8-6-2011 Jupiter Steeplechase

David, Andy and I all went into this race with pretty high expectations.  Andy ran well last weekend, David was 2nd at this race last year, I felt like I was in pretty good form.  Ideally we would have had a Sugar House sweep! We knew that wouldn't happen the second we got to registration and saw the rest of the field, stacked (well, as stacked as a small local trail run can be).  This was the last event of the La Sportiva Mountain Cup and the OR show was in town which contributed to the quality of the field.

The Up
The race is an out and back.  Up for the first 8 miles (3000 feet) and then back. The up was more exciting then I could have hoped for.  Running felt pretty flat (me, not the course) from the start.  David got out quick and I decided to hang back a bit.  I ran a few hundred meters behind him for the first couple miles and once that got boring I bridged the gap so we could run together.  Turns out I ran a little too hard to catch him and felt pretty awful as I pulled up.  I said hi and immediately slowed to try and recover a bit, I felt lame.  A mile or two later Luke Nelson passed me.  Shortly after he went around a turn I saw him sprinting back down the road yelling "MOOSE!  Turn around, a mother moose is charging me!"  Glad to have an excuse to turn around and run down hill I did.  Bernie was behind me and I yelled at him to turn around too.  He didn't.  He kept running up and once the moose charged around the corner Bernie bent over and picked a few rocks up.  The moose stopped and ran away. At least someone in the group wasn't scared. The rest of the up was slow and hard. I topped out with Jason right behind Bernie and Luke.  David a few hundred meters ahead.

The Down
The down also had moments of excitement.  Not sure if I've ever taken a fall while running but I've made fun of my friends who have.  Now they can make fun of me.  For some reason I didn't see a switch back until I was right on it and I kind of ran off the trail and fell to my hands.  Once again, lame.  To make matters even worse Luke and Bernie beat me to the top and were running the down a lot harder than I wanted to. Meaning, they left me.  A few miles from the finish I passed David just standing in the middle of the trail.  Apparently he just fell for the second time and was trying to make sure everything worked.  From there out the running was uneventful.

Thoughts
I was 5th in 1:57 or 1:58, David 6th a few minutes back, and Andy was another few back.  I can't speak for the others but I didn't compete very well.  A race never feels that good when you let the competition beat you and you don't even respond.  When Luke passed me I didn't even try to go.  I just wanted to play it conservatively.  When the moose incident happend and I found myself 25 meters down trail from Luke and Bernie, I didn't really push to catch up and run with them, I just stayed back, conservative.  On the down I didn't try to bridge the small gap and go with Luke and Bernie.  One fun thing about races is competing with others.  Oh well, next time.  Milliseconds.com did a great job with results (sarcasm).  They only missed 20% (myself and David included) of all the guys' times.

Paddle boarding at Deer Creek afterwards found David and I falling some more... Also, don't swim with a phone in your pocket.

Derkas goes down for the 3rd time