Race day. Whew. What a course. After a mile it’s a 3 mile climb up to about 7100 feet, then a creeping gradual rolling climb to a max altitude of 7600 feet. I tried to manage the effort with walking the really steep parts, but it didn’t help much. By mile 5 I was beat. OK, run what you can and mix in walking. Not sure how much of the impact was due to the altitude.
After about 1.5 miles the road turns to dirt/gravel. As the race progressed I accumulated lots of gravel in my shoes. Very painful. Lesson learned: do something, e.g., gauze, some product, etc., to try to keep gravel out of the shoes.
Today’s run was a 26.2. mile run/walk. “Pace,” if you could call it that, was an embarrassing 13:27 (reflects all the walking).