First an update on the final Hinson Lake 24 Hour Run results. I covered an official 86.49 miles, a PR by over a mile and good for 6th place female and 20th overall out of 254 runners. The amazing Mike Morton ran an incredible 163.9 miles without a crew or pacer, less than two miles short of Scott Jurek's American record.
The Cumberland Trail 50K
Two years ago I ran this as my first trail ultra. I had run a couple of road 50Ks and had run a trail half marathon and thought it was time to step up. I had met RD Susan at the Hot To Trot 8 Hour Run earlier that year and as I was drinking wine and browsing the internet I saw that she was going to direct her first race. With a couple of glasses of wine clouding my brain, I thought, cool, I'll run this as my first trail ultra.
The next morning I went back to the website and read the route description. Oh. My. God.
There is over 8000 feet of climbing with the climb up Cross Mountain being 2000 feet in just 2.5 miles. That is a relentless 800 feet/mile for 2.5 miles.
I finished that race two years ago in a time of 10:16 and DFL.
Fast forward to this year.
I had an opening in my schedule this month and thought to myself, self, let's run the Cumberland Trail 50K again. I didn't even have the excuse of having drunk too much wine this time.
After my "hilly" trail 20 miler yesterday I thought I would revisit my Garmin data from two years ago. Oh. My. God. My average pace up Cross Mountain was a whopping 28 minutes/mile! My average heart rate during that climb was 161. For me, that is like 5K heart rate. Oh yea, I'm going to have fun next Saturday.
My goal is to beat my time from two years ago, we shall see.
Grandma's Marathon - Number 10!
9 months ago
