Highlands Sky 40 Miler

A couple weekends ago I ran the longest race/course I've ever participated in.  The Highlands Sky 40 Miler runs up some mountains, runs 8 miles along a road on a ridgeline, continues through the Dolly Sods, into a ski resort and finally back on a road for a couple miles to get you back to the starting line. It was a beautifully challenging course that took over 9 hours to complete.





40 miles seems like a long ways. "How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time." So I guess in this case, it's one mile at a time. There were 8 aid stations along the run. One early section was 8.1 miles long (and had the longest climb) but the rest of them were about 4 miles apart. I thought that seemed a little excessive, but as the day wore on, 45-60 minutes between aide stations became a very nice thing.

Who thinks this looks like a good idea?

Early morning start (6am)

The run went over 5,400 ft of elevation gain, most of which was in the first 10 miles. The weather was about as good as you could ask for -- reasonable temperatures, overcast, and a light drizzle for a few miles in the morning. The trail was rough though. Between ankle turners for large portions of the course, and several sections where the ankle-turners were covered in 3-6 inches of water so you couldn't see them, simply running was challenging. But, as many ultra-distance runners will say, sometimes the hardest races are the ones that are completely runable. In this case, the technically challenging course forced me to a walk in many places and probably made the race much more do-able. Still 9:15 is a long time to be moving. Running at the end required a huge amount of effort just to run 11 minute miles. (Compared to the sub-8's I was easily running at the start, that was quite the change.)

Meg got an early morning run in (where it poured rain) and drove over to see me at the aide station around mile 19. That really helped the spirits as she helped with the logistics of finding my drop-bag to change shoes. Changing shoes to run along the 8 miles of fire road was great. My shoes had been unavoidably soaked early on and 3+ hours of running with squishy feet was wearing on me. Dry shoes made me feel like a new person. However, as soon as we finished the road miles, they dumped us almost immediately into a stream crossing and fixed that. As I shuffled the last few miles, we crossed a road where the organizers warned traffic "Caution: Runners in Roadway." I thought that was pretty generous since I wouldn't describe my shuffling as "running".

Aide Station 4. I swear you can see aide station 5 from here, but at least I have dry shoes on.

As I shuffled/ran/walked the last few miles, there was a sizeable hill before getting into the finish area. I think everyone started running as soon as they could see the spectators, but apparently the spectators could see us much earlier. They saw most everyone switch from walk-to-run mode.

We had a chance to catch up with some friends, Kir & Tom, who has blogged about it and has a lot more photos than I do.

Overall, it was a great run, a great day, and exactly what I was looking for in a vacation. Despite a little sunburn, Meg seemed to have a good day as well.