Thursday, February 2, 2012

La Sportiva Mountain Cup

The 2012 La Sportiva Mountain Cup gets rolling this weekend at the Uwharrie Mountain Run. The Mountain Cup race is the 20 mile distance. I'm looking forward to racing again. I haven't really raced since October. I did a mostly uphill 5K in December, just my 3rd run after 6 weeks off. You can guess how well that went. But the race was up my mountain, Pilot Mountain, so I wanted to take part. My only other “sort of race” was the NC Snowshoe Championship on January 7th. There was no snow and no snowshoes, but a great 10K trail race. Though it only had 4 people in it. Alison and I accounted for half the people in the race. So anyway, I'm itching to race.

Uwharrie is nearly 100% trail which I like. Personally, I would not consider it a difficult trail. The main thing that slows it down is the constant twists and turns. I consider the footing as medium technical. No significant climbs or descents, just lots of short, somewhat steep, ups and downs. For me, it's a speed race. At least it is 20 miles and not a 8K or something.

One of the best things about the Mountain Cup for me is the friends, the ones I see regularly, the ones I get to see sporadically, and the new ones. It's a good time playing in the woods with friends. Added in the new places to see, great areas to run in and it only gets better. I like revisiting some favorite races as well. Still, the people in the trail running community are the best. And I like messing with Woodsy.

So Saturday should be fun regardless of the outcome, though I'm looking for something good. It's Mountain Cup time and game on.


Training Note:

On Tuesday, there was great rejoicing among all the clans within my head. I went back to Pilot Mountain for my run up the road workout, 2.25 miles @ ~10%. My climbing skills have been off badly since March of '10 when my back went haywire. Since then every attempt at this workout has been wretched. This was finally back to normal, plus there was very little pain in my ass. My glutes had been failing all together or felt like a knife was in my ass, especially when climbing. Hopefully, the good feeling in my ass will last for a while.

No comments:

Post a Comment