Goal Race A - Completed!

 Maybe at some point someone will read this but in the mean time this is here for me to come back to. 

Yesterday I did my A goal race.  It was a new personal best on that course which I'm so thankful for.  But I have a few things to say that I'll hopefully remember the next time that I run this course!

What I'm going to say here is going to come across as negative, I believe, but I mean it more as a way to learn and move forward.  

Going into the race I wasn't sure if I had trained enough.  I had been training but for some reason it just didn't feel like enough. Despite this feeling we still bettered our personal best by a couple of minutes.  And that's what we need to focus on.  Not the other metrics that told us we would have a better time. Better to think of, on trail races, that it's a time trail against the clock and not where you are going to place among other people. That's probably my best take away. 

The 10 days leading into this race was spent at a lower elevation (3,000 meters).  We did come back a few days before but the heavy sessions were done at a lower elevation and while they were crushed and I think they helped I think being at elevation would have been better.  

The two other items that got in my head is the Stryd race calculator and the entrants list on Ultra Sign Up.  On Ultra sign up, with the entrants there, it said I could have possibly been top 3 in the whole 4 mile race.  And while I knew it was most likely not possible I let that get in my head.  Secondarily the Stryd Race Calculator was saying I was going to go sub 50 easily (which is what I've been wanting).  However I should know this by now it doesn't know how to calculate trail races very well. So next year we look at it and kind of ignore it I think.  I think it gives us a baseline to start with and then work from there.  

A couple of things that I think would have made this better.  More time on the course.  I think if we had put more time into the course or perhaps more running on trails with similar types of up hills would have helped!  Secondarily I think having more miles under our feet and having our long runs be longer (90 minutes tops) would have helped.  

But otherwise...celebrate those wins!  Even if they are smaller than what we want or were expecting. 

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