Death Race
Aug 04, 2011
Well Death Race has come and gone and what a great weekend it was. I went up friday with my team of three, myself Arri Mcwatt and James Dean. We had split up the five leg course as follows: 1+2 myself, Arri 3+5 and James 4. I was really excited to tackle leg 2, as this was my first time on it on race day and touted the toughest leg on the course.
On friday, I rode for 2:45 prior to heading up. wanted to push at death race but still the overall race goal is ironman canada. So some fatigue in the legs for the death race was necessary.
I started off on leg 1 and as expected with the extra elevation my lungs were burning. My goal for leg one was to come in around 1:30. pushing along I stayed with the lead soloists. I was pushing but not to my max and came in at 1:23. I was pleasantly surprised, I thought with how heavy my legs felt I would be closer to 1:35.
I exchanged my water bottle and grabbed my camel back from James and headed out on leg 2. I made it 5 min in and realized I had made a huge mistake. The timing stick and coin that we had to carry throughout the race was with my water bottle. I raced back to the transition zone and James and Arri had already left. I managed to borrow a cell phone from a team, and called James to come back. 25 lonnnngg minutes later, I was back on the course. I was really frustrated with myself. I pushed up the first climb hard and came in under an hour (1:30 due to the mix up). I was happy how I was feeling and slowly made my way through the valley up to the next big climb. With my focus on making up time, I did not fuel properly and paid for it. My calves and hamstrings began cramping, I started taking gels, gu chomps whatever was in my camelback, and things started settling again. making to the second summit, I clocked in and started making my way down into town. may legs were fatigued but my not as bad as I was expecting. The downhill into town is tough with lots of steep rocky downhill that punishes the quads. I came into the exchange at 5:20. I was happy how things went, 5hrs (without the mix up). Arri and James took over, Arri ran great for legs 3+5 and James hammered leg four in 3:30. We came in 5th overall just under 13 hours and the first team with less than 3 people.
After I ran I spent the rest of the day supporting my team and my good friend Carley, who made her first (successful) go at it solo, being the 43 soloist to cross the line and 11th female. Unfortunately for the soloist the weather turned at 9:30 and began raining and cooled off, the dropout rate was high, I give credit to the runners that pushed in those hard conditions this past weekend.
For me it is back to Ironman training, and trying to get the legs to loosen up after a hard race. One more long week of training then it is time to start tapering.
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