IAU Trail World Championship Recap
Where do I begin? With the disappointment? With the learning? With the future? The 3rd IAU Trail World Championship was quite a disappointment. I had prepared for this race for over a year, conditioning my body to handle 70+km of "trail running" at a pretty good clip, running three difficult 50km trail races in the mid-3:30's and erasing a decade-long CR in a pretty popular trail marathon. Bottom line, I was conditioned to run through 50km at sub-7:00/mile pace on pretty harsh Mid-Atlantic trails and then tack on 20km more. What I was not prepared for was hiking up a mountain ascent and scrambling the descent. The race started in nice conditions, a field of 120 athletes. With the initial 4km on the road before our first of two summits up Diamond Hill (1750ft), I got a feel for the field. I ran in about 25-30th place through the mile and by 2 miles had moved into the top 20. As we started the climb of Diamond Hill, I started easily passing most runners and I was operat...