There’s no doubt that consistency is key to long term success in anything. If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, he describes "the 10,000-hour rule" as a necessary requirement to become an expert is to put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. 10,000 hours is a long time (approximately 5 years of full time work). While being consistent in the process to those 10,000 hours is important, so is having fun! After the last few track races, I didn’t want consistency to become staleness. So, I decided to race the GoPro Mountain Games Apres 5k and Spring Runoff 10k. The 5k and 10k started going straight uphill and ran on the side of the mountain on forest service roads and trails. But I thought, why not...let’s have some fun...this will definitely be a challenge. The 5k was on Friday night and the 10k was on Sunday morning. In the 5k, it was about 85F in Vail at over 8,000ft and still very sunny at 5pm. The race started out on a steep uphill for the first mile to mile and a half. I went out pretty aggressively with the leader on the uphill, pulled away by a few seconds towards the top of the climb and then slightly extended the lead on the downhill to get the win. It was so fun and just a completely different type of race than a specifically paced track race. And, the competitors were great guys and the spirit of the event was absolutely so fun and awesome. After that race I was pretty wrecked, from not only running so hard at high elevation in the heat, but also from the hills. I thought how good it was that I had a full day recovery, until I woke up on Sunday morning and was even more sore than Saturday. Sunday’s 10k was pretty similar except the trails were a little more technical in the middle section, and then was a lung-busting, uber steep climb around mile 4 or 5. It didn’t matter if I was sore or not, I was going to get after it and do the best I could. By mile 1, I was in 2nd behind Joe Gray and although I reeled him in a little on the downhill 2nd mile, he slowly pulled away and won by 30s. I came in 2nd place, which for me was a big victory given how sore my legs were. Another good reminder that you can still race really well even if you physically have your B or C game, as long as you bring your mental A game (our sport psychologist at Penn State told me that back in 2006 and it’s something I reflect back on quite often).
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