Today I ran my 9.5 mile timed loop. The race against myself. To recap: this is the loop --
To additionally recap, my goal is two hours. My best time before today was 2 hours 11 minutes. In order to make goal, I figure I gotta make it to the top of Meadows Trail in ONE hour. That’s at about the 5 mile mark on the elevation graph above. Last week, I made the top of Meadows in 1 hour, 7 minutes.
I wasn’t sure how to improve getting to the top of Meadows. Do I run like heck to the base, therefore tiring myself beforehand? Or do I conserve energy a bit so that I have more energy running up the beast?
I decided, run my a** off and try to make time on the easy parts. I will say, that I got off to a slow start. Needed to make a pit stop. Then I had to retie both shoes, since I tied them too tight originally.
I made great time on Wood Canyon. By the time I reached Meadows’ climb, I was dead-dog-tired, and about a quarter of the way up, I started with that nasty negative talk. “I’ll never do it! I can’t, I can’t, I can’t . . . “
With that kind of talk, I’m surprised that I made it to the top of Meadows Trail three minutes faster than last week!
I ran across the Top of the World (most of it paved) a little sluggish, speeding up on the flat and downhill portions. When I entered the park again at West Ridge Trail, my motto was “Run like the Wind, Bullseye!”
To my utter surprise, I made the outhouse at the bottom of Canyon Vistas Park in two hours! With one tiny little hill to go, I told myself, just do it in FIVE minutes. You can do it in FIVE MINUTES!!! Thing was, I felt like falling flat on my face. I had really run myself into the ground this time.
But I was so close to smashing my record by several minutes. Ends up I made my best time in this race against myself with 2 hours, 4 minutes. I really couldn’t hope for anything better than a 7 minute improvement from last week. I’m shocked.
The pressure’s on . . .
Now to spice things up a bit – I had such a blast looking through old team pictures last week, that I thought I’d post another one (30+ years old – not me, the picture, I’m much older)
Another blast from the past. This is one of the several softball teams that I played for in my youth. The Flintstones from 1980, the Bobbi Sox league. I played in two leagues, the other was Little Miss, where we wore those skirt-like shorts and no sliding allowed, stealing home, or even leading-off. Bobbi Sox was tough – sliding allowed, leading off and stealing home too! I slid maybe once. And I don’t recall ever being asked to steal a base (I was too slow : ) My Dad is in the picture too, and I was so, so young, but I’m sure with that youth, I could have never run today’s loop anywhere close to 2 hours 4 minutes!
Thanks for reading.