again at the crack of dawn

Another June, another Crack of Dawn 8K road race.  Just like last year, we got up at 4:20 a.m. so that I could pick up my bib number and timing chip at 5 a.m. and H could drop me at the start of the race, five miles up Millcreek Canyon.  It was a little warmer and cloudier this year, despite being two weeks earlier; because of the clouds the sun hitting the canyon walls was not so spectacular, although H caught the colors fairly well.

You get to see the sunrise when you get up early!

I started off strong, running faster than I did last year, trying to not hold back quite so much on the steeper downhill bits.  As you may recall, nearly the whole dang thing is downhill except for a tiny little bit at the very end.  After about two miles, however, I got really bad cramps and had to walk for five minutes until they subsided.  This was pretty frustrating because I felt like I was on pace to beat last year's time.  Very few people had been passing me before I had to walk and after I started running again, I passed a bunch of people, but the damage had been done.

Charging towards the (uphill) finish

I finished 5 out of 12 in my age group, 61st overall, with a time of 44:15.11.  Last year's time was 41:09.75 so if you figure in the time I lost from the walking this year, it would have come out pretty close to even.  I have a very consistent pace.  It's slow, but consistent.

Continuing the tradition, we went up to breakfast at the Silver Fork where H had a chile verde omelet and I had the sourdough pancakes with a side of bacon.  Please note: the sourdough pancakes no longer come with that marvelous apple compote - apparently too many people weren't eating it and it was getting wasted - but you can order it as a side.  It was still a little nippy up Big Cottonwood Canyon (high 50s, with the sun peeking through the clouds) but the songbirds were busy at the feeders on the deck and the road was busy with cyclists.  We had the whole day ahead of us and it looked to be a nice one ... but I was thinking a nap was probably going to have to be scheduled in there somewhere.