Sky Race

Today was the Friulane Dolomite Sky Race - http://www.fornidisopra.it/?page=spr.maratonina.dolomiti. Last weekend I ran into one of the guys from my running club and he convinced me to run it. There was only one problem - the last time I ran on mountain trails was back in April when I bragged about it on this blog http://clint-marie.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html. 4 months of 3 to 6 miles flat runs, and not really many of those.


Anyway, I did a steep 5 km trail run last Monday, then regular runs on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. My legs hurt from the climbing until Saturday, but it must have toughened them up because I made it today. Here's a Google Earth of the course:


And an elevation graph:
Here's the elevation numbers from the GPS:
Total Elevation
3,758
Elevation Gain
1,878
Elevation Loss
1,880
Net Elevation Change
-1


Average ascent grade was 24.6%, average descent grade was 20.8%


Winning time was 2:04. I ran a 3:32. Course record is 1:56 with a world champion running, so if you add 10 minutes to the winning time you roughly equate it to a marathon time, since the fastest amateurs hit a 2:15 or so. That's adding 8% to the winning time. If you treat mine the same way, I ran the equivalent of a 3:49 marathon. I feel pretty good about that, considering I didn't train for it.

Sick Bastards

It's festival season here, and most seem to have displays of farm animals. Here's Ian checking out a donkey.

And a show pheasant.

How about some goats, a donkey, and a pony?

The best was the "Do Not Touch the Animals" sign. Literally translated it states "Do Not Molest the Animals". Eeewww!!!