N.U.T.S Trail Half Marathon - 1st place overall and new course record! Ok, its a first year race so the record was a given, but the first place wasn't. I had to work hard for that. The course was great with lots of vertical and a good mix of fast/flat, rocky/technical, and steep ups and downs. My kind of race. Course description here
At the start I saw Brian Beckstead and a few others that looked pretty serious so I knew it would be a fun race. As we started (15+ mins late) no one was anxious to take the lead as we hit the trail so I decided to set the pace. I actually prefer to do that as then I control how fast I want to go and not get sucked into a faster pace than wanted. I kept things pretty chill on the first climb up to the shoreline trail. I had brian on my tail with a few others lurking a few steps back. The pace was chatty and I enjoyed relaxing and enjoying the run. I began to gradually pick up the effort and by mile 3 aid it was down to just 3 of us. Third place was being held down by a super chick (I forgot her name, but she ran the olympic trials last time and is getting ready to attempt to re-qualify. She was super strong on the uphills and wouldn't drop back. I kept the pace hard and got a bit of a gap on Brian and the girl. The gap would slowly increase over the next few miles, but it was hard to tell by how much. One of my favorite sections was the descent into the turn-around at mile 7. It was a steep and rocky descent and I let it rip. I slowly refilled my bottle at the turn around and began my slog back up the same canyon. That was not fun. As I was leaving the aid, Brian came roaring in and I figured that I had only 30 seconds on him. Too close for slacking off. The main focus was to keep working the uphills hard and put some more distance on him before the downhills. I wasn't feeling super fast on the descents so I figured my advantage was the uphills. Really, it was a pretty boring race to share (sorry to my 6 readers) as Brian never got closer than about a minute behind me and the girl couldn't keep up with Brian on the downhills so the placing was pretty locked in right from the start. The final descent was fun as I knew I had won and merely focused on not falling off the trail and not taking a wrong turn. Successfully completing that, I jogged across the finish line to the roar of the crowd (15 people or so) and accepted my minute of fame waiting for Brian to finish. I think he was about 50 seconds back, but I have not seen the official results yet. The no name girl finished not long after Brian and chicked most of the field. Overall, it was a great course, solid competition, great course marking (as there are tons of trail options in the area and you could easily take the wrong way), great plaque for first place too. The only downside was the late start and the warm weather, but since it was overcast, it didn't get really hot like I expected. I will probably do this race again, especially to defend my course record. T- 1:49:47 (8:22) 2600' vert ( Did a good 2 mile warmup and 2+ mile cooldown)
** Weekly summary 75.5 miles 8500' vertical
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