Congrats, Dot! Cool you made your time goal on a tough course.
I couldn't get the pictures to come up just now, I'll have to
try again in a bit as I really enjoy seeing the trails up there,
they're so gorgeous! Thanks for the complete report, and good
luck on the recovery!
Teresa in AZ
Dot said:Powerline Pass Trail Race 2007
Date: 9/22/2007 10am
Route: Indian to Upper Huffman Parking (Anchorage, AK)
Distance: about 13 mi, about 3700 ft of up, 2200ft of down
Benefit: University of Alaska Ski TeamSummary: Sun, fall colors, Denali, Bullwinkles, no Yogis, hills – what
more could a person want in a trail race.🙂
http://home.att.net/%7Eakrunning/Powerline2007/index.html
Note that I’ve got waypoints (F01, F02, etc) on the map and profile that
correspond to locations of pictures. I didn’t take many pictures on the
uphill this year since I had taken a bunch last year:
http://home.att.net/%7Eakrunning/Powerline2006/index.htmlBy a professional photographer:
http://www.shutterfly.com/pro/MDinneen/PowerlinePassTime guesstimator:
Playing with my ouija board / excel spreadsheet / random number
generator on a trail where I’d only done the 1st half but had seen a few
pictures of downhill side, I came up with numbers that breaking 4 hrs
was highly unlikely, going over 4.5 hrs would be very disappointing.
When I earlier compared times of others for Lost Lake (15.5 mi, 2700 ft,
iirc) and this race (13 mi, 3700 ft), this race was a little less time,
but comparable. So, somewhat arbitrarily I decided something a little
less than 4:13 made a good goal - recognizing I can manufacture a goal,The Race:
So off we go at 9am. It was probably in the low 40s, calm. Some of the
lower parts were a little muddy (complete with a couple grizzly paw
prints), so I decided to walk a little sooner than I might have, esp.
since I was having a little trouble getting legs warmed up (cool temps
in shade) and wanting to run up in mud. This could also be a result of
inadequate recovery from training run (see comment in a followup post).In the distance, I see another gradual hill, which I wasn't sure if it
was on my route or not. Yep, it was. But once I crested that, I think I
ran the rest of the way, pushing to best of my ability, recognizing that
2+ mi is close to half hour for me, and trail quality degraded a little,
but not too much. After that when we turned on the gas line, we were
back to dirt and some goopy mud for a while, then we turned off that
onto another good gravel trail and up a small hill to the finish in
4:08:41.Results: 3/3 in ag; 115/115 oa - my usual DFL😉. For perspective the
other 2 60+F were 2:49, 2:56; overall winner was 1:38:47. This
definitely has a different clientele than the Tues night races where I'm
getting close to back of mid-pack rather than tail of pack.