Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Lost Lake Run

The longer I live in AK, the longer my checklist of cool things to do grows. One of the "to do's" on my list for several years has been the Lost Lake Run. I finally managed to get myself a spot in the race months and months ago (this baby sells out fast!), and just this last weekend, I did it! I accomplished my big goal of the summer! The race consists of a 15.75 mile trail that takes you up and up for 5 miles (with much of your view looking like this):Not my picture, I took this from the internet


Then there are about 4 miles of rolling hills up in the alpine tundra. It was raining pretty hard up above tree line, but it's hard to notice the rain when the views were still stunning:



Again, not my pic, thank you internet. This one captures very similar weather conditions we experienced this past weekend. The bike would've been nice!


And then there's a big push at mile 9 up "heartbreak hill" before you plummet down to the finish line. Guess what? Yep, not my pic. But this shows the beginning of the plummet. Of course, it was NOT this sunny and you couldn't actually see Resurrection Bay. Not that I would've seen it - I was busy focusing on the 10 feet in front of me and that's about it.

I was hoping to finish in less than 3.5 hours, as I'd never run this far before (longest run prior to this was a 13.07 mile training run up and down a mountain) and had no idea how fast or slow I'd go. I've also hiked the trail before, but didn't remember much about the elevation gain and whether I'd be able to run up the "ups" at all. When I reached the halfway point at 1h 40m I knew the hardest part was behind me, and that I could break 3 hours so long as I didn't hurt myself. I managed not to fall the entire race (woo hoo!!), even with all that rain and slick gloppy mud, and finished in 2:50:21. Yee haw! I still had gas left in the tank too, so I know I can go faster.


Remember how I said my list of cool things to do keeps growing? Well, now that I've done Lost Lake in the rain, I want to do it in the sun! And I want to do it faster. I'll add it to the list...

2 comments:

shawn said...

YOU ARE AWESOME!!!

and i want to do that race with you next time.

Krista & Duncan Graham said...

We hiked Lost Lake with you and Julz, right? If so, DUDE. I'm impressed with your time. Nicely done, Linz, nicely done.