Quote Originally Posted by limewave View Post
The two men in front of me kept walking up the hills. I wanted to catch them so badly I could taste it. As much as my legs and lungs burned, I forced myself to jog up every climb no matter how steep or long--I could let my heart rate recover AFTER the race!!!!
I did a 20k loosely-organized trail run today (only it was actually 21k!) and saw a lot of men doing this (of course there were maybe 4-5 women total out of about 40, so I saw lots of men). I could catch them on the uphills but they would smoke me on the downhills and on the flats. I kept telling myself it was because they had longer legs . However, I am a tentative/careful downhill runner, so I take little itty bitty steps. I fall too much to get much gutsier.

Most of these guys out today were experienced ultra runners and many of them seemed to walk the uphills. I may experiment with walking some of the uphills on future trail runs and see if I really lose that much time. I run pretty slow up them, and if I were to walk maybe I would use that much less NRG that I could apply to the flats...and my time might be the same or better. Have you tried that?

I can't imagine sharing the trails with 100 people, but it sounds like they got pretty spread out. I agree with RRG, 9 min miles on the trail is really smokin'! Good job!