Michael: Sign Me Up

The chocolate cows
Meander through the pasture
Without umbrellas.

Wednesday, July 14, 2017

 With our plans just about complete for a U.S. visit next month, I can finally sign up for a few races. That almost feels like waking up on Christmas morning to me when I was a little kid.

Initially, I had wanted to race in the inaugural Santa Barbara Endurance Marathon, but our plans no longer include a visit to that beautiful city. Fortunately, in S. California there’s always a plethora of races on the calendar so I’m switching over to another inaugural trail marathon that works better into our itinerary - The Peak Marathon in San Diego.

The Peak Marathon is a ‘simple’ out and back race that climbs 2,200 ft. over roughly 6.5 miles to the top of the second highest peak in San Diego, Cuyamaca, then descends 2,800 ft. over 6.5 miles before reversing directions back to the start. There’s an aid station at the peak and at the turn around. The website doesn’t provide a course map or elevation profile, which would be helpful, but crunching the numbers would lead me to believe that the grades should be pretty gentle for the most part. Just to be sure I’ll do a bit of research on the named trails the race directors provide in their course description.

The kicker for this race is that it’s held in inland San Diego where temperatures promise to tickle the 90s. Given that the race starts at 6 a.m. the gamble on this course will be to try and climb over and get back to the top of the peak and start heading out on that last long downhill stretch before I get baked in the sun. That’ll be the difference between a great race and a decent finishing time and a woozy just get this damned thing over with dehydration prayer session.