My family was staying in Park City for the weekend and I saw this race and decided that it would be a lot funner than a long run by myself, so I signed up for it. I had never run this far at one time in my life, so I went into it without high expectations and more of just doing it for fun than competing. The course was absolutely brutal, and I have never done a race with nearly as intense of a course before. We started at 7,000 feet elevation, then climb 8 miles up to 10,000 feet, then deescend the 8 miles down. I made sure to go out slow since I didn't really know what I was doing and had a long ways ahead. I spent the first couple miles passing people (whcich is really hard on single track trails), before settling in with a little group for the next few. I kind of broke away from the group once the hills started getting more intense and I caught up to the top girl. Blake from Alta passed me at this point, and I probably should have gone with him but I didn't know how far it was to the peak, and I didn't want to end up dead at the top. The last mile or so before the summit was killer, and easily the hardest hill I've ever seen in a race. It was so steep that you almost had to climb it, and I used my hands quite a bit. This part was virtually impossible to run up and I fell to like 15 minute mile pace. After I summited Jupiter Peak it was all downhill so I took off to try to catch Blake, but I am pretty bad at runninghills and ended up getting passed by a couple people. about three miles out I biffed it pretty bad and a lot of the skin on my hand came off. I didn't hurt my legs at all, but my hand was hurting really bad for the rest of the race and I lost about a minute probably from the fall. I ended up finishing in 2:04:00 which was actually pretty fast for the course, and a lot faster than I had thought I would run. Afterwards I went and got cleaned up a little in the first aid tent, then talked to Blake for a while. Overall it was a super fun race, and I think I am going to do it again next year and try to break 2 hours.
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