Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon

I added this race in a couple weeks ago to add excitement to a long run training day. Since it was net 1,000 ft downhill, I thought it would be fairly fast and easy. It was neither. Here's the elevation profile from my Garmin. The race started at 8500 ft in Georgetown and ended at in 7600 ft Idaho Springs:



But you see all those bumps along the way? Those were some decent hills. I hardly ever noticed the down, but I sure felt the up. My Garmin (which I don't think is so accurate on this front) had the total ascent at 2029 ft and the decent at 2929 ft. While I'm not sure of the numbers, I think the ratio is about right.

But backtracking a bit... This race was a chance for team Bee Rad to run together again. My sisters have been off running half marathons this summer while I've been doing my tris. My tri friend Liz also joined us. The start of the race was very similar to Canyonlands. We had to park in Idaho Springs and take a school bus to Georgetown. Thankfully it was not nearly as cold, though there were similar problems of lack of sufficient port-a-potties. The frontage road we started on was fairly narrow and there was a lot of bottle-necking as 3,000 runners and walkers tried to go at once. I was at least 2 minutes back from the start line. Between the port-a-potties and the mass start, I lost sight of Laura and she ended up starting in front of me. I saw her at about mile 2 and thought I'd catch up with her but at some point she took off and I never saw her again.

My first 8 miles went really well. I tried to stay in my zone 2 heart rate and everything felt great. I raced in my old running shoes and not the Newtons. But somewhere after mile 8 my legs started getting sore. The road was very canted, usually lower on the right side, for water drainage and I started feeling that in my right quad. I also went out a tad bit faster than I should have and when I got to the last 3 miles, I didn't have much kick. Dad met us at the finish line:



My watch time was 2:02:00. I was hoping to go under 2 hours but it was not to be. I was at least 90 seconds faster than Canyonlands, a race I trained and tapered for.

Team Bee Rad had a fine finish:



In the afternoon after lunch, an ice bath and later a warm shower, I did a 2 hour hike. Cross training will start showing up more on my training program as a way to get me used to being on my feet all day without the added stress of more running. I thought I was walking at a fairly brisk pace, but my 10k time was on par with Alex's Bolder Boulder time. My legs felt stiff after the run, but it wasn't until I took my shoes off that I felt how sore my feet were. Between the race and the hike, I did over 20 miles today.