Friday, June 27, 2008

Deseret News Marathon Course...further testing

After a very sluggish week of running, I did not know whether I even wanted to hike up the big hill from my apartment to a middle section of the Deseret Morning News Marathon. My Achilles tendon had been aching and all I have read told me to keep off of hills in oder to mend it. Well, doing so was not helping, so I decided I might as well test it on some hills, I thought

If you read my post from the other day, I ran the last 10k or so of this marathon to test it out last weekend. The closest section of the race I could run today was miles 15.5 through 20.





I knew this particular section, starting right outside of the Hogle Zoo, was mostly downhill, but once again, I wanted to see for myself. The hardest part of the whole run would be getting to the part of the race course. Before I was even properly awake, I was climbing a hill. My Achilles did not protest, so I happily (perhaps an overstatement of my emotion) progressed up the hill.

There were some really nice house up here on Wasatch drive and the view was pretty nice as well. There were also some REALLY odd stylings of house and some that were not too nice to look. I am sure real estate on this particular section isn't cheap, and whenever I see a shoddy house on expensive land, I am always baffled. At least ti kept my mind off of the run.

By the time I exited Wasatch Drive and started to head home on Foothill Drive, the sun was hig and warm in the sky. hopefully FAR more warm than it will be come race day. As I have mentioned, I am going for a personal best this day. Very few personal bests are run in the desert in July, that is for sure. But the irony of having my personal worst (Leadville in 2006) and personal best in the same month (albeit separated by two years) would be quite nice.

10.2 miles, 1:19:57 and one only slight sore Achilles tendon later, I arrived home.



Now if I can just get someone to drive me out 10 miles,so I can run the 10 mile downhill INTO town, I will be set!

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