Running race 57:30 [4] 10.8 km (5:19 / km) +320m 4:38 / km
ahr:175 max:184
Trolhattan city trail race. 10.5km up, down and along the river/gorge banks on small trails. Really fun and painful race with lots of sharp steep climbs and descents (advertised as 1040 stairs, but I'm not sure if anyone counted?).
Kine and I got offered free entry a couple of weeks back, and at the time I kind of said 'sure, why not?!' About 10mins before the start we were wondering what we might have got ourselves into, as unbeknownst to us it was a part of some Nations Challenge between Sweden and Norway. Fortunately, being a kiwi, my result wasn't to count (oops, that probably wasn't what they wanted from my free entry! ;) Our competitors included some pretty darn fast runners, plus a few very fit long distance skiers it seemed.
Anyway, I had a fun battle with 3 other girls, Kine included. I managed to keep Kine in sight, just about, for the first half of the race, with a local girl (later turned out it was the sister to one of our new juniors!), and white-shirt-and-speed-glasses lady between us. Then as we crossed the river, I noticed we were starting to bunch up a bit more. Around the sluices and I eased past Ida's sister, and then Kine. THat was at the 40min mark, and I was pretty damn sure I was going to crash soon after, so I didn't believe Kine when she said I'd beat her from here. I also didn't believe her when she said I was fighting for 3rd place.
Anyhow, long story short, I tucked in behind white-shirt-and-speed-glasses lady, camo-singlet guy, and bright-yellow-shirt youth, and gritted my teeth for the last few km. We'd sussed out the last km or so, so I at least knew what to expect there, and I'd sussed out the last decent climb on google street view (sprint geeking skills for the win).
I knew I was beating white-shirt-and-speed-glasses lady on the climbs, so on the second last stair climb I put my legs to work and hoped like hell that her legs would feel as leaden as mine at the top.
Seemed to work, and I even managed to (unintentionally) do the same to camo-singlet guy on the very last set of stairs. But only after we'd both given the little kid spectating two very satisfying high-fives.
With a couple of backwards glances to check the distance to white-shirt-and-speed-glasses lady, I gritted my teeth and ground out the last few hundred metres of flat path to the finish. bright-yellow-shirt youth put about 50m into me here, but whatever.
Turns out I finished 4th, so just out of the money (literally). Ah well, the organiser bought us free pizza afterwards, which tasted a hell of a lot better than an oversized novelty cheque. For the record, I was 5 mins off the winner, 2 mins from 3rd place, and 20s ahead of white-shirt-and-speed-glasses lady. Kine's watch says it was 240ish metres climb, but Strava says 390m...go figure. Reality is probably somewhere in between.