Sorry to hear about your back, TC - might some gentle yoga help? Hope you're back to 100% soon.
SoCalTriCurious, I always go to bodyweight-only work on M-T of race week, foam roll as my morning "strength" work on W, then do some yoga on Th (sun & moon salutations + other poses for things I specifically want to stretch). It sets me up for good mobility and prevents dead legs from lifting heavy earlier in the week. I do sort of a reverse strength taper after races, too; mobility & stretching in the first couple of days, then W or Th I might get back to actual strength work.
Way to go SLO! I've been loving my Fenix 2 for a little more than a year now. Love those gorgeous superbloom pics!
I think I did enough hills for both of us on Saturday edbikebabe!
The 50k actually went better than I had any reason to hope. I was really concerned on Friday - my legs felt terrible all day, my glute/hip was sore, my back was whining a bit (wtf?) and I wasn't even sure I'd make it through a single loop. I felt a lot better when I woke up on Saturday morning (rest day Friday FTW!), taped up my damaged ankle, threw a whip of tape on my hip/glute, and decided to see how things went.
Up. They went up.
There are 4 major climbs per 12.5km lap, up and down the Heights of Horseshoe ski hill. They changed the course from when I did the 25k there two years ago, so there's more singletrack trail now, but this climb remains the same.
For perspective, there's a girl in a fluorescent green shirt at the top in that photo.
I kept things very conservative, just walking up the hills instead of trying to power hike them since I wasn't sure how my hip/glute would hold up.
It was a beautiful sunny day, if a bit chilly and windy - high of 7c/45f and 30+kph/20+mph winds. On the bright side, most of the exposed climbs had a tailwind!
I was pretty conservative on the singletrack as well, since a lot of it was this sort of "death to the left" side slope with fallen trees, roots and rocks all over. I caught a toe a couple of times on my first lap on some of the less-deadly sections but knew if I tripped and fell on this stuff it was 75+ feet straight down and I'd arrive at the bottom with every bone I have broken. So, I walked the sketchier bits.
And took dorky photos along the way, of course. I took the camera out for my 3rd lap (it's usually the "tourist lap" of a 4-loop ultra for me), and was able to get some pics of the trilliums along the singletrack just starting to open in the afternoon sun.
I was a bit sore and things were starting to talk by the end of the 3rd lap, but I'd run 38km with over 4,000ft of climbing and been out for 5h45m (per my Garmin - I got some extra distance after the 1st lap because the only washroom available was in the ski chalet by the start/finish, DOWNSTAIRS aargh) by that point, so feeling a bit beaten up seemed legit. The whole idea was just to get a lot of time in on my feet and GO EASY, which I accomplished pretty well. I pushed a little harder in my 4th lap and was happy that things held up, and even tried to out-kick a girl whom I'd passed with ~3k left to go and who passed me back on the final bit of singletrack about 500m from the end. I went bailing down the double black diamond ski run final hill to the finish as fast as I could without just falling and rolling down in a boneless heap, but couldn't quite catch her - finished 5sec back.
Still, at 91st out of 99 overall and 26/30 women in the 50k, it's not like I lost out on prize money!
Final time was 7:37:06 with about 5,400ft of elevation. My splits were very even throughout (1h49, 1h53, 1h59 & 1h54 - 1st lap time doesn't include stopping at the crew/drop bag area just past the line so was a bit faster), and I didn't even really feel tired until about 7hrs in. I wasn't pushing them but I also wasn't getting winded at all climbing the hills, whereas I remember them completely kicking my ass in 2015. Nutrition and hydration went well, and I haven't even been terribly sore - walking up & down stairs without much trouble. I rolled my ankle once and it's been a little whiny, so I'm giving it until at least tomorrow before I go run again. All in I'm quite pleased; the hills are much steeper and the trails are much more technical at this race than at the 100k next month (which has 8,700ft of elevation total), so it's nice to have this under my belt beforehand. It also gave me a peak training block of just over 129km in 8 days, so now I'm in recovery and maintenance mode until the end of May.
Won't set goals for this week either. Just do what feels good.
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ill advised racing inc.