Crazy Times

Good golly it has been so busy around the Decker house the last two weeks. Hence the lack of blogging. So where to start huh ?

Well how about with a little Trail Mix 50k race re-cap. The race went pretty well I thought. Going into it I figured I was in 3:50-4:00 hour shape. I figured I would shoot for 57 min laps or so and just go with the flow. The race was stacked with lot's of fast runners and we had a great day weather wise so that was good. When the race started we got out hard. Hell I looked at my Garmin and we where rolling 6:30 miles and the leaders where pulling away! I backed off as I knew I was not ready for that yet. The whole first lap I was feeling great and very much in control and happy with how I was running. I hit 54 mins for the first lap and knew I need to slow some as we still had a long way to go. I was running the race alone for the most part so I was very happy to have my ipod rocking. Late on the second lap my friend Kelly caught up to me and we ran for awhile together. It was great to see how he was doing. He was using this as a training run before Ice Age 50 miler in 4 more weeks. At the end of lap two I was 56 min for a 25k split of 1:50 and I was feeling super good! I took a second Vespa going into the third lap and was excited as this was coming together well for me. Not much happen that third lap. I continued to run alone and listen to my tunes. It was funny to me to think I had run so far and only ran with someone like for 30 min's or so total. This third lap was a 59 min one. The last lap was crunch time for me. I knew I needed a 1:10 lap to run 4 hours. I tried to be the "new/old" Kurt and said hell forget 4 hours let's run as close to 3:50 as possible. It was on this last lap I could tell I was getting towards the max of my current fitness level but was very happy I was still cruising along hitting 6:40 mile pace still in the flatter areas. As the finish was coming I was very happy to be done and very tired. But it was more of a emotional type of tired as I knew I was finally back to running more like my old self. It felt good! In the end I was 3:53 and good for 8th place overall. I will take it as it is a good starting point as I build for Afton in July.
Hmm what else was going on? Oh yea my wife had surgery to have her Gallbladder taken out and I had my 39th b-day. I am happy to report Sonya is doing good as we even got to run some trails yesterday for my b-day! I had a good feeling during yesterdays run this is a good start for the summer for both of us. Bring it on. I leave you with this little video for a group I have been digging. Enjoy!