I ran up Mt. Si yesterday. I've been wanting to do this for a while due to a small seed in my head around ultra-running. I've become quite interested in trail running. The beauty and solitude are two things that I really enjoy. I've also been reading some ultra-running books lately and it sounds like a very interesting sport. Mt. Si is a tough climb of over 4 thousand feet in 4 miles. Its pretty brutal. I did Ironman Canada just one week ago, so this was a pretty tough challenge. I started the climb running pretty hard, and I went into oxygen debt almost immediately. I probably should have done some type of warm up. I ended up having to walk a ways after I started to get my heart rate under control and flush the lactic acide that had built up in my chest and lungs. After that I felt much better and ran / walked the rest of the ways. There are some steep sections and then some really steep sections. Absolutely no rest. I was going through .5 miles in about 6 minutes. I was fast, but I was steady. I got to the top in a little under an hour. I knew coming back down would be harder, and it was. I'm a really bad downhill runner. I think its mostly mental, but I tend to really put the breaks on coming downhill, which is probably harder on the legs. It took me an hour and 5 minutes to get down. I didn't realize how hard this was going to be. Today (the day after), I am beyond sore. I'm probably more sore than after IM Canada. I rode the bike 30 miles today to loosen up, but it didn't help. Anyways, it was a lot of fun, but kind of dumb.

 

 

I finished the race in 10:23, but this was well short of my goal time of sub 9:50. I had a great swim. I don't think anybody bumped me the whole way. I found great drafts and came out at 58:47. On the bike, I felt great for about the first 50 miles. I knew I was going too hard too early. My speedometer stopped working at about mile 5. That sucked. I also realized I didn't have my bag of salt pills with me. That was also a big bummer. Going up Richter pass (10km climb), I started to realize that I didn't have the normal pop in my legs as I started getting passed. I decided to slow down and take it easy. By mile 70, I was very tired. I was paying the price for going out too hard. The climb up Yellow Lake really sucked and I struggled with the climbs. I still had a solid bike time of 5:06:55. I came out of t2 feeling relatively good. The first mile went by in 8:11, which was my target pace. My HR was 150, which was also my target. The first 6 miles of the run went by quick and I felt good. By mile 8, I started sliding. I started stopping a little and walking some aid stations. I was starting to get very tired. The hills on the mid point of the run really hurt me and by mile 16 I was done. I just could not muster the motivation to keep pushing. I had a really bad cramp in my shoulder and my asthma was really acting up. I had a very congested and tight chest and could not get deep breaths down. I was a little worried that something bad was happening. Miles 16 through 22 were horrible. I just wasted so much time screwing around. I wish I would have just kept plodding along. I had lots of friends and company out on the course giving me encouragement, but it just didn't help. I had no reason to get myself going. Once I got to mile 22, I could sense the finish and I promised myself that I would run the last 4 miles without stopping, and that I did, although very slow. Anyways, I finished, and I recovered pretty fast. I even biked 10 miles the following day. Oh well, this race taught me two things: 1) I can't do IM with the time I want on low-volume / high-intensity training, and 2) I need to make it a goal to NOT stop on the IM run. That would have saved me 15 minutes in this race.