Sunday, June 15, 2008

Had a back to back weekend with Lake Youngs on Saturday and a Rock Candy run on Sunday. Ran Lake Youngs with Matt, his first ultra. It was alot of fun since he had a garmin so I could constantly ask how fast we were going and our average pace. We've run Capitol City marathon together and he is faster, but usually runs the same pace that I do. We started off a little fast but got into a comfortable pace and did the first lap in 1:20, just a little faster than planned. Matt had to go to the bathroom so we spent about4 mins at the aid station. The second lap felt good, Matt had to stop a couple of times to get rocks out of his shoes, and Van Phan and Steve Stoyles caught us just before the end of the lap and we finished in 1:26. We both started to feel the pain on the third lap and couldn't keep the pace up, but I wasn't suffering, and felt pretty good. In the last mile, I started to smell the barn and surged ahead of Matt, who figured he would catch me on the steep hill at the end. But I decided to charge up the hill instead of hiking it, so Matt couldn't catch up. We finished at 4:18, I was hoping for 4 - 4:15, but was happy with the result, I could always blame it on Matt's breaks. We were surprised to see Kris at the finish, she dropped after trying a third lap and deciding to turn back due to stiffening up. But Kris recovered quickly and wanted to run the next day as a start for our Cascade Crest training, so we decided to do Rock Candy Mountain, about an 11 mile run with a couple of thousand feet of gain. We got up there at 11:00 when all the motorbikers were there, but few were on the trail. However, there was alot of big mud puddles on the lower part rimed with devil's club, that made it slow going to start off. We took it easy going up, and were disappointed it wasn't sunny and warm at the peak, but the view was great. Had a good run going down, talked to a couple of bikers on the way down and just before the parking lot, Kris slipped on the mud and landed on her butt, caking her handhelds in mud and of course her backside. If felt good, it wasn't that long ago I wouldn't do any running for a week after a marathon. I plan to do Rock Candy at least once a week and will start doubling up long runs on the weekends more.