Silent Trails 2010

I had a good time in Wyoming, but no PR this time.

I drove up the night before. Dinner was at the Albany Restaurant across the street from the old depot tourist-trap. I had the cutest waitress, way too young, but vivacious as hell. She parked herself at my table and just started talking, and talking, and talking... Geez! And I was lovin' it, but it seemed odd, and I was kind of looking around thinking, is she going to get in trouble for spending so much time standing at my table? She told me all about her pet snake, her pet rats, and we talked about dogs and cats and rabbits, gerbils, hamsters, guinea-pigs, and ferrets. She was so expressive and, well, ADHD that it was hard not to laugh. But she was so very endearing! That made my whole night! Too bad she was young enough to be my daughter. In fact, I wondered if the glaring proprietor was her dad.

I parked for the night near the race course and slept in the back of my car in the trees. The wind was blowing very hard, especially up on the Divide where I was. It just rocked me to sleep.

The next morning was coffee and breakfast in Laramie, then back to the hills for the race.
I wore my new Mizuno Wave racing flats and loved them. They aren't as minimal as some racing flats, so these will last longer (I hope).
Other than the wind, the weather was almost perfect.
I took all my asthma meds, and downed 16oz of Gatorade, chasing it with Heed to try to avoid gunk in my throat. Sugary drinks like Gatorade have a bad habit of causing phlegm in my airways.
My plan was to run at least 3 full miles to warm up, but I screwed that up by getting all sociable and talking all my time away. I ended up only running half a mile. That hurt. I immediately started the race slow, and couldn't push it any faster. So I lost time from the very beginning.
Then I missed a turn and ran for over a minute before finding out. When I got back tot he course, I was pissed to see that I ran right between two arrows, one on each side of the wrong way, pointing me to turn left. So I lost over two minutes, and definitely less than three.
I had my usual asthma attack near the top of the big climb. Every time I've run this race so far, the climb triggers one where I'm gasping both in and out, on the brink of a catastrophic clamp-down attack. Next time, I've GOT to bring my Albuterol!
But the rest of the race went well, and I had a very good time. It's so nice to be hammering the trails again!

My PR was 1:32 back in 2006. I managed 1:39:52 this time. Even taking off a couple minutes for the wrong-way, I still would be over my PR.
Poorly done, what can I say? I will have to kill it next year.