First (and hopefully not last) Race of the Season!

A year has flown by since I ran in the K-100 relay last year and i'm back to do it again tomorrow! Because I was training for a ton of trail stuff last year, including Transrockies, I had opted to do Leg 5 which is the hardest leg of the relay so I could work on my hill training! It was pretty tough indeed and I happily refrained from volunteering for that leg this year! Here is my race report from last year in case you missed it!

I wasn't sure for a long time that I'd be able to run it this year because my foot has been giving me problems for such a long time. But i'm happy to say it's doing quite well lately and although my fitness is nowhere near where it was last year, my team still wants me so I said that the best I could do would probably be 5 min/km (~ 8 min/mile) for the 16.5km that is Leg 7...one reason is because of my inconsistant running/"training"...and the other reason is because I don't want to kill myself racing and risk hurting my foot...and screw up my chances of running the rest of the summer and training for the NYC marathon in the fall.

Here are the stats of the leg below and while the profile pretty much makes it look like a piece of cake since it's all downhill, i'm not so sure. With any luck I will find it fairly easy and maybe all the downhill will help me run a faster time...guess you'll just have to wait for my race report next week! Wish me luck!

LEG SEVEN
START: Roadside turnout 860m past the service road at the top of a small hill.
DISTANCE: 16.5 km
DIFFICULTY RATING: 5 - 6
FASTEST RECORDED TIME IN 2006: 1:02.27
PACE: 6:06 per mile
DESCRIPTION: The drop from the Highwood Pass continues through the first 5 km with a 170m loss of elevation. The last 11.5 km are moderately hilly with a further overall elevation loss of 90m. The course has now entered the Kananaskis Valley. The surface is older asphalt.