Monday, June 6, 2011

Conquer the Cove Marathon


When I decided to not enter the Black Mountain Monster 24 hour race, it was because I didn't think I would get a decent training benefit from it. Sure, I would get a good long run whether I did 12 or 24. I also would get a night time run; all beneficial and will help me in my TRT prep.

But I need mountains. I need to work on climbing, and I need to work on surviving quad busting descents.

So when a friend suggested Conquer the Cove marathon in Roanoke VA, after my initial "Oh, how cute" thought, a look at the elevation profile told me this is just the kind of run that I need. There are two solid climbs (and subsequent descents), and lots of single track. Perfect. The weather promised to be hot too. Excellent.

The race itself is an inaugural event put on by the Roanoke VA Mountain Junkies.

The race itself was awesome, after the first mile, we went straight into a single track 2 mile or so climb. Rolling hills, about 80% single track until mile 18, followed by a three mile, 1000 ft climb, and then a quad busting single track descent with a few more rolling hills took us to the finish. It was very nice of the sun to come from behind the clouds and start beating down on me just as I was

The aidstations were wonderfully stocked, spaced nicely, and manned by terrific volunteers. "Organic Chocolate with Sea Salt" is awesome. So are shop towels soaked in ice water, a very nice touch.

This is an impressive race, thoroughly enjoyable, and I recommend it.

My finish time was 5:37. Happy with that considering the 3200 ft of elevation gain, although I didn't really set any time goals.

What was particularly encouraging was the speed of recovery. My leg muscles were practically fine within a few minutes of the finish, and certainly by the time I got home there was no soreness at all. 24 hours later, and I cannot tell that I had run a marathon the day before.

Keep plugging away at the hills Jimbo. TRT is just 39 days away.











1 comment:

  1. Great report. I kinda ran into this by accident, but I'll be sharing a link to this report, on my own report for the Conquer The Cove race.. find it here:
    http://morethanpaceandstride.blogspot.com/

    Hope you dont mind me putting a link to your report there.
    I'll be keeping up with your posts from now. You run many events I read about.

    ReplyDelete