Michael: Ranked

It’s not personal;
Cows are decent enough but
They’re a disaster.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Kimme and I are excited that we’re both now officially entered into races coming up this month in the states. Kimme is doing the Bull Dog 50k August 22, and I’m doing the Bull Dog 25k then the Los Pinos 50k Sept. 5.

One great thing about racing is that the outcome is both immediate and clear. One strange thing about the Los Pinos race is that they give you a predicted time and ranking before the race. That I’m not sure how I feel about.

I haven’t done the Los Pinos race before so as part of my race preparation, I check out past results to get an idea of what people are running the course in. Out of curiosity, I’ll often also look at the list of current participants to see if I recognize any of my competitors. I’m not looking at the elites, I don’t know those guys, but dudes in my age group that I might be familiar with.

I don’t recognize anybody running Los Pinos. But in the participant list is a projected time and finish ranking. I thought when I signed up yesterday, I would be asked to estimate my time, but the website must have some calculator that does that. I was going to give 6:15 as my estimate, but they’ve given me a 5:48 projection, which would have me coming in second at the moment.

That is both flattering and a bit unnerving. I haven’t raced in the states in 8 months. I really haven’t been thinking about where I should finish. The race sounds grueling enough to where I should be satisfied just completing the course and not make Kimme wait for me all day. I’m going to try and not let it influence how I think about running the race too much, but that’s not going to be easy.

One good thing about being given an estimated finishing time is that I’ll use that, along with the course profile, to develop a fuel and hydration plan. If they think I can finish in under 6 hours, dammit, I’m going to give it a go and that means I’ll have to take in less fluids and sugars than I had originally planned.

Now what to wear?