This one wasn't even on my radar at the beginning of the year, let alone on my race schedule but things change and I'm raring to go ! I was planning on doing something between Umstead and 3 Days at the Fair but was really looking at a return to The Promise Land 50++, one of my favorite trail ultra's. The main reason I decided against it was because I really want to do well at 3 Days and beating myself up at Promise Land less than 3 weeks before really just wasn't a smart thing to do. In addition I wasn't sure how recovered I would be from Umstead with just 3 weeks . Kind of sad I couldn't go and it sounds like they had a near perfect day for fun on the trails but I'm sure it was a smart decision to skip it.
But anyway, my training partners Karla and Lisa were going to run at Flying Pirate as well as Karla's husband Frank so I decided it would be fun to go hang out for a weekend at OBX with them and get in a race. At almost a third of the distance and nearly flat for most of the time the recovery will be a lot easier !
I was waiting to see just how well I was recovered from Umstead before making a decision on whether to race or just run it for fun. Well, the recovery has gone better than expected and I've been able to get in a few good hard workouts, hill repeats, mile repeats, tempo and race pace and felt strong in all of them so I guess I'm ready.
The course is the same as the first half of the OBX Marathon which I have done 6 times now so I am very familiar with it. The 1st 10 miles are almost all flat except for one short hill around mile 4. The last 3 miles are in Nags Head Woods on dirt for the next two miles with rolling hills and then the last mile is mostly on a single track trail over ancient sand dunes. I plan to try and build a bit of a cushion in the first 10 and then hold on as well as I can the last 3. I'm not sure I can duplicate the effort I had in March at Tobacco Road but I am going to try. With the slightly harder course I think a 1:40 would be about equivalent to my 1:39 I ran then. This is the 5th year for this race and in every year but one previously a 1:40 would have easily gotten 2nd place in my age group. That is my goal for this year but there are a lot more entered this year so the competition could be tougher.
The race will have runner tracking so if you're interested you can go to the race website and sign up for alerts via text or to FB or Twitter. My bib # is 32. Race starts at 7am Sunday am.
here is the link to the website.
Wish me luck !
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