy. However, at the end of the day, I understand that the focus on building an aerobic base then layering speed workouts on top is the superior training methodology. I have no doubts that as I add more aerobic training volume over the years, these runs will get faster and easier.
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You ROCK!!