Answered prayers

Sometimes the Gods smile down on you. Remember when I pleaded "Oh dear Lord, please let it be under 7,000 feet..."? Welp, the starting altitude of this year's national marathon course: eight feet above sea level! :D

The data is availablehere from MotionBased. There'll be a lot of short climbing it looks like... Gallup'esque almost. It's only an 8 mile course with 1300 feet of climbing, but nothing sustained. The longest "climb" is just over a mile and you only gain 300' compared to the 500' in a half mile at the Coyote Classic. The format, unless they change it now that it's the Nationals, will be a six hour race, which I think will suit me better... I've always preferred timed races to distance races.

This does mess up my scheduling though. I had already planned to skip this race. There's the possibility that if I don't hit both of the Utah marathons someone could sneak past me for the series title. That means I'll be doing Park City and Sonoma back to back, or skipping Park City hoping someone doesn't beat me out at Brain Head. Decisions, decisions...