7/30

Speed Goat
In order to ever so slightly shorten our drive to Salt Lake, Jen, Ander and I made a planned stop over in Glenwood Springs on Thursday.  I cant say I'm a fan of anything we found.  Glenwood has a bit of a carnival feel and smell to it.  One quick walk up Grad Ave. and we readily retired to our hotel. 

Our visit to Utah earlier this summer was enough to get me stirring about the Wasatch Mountains and Karl's course.  I couldn't track down a lot of information about Speed Goat, so I had random numbers like 20,000ft of vertical and 6and1/2 hour course records starting to worry me. 

We reached Snowbird around 3pm on Friday.  It's was a nice to finally get out of the car, checked into our room, and set up camp. Our room was just at the base of Hidden Peak.  Ander, now three months old, was a bit fussy from the drive, so we paid our $14 to ride the tram and headed up to the top of the mountain at around 11,000ft to get some fresh air.  At the top the temperatures were in the mid to low 70s and we could see just how new and rocky the mountain range was.  A lot of the features were knife like ridges with steep cliffs on either side.  Jen and I took a short hike to get some better views, and I could feel my heart pounding slightly harder than I had expected, probably more from anticipation of Saturday than anything. 

Satuday morning, my alarm goes off at 4:30am.  I can't say i got much if any sleep.  Ander kept us up most of the night running his own version of the course as he dreamt.  I had put out most of my clothes the night before in order to be as quiet a possible in the morning.  As I was creeping around the room and switching lights on and off, making what seamed like extremely loud sounds from simple acts, I realized that I was missing something.  I had my plaid shirt, Asics shorts, Nathan water pack, but no shoes.  No shoes? NO SHOES!!!  For the next few minutes, I just fumbled.  I can't believe I just drove out to Utah to sit on my ass and watch this race from the starting line.  I started going through questions in my mind like: Could I wear Jen's shoes?, Could I wear my flip flops?, Could I just go barefoot?NO,NO,NO.  I quickly grabbed what I had and without saying a goodbye headed for the starting line.  After further fumbling around with where the starting line was I found the other runners at around 5:45am.  I didn't even want to sign in.  I started asking around and explaining to a bunch of people i didn't know, including Karl Meltzer, that i was an idiot and had no shoes to start this race with.  Everyone was overly helpful and in about 10min I had a well used pair of Lasportiva Wildcats on my feet (THANKS MICK!).

The race started at 6:30 sharp and within a second I had forgotten about the whole ordeal.  We were off and my new worry was whether or not I had placed myself too far back in the pack at the start.  I guess I always have this conflicting need to burn off energy and cover miles while my body feels good but at the same time worry about the fallout as the hours keep coming. I hit the first few hills at a good even pace and worked my way into around the top 25 runners.  The course changed with each turn.  We ran up long switch backs, tight steep switchbacks, snowfields, across streams,on trails, off trails, following ridges, but for the most part we were going UP.  We finally got too the top after around two hours and we started heading down fast.  We had volunteers out manning steep sections and pointing out ropes you could use to help .  The steep downhill was followed by really technical cobblestone trails and roads.  After about 17miles I started to hit my normal nutrition wall.  I got some bananas and slowed my pace as we headed back up again.  At the next aid station I began taking in S-Tabs and my body felt like it would recover from the earlier week feeling I was stuck in.  The course then jumped off the trails and headed straight up the side of the mountain for 800 to 1000ft.  We got back up to the top and started immediately back down.  We had about another 3miles of down hill before reaching our last climb.  The last 5miles were a steady section of downhill.  I felt better on this portion of the race than I had expected.  My muscles and stomach were much more comfortable than in previous races. I finished the race with still a very middle of the pack outcome, but my muscles are feeling less fatigue and my body is getting use to the hours needed to race at these distances.