pikes peak ascent registration

Kudos to the RDs for a job well done.  Unfortunately, they are still letting active.com handle the business end of things, but it was MUCH smoother than last year.  I logged on at about 10 til noon yesterday and after clicking the "register" button a couple of times only to get the "too busy" errors, I found a registration page.  I quickly entered my info and pasted in my qualifying link and I was in.  A couple minutes went by before I had Josh's entry confirmed as well.

The qualification criteria certainly seemed to have slowed the rush down to a much more sane pace and it took a whole 67 minutes for Wave 2 to fill.  Compare that with 9 last year.

We spent a bunch of weekend nights on the incline last year and I don't think that will cut it this year.  If we get the regular incline crew going over to Ruxton again once things warm up, I'm going to spend time running up Barr instead of trudging up the stairs on the Incline.  Hopefully, I can make the Sunday workouts with the Incline Club as well.

Now that I'm in, it's time to talk about goals.  I'd like to finish in under 5:00:00.  I had trained for this last year and was hitting a pace close to that on the bottom half of the course and also above tree line during training runs.  On race day, I abandoned all pace strategy and settled in with the back of the pack and never pressed the pace after the W's.  Lesson learned.  I'll continue to take my time on the W's again this year, but will certainly look to make up time after No-Name and up to Barr Camp.  I've got a long time to go before I need to get serious about hitting splits on the pace chart.  It's all about putting in the time and miles on the hills for right now.

Got the 5K on St. Pat's Day this Saturday and I'm going to get out on a trail on Sunday also.

On the weight front, I hit 204 this morning.  I finally decided to commit to some dietary changes to go along with the increased training.  I was still eating the same crap and wasn't seeing much in the way of weight coming off.  The changes have already paid off.  I was bouncing between 207 and 210 depending on the day and I feel like I've already busted through a plateau.  I actually weigh less than I did at race time last year, so I'm pretty pleased with that.