Our instructions were to pick up our timing chips at the finish line between 5-5:15 a.m. and get up to the start by 5:30 a.m. There were buses bringing people up to the start or, if you could convince someone to get up early with you, you could get dropped off. I promised H and Paul that I'd buy breakfast if they'd take me to the start and thus, because we're apparently all nuts, we got up and out the door by 4:35 a.m. to meet all our deadlines. The sky started getting brighter around 5:30 a.m. while the guys waited with me at the start. I sent them down the canyon at 5:45 a.m. and by the time we started running, the sun was peeking over the canyon walls.
Eight kilometers (right around five miles) is a lot of down, let me tell you that. I was worried that my knees would take a beating but it was my quadriceps that ended up being sore. The first mile was great - and when I checked my pace, I was running nearly twice as fast as my regular flat pace! - but then it started getting steeper in some spots, and I could feel the stress in my legs. Breathing wasn't a problem since gravity was doing all the work; the fatigue came from fighting the downhill for that distance. And if that wasn't enough, the last .5K was uphill - a tiny little rise to the finish line, which was just mean.
Bring on breakfast!
It was actually quite fun, above grumbling aside. My pace averaged out to being two minutes/mile faster than normal and I finished in the top half of the 106 entrants, which surprised me because it seemed like everyone was passing me. And the best part was that I had run five miles before 7:00 a.m., leaving me to chow down on corned beef hash and eggs at the Silver Fork Lodge completely guilt-free.
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