Fall Backyard Burn Race #1 - Run5 Mile

I think this was a pretty good effort. I have only just restarted my base period so I wasn't sure how fast I could maintain on this kind of a course. A little more than half of the 5 mile course was fire-road, so not as much single-track as possible, but still a nice course.

The first technical downhill section wasn't too bad, I heard that people farther back in the pack had a lot of trouble getting through that section because of the bottleneck, so I'm glad I started out pretty fast and could do that section fast. After getting down the hill, the suspension bridge to cross the creek was interesting as well since it is basically on springs, so when you're in the middle of the bridge it is bouncing all over the place. From there it is a steady climb up after passing the first aid station, about a half mile or so. I think I got to the 5K mark at about 23-24 minutes so I knew I was doing pretty well, then the course goes down a pretty steep hill after passing AS2, and the two trails split off. From here the 5 mile course winds through some nice woods, there were some heavily rooted up and down sections, and one really rocky area, but there was a smooth area on the right side that made the rock garden not so bad. From there a little more twisting around the woods and we come back on to the suspension bridge with just over 1 mile to go, twist back around the creek and then the trail goes up.. up, up, up. There was at least a flat section or two in the middle of those climbs, but just after seeing the sign for a half mile to go, the toughest hill of the whole course loomed ahead. At this point though I knew it wasn't far to go and I kept up with all my might. Thank goodness for the course markings letting us know that the finish was just about to happen.

I'm using the distance from my garmin instead of the 5.1 advertised distance. I have the course uploaded to my training log so anyone can check that out and see the killer climb at the end.

I'm probably at about 90% of a race pace that my fitness level will allow, that of course takes a bit of searching to really find that pace, but I hope to get a better hang of it by the time I'm done with the fall series, and can maybe start to podium for the spring series. I'm about 3 minutes from a podium finish, and I think that is totally reasonable to shoot for that in the spring.

Just walked around a lot, drank some and at some grub.


Mostly being able to tell what kind of effort I can sustain for a whole 5 miles. BAsically race experience.


I love EX2 and the races they put on. Always a good race.