Sapper Joe 15k in 1:21:45 (annoyingly, officially 1:22:45 on their website... wish my garmin would connect to the PC so I could get that corrected), going on 2 hours and 40 minutes of sleep (was out late, went to bed at 2, got up at 4:40 to make it to the 6AM start at Camp Williams in Riverton). Old course record was 1:28:xx and I had the rather confident idea that I could run 1:20 and easily win after looking at the course profile:
 2284' of climb in 10.93 miles isn't that bad, right? I guess I didn't really look carefully enough to see that the portions of climb between 3.2 and 4.0 were a 25% grade...
Anyway, the race took off and some hairy ultra-running looking dude without a shirt blasted off the front. I decided that he looked serious, so I went with it and pushed hard from the gun. I hit the first mile (with 200' net uphill) in 6 high, about 10 seconds back and he just kept pushing. By mile 2, I was about 20 seconds back thanks to another 400' of climb and by mile 3, I was 30 seconds back (both very uphill and slow, 8+ pace). This wasn't good, but he seemed to have a slightly awkward cadence on the climbs, so I figured I could catch him on the absurdly steep climb that I saw looming ahead. He set a punishing pace on the downhill rollers leading up to the big impending climb, so I gained no time leading up to it. Going up the climb, I maxed myself out but couldn't gain any ground. Mile 4 took 14:59 (not a typo) and involved mostly hands on knees powerhiking. Fun. I don't know what to say about this except that it massively sucked. After this death climb, we had some nice net downhill (with steep grunts mixed in) rollers up until 5.5 miles. I had been laser focused on trying to keep up with this guy without completely burning myself out for the first 5.5 miles, but when I hit 5.5 and realized that virtually all of the uphill was gone, I decided to just focus even harder, go for broke, and try to catch this guy. My watch said 8:00 flat pace average for the mile split so far at 5.5 and by 6, my mile split read 6:35. That means 5.5 to 6 was 5:10 pace, but I wasn't gaining. I figured if I kept hammering, I'd catch him, so I ran mile 7 in 5:11, but managed to lose ground on him. At that point, I started to get a side stitch (really uncommon for me), so I only hit mile 8 in 5:36. Mile 9, I drifted off pace a bit to 5:44. Mile 10, I picked the focus back up and closed from about 45 seconds back to 30 seconds back, hitting a 5:42 with one very irritating extended uphill mixed in. However, I was never going to be able to pick up 30 seconds in the last mile or so and had already pushed myself to the max, so I stayed about 30 seconds back until I mistakenly missed the last turn, tacked on another 40 or so seconds, and roughly doubled his winning margin (final pace of 5:37/mile for the last .96 with more fun uphill). In all fairness, the turn wasn't marked, but it was just the opposite of the starting section, so I probably should have recognized it.
In any case, I finished in 1:21:4x and realized my heel was in agony due to a massive blood blister (funny how you don't notice these things when pushing super hard). I'm guessing my overused shoes probably aren't helping:
Without the missed turn, I would have been about 1:21 flat, having thought that 1:20 was the best case scenario on what I thought was an easier course. In other words, I met or probably even slightly exceeded my expectations for what I could run here today and really couldn't have done much better. The winner was simply better.
I chatted with the winner and found out he was Nephi Tyler, who ran a 4:01 mile and 3:43 1500 in 2005 while at the U in their last year of men's track, having since dipped under 15 in the 5k a handful of times. While chatting with him, Amiee came in to win the women's race (and maybe even break the course record???).
Anyway, Nephi is a sick runner, so while my limited abilities probably translate better to trails than his (and more than anything, I will push and punish my body more than virtually anyone in these shorter trail races), sticking 30 seconds back of him for most of the race is a huge win for me. I was super focused and basically in a state of complete agony for virtually the entire race after about a mile in, so I know it was a solid effort. :) I think that I'll be able to knock some serious time off when in shape, so when I run this again next year (which I'm definitely going to do), I think 1:15 or 1:16 would be a good 'A' goal to shoot for.
Ok, time to nap for a couple hours.
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