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South Kendall/Highland Mary Loop

July 22, 2022 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: perfect (mostly sunny, not too warm; tiny bit of drizzle up Little Giant)

Comments:
BIG test today.

Time to do a legit long (mountain run). Because this run seemed to have some flat runnable stuff - and because I'm familiar with it - I redid the loop Callie and I did on 7/3 last year. This time, with better navigation (and a way better ending).

Left downtown around 8:15am and budgeted 8 hours(!).

Counterclockwise loop around Kendall Mountain, to a high plateau that loops around to Highland Mary Lakes, just south of Cunningham Gulch AS. The loop, then, ends with that HUGE climb.

Pretty damn good day.

Did the first 17+ miles with HR discipline: no higher than 140, otherwise I was walking.

BIG climb to the plateau over the first 6+ miles, then pretty runnable-rolling, except the terrain was pretty rough: narrow (or next-to-no) singletrack.

Once again I completely lost the trail around "Lost Lake" (lols, appropriate). Then it was super-slow going connecting Lost to Verde Lake. But then, solid running at/along the Highland Mary Lakes, down to the TH and Cunningham Gulch.

Ankles were pretty solid until that climb. Little Giant....SO ridiculous. I "only" had a 17.2-mile warm-up (vs 92 miles), but it was SO tough! And my ankles KILLED. That combo of full stretch AND loading.

Did the climb in like 62 minutes (FYI - Kilian did it in 49 minutes to break FdH), then painstakingly shuffled the sketchy upper descent (including some butt-scootin' boogie) before getting on more stable trail.

After that...I let HR rip. Tough to keep it down, as I was bonafide fatigued.

The road descent was OK, but tough. Don't have descending legs and it was pure rock for the first few miles!

From there, the rolling singletrack along the Animas was good.

The last kilo to the van was painful: ankles were super-tight.

Grades:

• Pacing: A-. Great pacing until the end. I wish I could've been more controlled over the final 9, but I'm just not fit enough. NBD.

• Nutrition. A-. Ate plenty and consistently, including:

5x sleeves/pouches of chews(!)
1 Rx Bar (one 10-minute sit break)

• Hydration. C. Not enough! Started with maybe a 55oz pack. Drank maybe half then filled to 60+. Drained that by the end.

On top of that: probably 3-4 16oz filter bottles.

So it seems I drank 120 oz of water in 7 hours. That's about 16oz/hour. You'd think that was enough, but I literally spent the rest of the day POUNDING fluid! Gotta do more.

• Stride: B. Taped my trunk and did a pretty good job. But I felt so sheared/rotated on the climb up Little Giant! (Mechanical restriction). Felt like I used my hips well, and otherwise good hip loading and posture, and my cadence was solid.

Great run, but I'll need a lot of good/great ones in the next 8 weeks!

FYI - wore the Hoka Speedgoats. SOLID shoe. Tread was B+ but cush was A!