Sage Burner 25K

Back home and another race! A week after Transvulcania was the Sage Burner 25k. Low key and fun I was ready to race. I went out with Brian Smith who quickly took the lead and pushed the pace. I was not going to stay with him with his blistering pace, it was too fast. I let him go and hoped he was indeed going too fast. I followed but slowly lost time to him. By 50 minutes into the race I was about 1 minute back. But I was no longer losing ground. It was my turn to run the second half of the race faster than Brian. I felt great and started pushing the pace. By 1 hour in I could see I was making up ground as we started up a steep hill. I drove up the hill unrelenting. Sure enough I caught Brian at the top of the hill and 1:10 into the race. At this point I knew I would win the race. Mentally I knew I would. But there is the saying, "don't count your chickens until they are hatched".

It was now my turn to push the pace. I picked it up doing several long surges until I had a 2 minute lead on Brian. As the course was slightly different and longer I wanted to run as fast as I could to get the new course record. I knew I would be close to breaking 2 hours on this nearly mile longer course. I pushed and sprinted and finished winning in 2:00:22. Results can be found here: http://sageburnertrailrun.com/2015-sage-burner-trail-run-results/

Great fun run that I have to run every year. Check it out, well worth it with the miles of awesome winding single track, great people, and awesome after party.