Sunday, February 18, 2007

Lousiville Lovin' the Hills - Race Report

31 miles, 6:46

I want to preface this report by saying this was definitely the most difficult race I have done. The hills started at mile 1 and continued consistently to the finish line. It was about 25 degrees through the race. The ground was frozen so the footing was pretty good. There were frozen horse tracks on some on the trails which were a little tricky to maneuver, but it wasn’t a big deal. It started snowing pretty hard around mile 12. I don’t really think the snow had too much impact on my time. It made me slow down a little on certain parts but it wasn’t a big deal. There were some patches of Ice on the course. I had a pretty bad fall onto my back which bruised up my elbow, but didn’t affect my running. There really wasn’t one section of this course that sticks out as being more difficult then any other. The whole course was full of technical single track trails and huge hills. The web site advertised 17 hills of at least 200 feet climb each. This didn’t count the ones that were run twice. I counted about 23 or so. I was very happy with my performance. It wasn’t until mile 26 that my legs really started feeling the hills, but even after that I was able to finish strong (No bird watching after this one Rob, ha). Although I didn’t even come close to a PR this was probably my best race. I suffered no blow ups during the race and was able to run the entire course, minus the hills. I think the winner (Eric Grossman) finished somewhere around 4:40, and the second place finisher didn’t break 5 hours, which shows how tough the course is. This will probably be my last long run before my first 50 miler at LBL and I am feeling good about it. The race director for LBL was at Lovin’ the Hills. He said LBL was not nearly as difficult as this course. He said there are two big hills and the rest are rolling. I am excited for LBL and I think I am ready for it.

4 comments:

Kim said...

Excellent run Josh!
I had been waiting to hear about your race report because I'm going to be in Louisville this week. I have a 50K training run and hopefully will be doing it on part of the LTH course--and it's supposed to be 60 degrees!

Josh said...

Kim,

Wow, 60 degrees! can you beleive it? You should definitley do some running on this course. It is very challening, I don't think it matters what part you run, you can't miss the hills! you could have some sloppy footing if it heats up to 60, but I would be willing to put up with some sloppy footing for that kind of weather! Have fun! and let us know how it goes if you do run there.

Anonymous said...

Josh,

Nice work! I have been doing shorter mileage stuff for a little while and lifting to trying to even my legs up.

Tonight I ran a decent 5k on the indoor track at my gym (about 25:00, I didn't time it exactly, but that is close.) I cranked the last lap up to about a 5:30/mile pace and it felt great to really let it loose. In fact, it felt so good, that after the 5k distance I walked a lap and then cranked out another lap at near 100% effort just to feel the wind again. I have been running slow long distances for so long, I forgot how fun it is to RUN a little. :)

I thought Kim's run coming up was the race you just ran, so I have to go back to her blog and fix my post....haha!

Running 2 Mohican said...

Great Race report!