On August 2, Wasatch Trail Run Series 2023 hit Snowbird for a second time. I didn't quite hear the reason, but I caught on at the beginning that every one was again doing the short course. While I was amped up to run the long course this came as a welcome surprise just as it did at Brighton. I had incurred a bad injury glissading down the Mount Timpanogos glacier last week and had not been doing very much training and conditioning. Aside for one long-ish road bike ride (and the fact that I have a physical job that is not at a desk), I hadn't really been on my legs in a week and a half so I was glad for the abbreviation.
I'm grateful that I once again came in running and was pleased with my time. I finished at 54:48, which is under one hour for the short course. This was a huge improvement for me with a pace of 13:28. For a 50 year old WTRS "newb" I felt like this was finally some legitimate trail running. But, to put the work ahead into perspective, the fastest person did it in 30 minutes. Average time was 45 minutes. To give further perspective on what's possible, an older male participant completed this course in 46 minutes at age 65, and the oldest participant, a 68 year old male completed in 59 minutes, just 5 minutes behind me.
Two main takeaways are this, maybe the short course is more my jam and maybe I'm doing too much hiking or cross-training in between the races? Clearly, I'm not too old to be out doing this and there is potential for even more improvement if I want it.
At the end of the day, this season has been all about challenging myself to show up and do hard things on a regular basis and I've done that. I've completed 7 races with WTRS and one Cirque Series race so far this year. After each race and through the exercise of blogging, I am able to reflect on what I can do better or reflect on whether or not that's even the goal. Over the course of the next few weeks I will be setting my intentions for next year. Do I push myself to get better, faster, more amazing results or will I continue to just show up and enjoy power-hiking and running in beautiful nature with a community of like minded people? Both are valid pursuits. Thank you for reading. ~Clark 🙌🏻