17.1 miles, ~5000 feet climb, ~4000 feet descent, top-out at 13,120 feet.
Did it in 3:46, an improvement of about 30 minutes since my last one two or three years ago. Felt pretty good. Passed a lot of people near the top of the climb and on the way down, even though I was moving at a crawl on the last few climbs. In the unofficial results I was 100th overall, out of some 1200 registrants (don't know how many actually started & finished). I suspect I'll end up much lower in the official results; people were saying there were timing problems and my time just isn't that fast. UPDATE: Offical results place me at 381 out of 1300 starters; official time 3:45:31. My summit split was 2:43. This means I hit about a 16 minute pace going up, 8:45 pace going down, and 13:11 overall.
This was my first long run since the White River 50, and I think adding the Crossfit on top of a summer-long slow aerobic base was a good idea. I still need to be able to climb faster at the top.
According to plan, I took the downhill hard from the beginning. Unfortunately I kind of burned up after dropping a couple thousand feet in a couple miles. I took a caffeineated gel that I had brought with me, which helped a lot, but the flats about halfway down were tough. I sped up again after that.
My calorie intake was about right, but I got fairly dehydrated. It was very cold and hard to drink at the top (probably close to freezing, with a strong wind).
On the way back, we were nearly first-on-scene of a major motorcycle-vs-SUV accident. Some guy decided that the best way to learn to ride a Harley (he didn't know how to ride a motorcycle) was to go out without a helmet on a busy two-lane highway; he apparently swerved right into them. He was in bad shape: two distal limb amputations (one hand and one foot), major closed head injury, bad GCS, etc. I held a jaw thrust on him to try to keep his airway open until EMS eventually showed up. Worst trauma I've seen in a long time.
