Chuckanut Was A Success!

I'm off to bed here soon as I am completely exhausted. I managed to limp through a one hour walk today and then hopped on the road bike for a 2.5hr recovery ride with a friend.

Yesterday's Chuckanut 50k in Bellingham Washington went incredibly well for me. Not only did I manage to cover the full 50km distance, but I actually cracked top ten!! Well 10th exactly, after a hard fought battle in the last km of the race. The event had a pretty stacked field and even top American runner's Scott Jurek and Brian Morrison finished 3rd and 4th respectively, with some speedster from Boulder, Colorado enjoying the thick sea level air as he powered himself to the overall win.

I was on the verge of pulling out at three points in the race, but each time gave myself ten minutes to deal with the pain in my calves and reassess. I told myself that if it got any worse I would have no choice but to end my day early. Thankfully it never got to the point where I believed that I'd be setting myself back in my training for the Miwok 100k in just six weeks time. After a very slow start in which I was down in the 30's positionally after the first hour, I managed to go to work over the mountainous section of the race and really excel at what I consider myself to be good at, which is power running, up and downhill, over tough, steep, technical terrain. The race started and ended with a 9km flat section, which obviously favored the road runner's in the event.

Anyways, I took a lot of positives away from this race and will post a full race report in the coming days. As for now, I need to catch some serious zzzzzzz...oh yeah, and stretch...uggg...I need a personal masseuse, any takers!?

GR