Who runs when it’s cold, wet, and windy? Apparently me that’s who.
Conditions to the SAAC King of the Mountain were similar to those of Troopers Creek a few weeks back. This distance however was 3km and not 10km.
The course was slightly different from that of last year, and unless King of the Mountain gets moved to earlier on in the year, I doubt we will have it again out in the Grampians, especially if weather conditions are the same as they were on race day.
We couldn’t wait to get started, we just wanted it to be over and done with, the rain was no longer mist, but pure downpour, and the wind was starting to pick up. When the car horn went off I just went for it.
I had already made the decision of getting to the top, turning around, and just running back down. I didn’t see the point of waiting for everyone else to finish. Not unless I wanted to catch a cold. Yeah, no thanks.
I was soaked through and through by the end of it. There was no part of me that wasn’t wet. As soon as I got back down the hill, I ran straight to the car, took off my top and wrapped a towel around myself, and we left. I could have easily dripped out a cup of water from my top, it was soaking.
Because it took forever to locate satellites I didn’t end up wearing my Garmin, I would just have to wait until I got the results from the timekeeper to see what my end result was.
I ended up running this 3km distance in 16:35 which is not bad considering it was all uphill at a 120m elevation. This is compared to last years course at 187m elevation (but at 3.6km).
I would show you a map, but it’s a 5km loop as we ran 2.5km, did a turnaround and finished at the 3km (for the actual event). We were still 2km from the start line, which makes it 5km all up, I hope that makes sense.
Overall it was a good run, not my best, but the weather really through me. That’s ok, we don’t always have fantastic runs, I still enjoyed it, wasn’t as steep as I thought it would be, but it’s not Troopers.
Who knows what will happen to King of the Mountain in 2014? As soon as I found out I’ll post it here.