So it turned out the hills were no problem. And I have idea how I pulled off this ranking. I started no where near the start line (maybe 2/3 of the way back in the pack). And I continuously picked people off during the race but didn't realize it was that many! Everything clicked. My HR was pretty high but my breathing was pretty relaxed so I just went with it. The first hill was easy and maintained my own pace. Forgot about the one last hill in the 4th km so that took some mental effort to push through. In the 5th km was the last steep little hill and they were holding traffic and there was a big enough gap between myself and the person in front of me that I felt bad that they were holding traffic so I decided to sprint up the last 20m. Impressed the volunteers and one of them even took a picture :) Flew down the hills and my knee felt great the whole time, good recovery after the little sprint. On the last flat tried to hold it and focused on keeping pace with a person in front of me and had an amazing split but that's about where the mental effort was really having to kick in. The last.75km was a challenge. I could see the finish but it just didn't look like it was getting any closer. found my kick about 50m out and crossed strong.

I should have eaten better the week before. Ate a lot of chocolate on behalf of valentines day. Other than that it was great!

Walked stretched some, had some of their snacks. Talked to the guy selling "the stick" and he used it on my legs and it was awesome. After about 10 minutes of cooling down and wandering around, I felt like I could do it again.


Just being new to it all and not knowing exactly how hard I can push.

Getting used to trusting my knee and what it can handle.