Tuesday, October 6, 2009

2009 XTerra Trail Marathon-Colorado Springs

I'd been nursing an injured foot for about a week and a half leading up to last Saturday's inaugural XTerra Trail Marathon in Cheyenne Mountain State Park. Due to the pain, I was unable to run all of last week but already had no expectations for the race, so I wasn't too concerned if I DNF'ed.
Mainly, the prospect of 3-4 months without any races planned (except for the occassional 5k) is what I've been looking forward to since Leadville. My PR at the 50 miler in Washington, D.C. a couple of weeks ago was just an unexpected surprise.
Anyway, I showed up Saturday morning, ran the first 13+ miles (wanting to quit numerous times) and decided that since it was my last big race of the year, I was going to just deal with the pain and finish. There were two noticeable, sustained climbs in each lap with the last one being especially steep, but just for a mile or so. Anyway, by just being able to run nearly every step of the race I surprisingly came in 4th place overall, after finishing the first lap in 7th place. This was the highest I'd ever placed at a race of any distance, although there was a pretty small field. My final time of 4:16xx was was only about 4 minutes from the 2nd place time and about 10 minutes from the winning time. (Just a side note, but a fellow runner's GPS showed each lap as being 14 miles. If he was accurate, this makes the relatively slow finishing times a little more understandable.)
It's a good feeling to look forward to some time off now, but I'll obviously have the bug to race again soon and will keep everyone updated here!

2 comments:

brownie said...

Time off??? What about our duel at the Manitou 5K?

Justin Walker said...

Tough race man. I feel ya. Just wanted to congratulate you on an awesome ultra season. Your many races has inspired me to back down my schedule to less races. Thanks! My quads thank you!