7th place overall
Good day out there, but not easy. It was a strange one; I never felt great but never felt terrible, except for miles 35-40 when I was out of water. Just felt average all day. Usually I feel really strong the first 1/3 of a race but everything felt blah from the start.
My right calf and achilles were tight from the start and incredibly tight from miles 20 one, I need to figure that out as it's been a problem for a long time now. A few times I was slightly worried my achilles would rip in half...
The first 10 miles had about 3 miles of snow slogging which was slow and tiring. After that it changed to flowy single track with a nice mixture of up and down. Miles 10-25 were OK, nothing hurt except the calf/achilles. Miles 25 -35 were harder and 35-40 was shit. Ran out of water and gels and struggled into the aid station at 40. After eating some real food I felt good to 45 then struggled most of the 3k drop to the finish. At 48.5 miles I saw a runner ahead and picked up steam to pass him, turned out he started in a later wave so ultimately his chip time was fast, but gave me motivation at the end nonetheless.
Was curious to test the fitness and legs as I've barely run the last 8 months but did a ton of skimo/backcountry stuff. I was strong on the ups but was very slow on the downs. Turns out ski stuff does make you fit but I needed a few weeks of real training to get the legs tuned.
All in all a decent race, but I do need to run more pre-race; veryyyyy sore.
