Friday, September 16, 2011

GORE-TEX Transalpine Race Summary: Stage Three

Shruns Austria to Galtur Austria

Stage 3 brought rain but a happy stage for Two Canadian Girls on the Run!  With the cooler temperatures, we had a steady day which lead us to our first 10th place finish.

The  night before, Wolfy (the Race Director), switched the stage due to lightening storms, high winds and foul weather.  The original route would have taken us up a ridge.  It would have been awesome!!  Instead we still had 43km and 2673m ascent and 1773 descent ahead of us.  Another marathon for day 3.

Sarah and I were arriving late at the starts and getting really poor positions every morning.  And with 10min to the start I had to use the 'washroom'.  Poor Sarah, I left her standing by the start gate and ran into a local hotel to use the washroom... only to get a major mouthful by the owner for using the toliet w/o asking.  I felt awful and was poliet and stood there to hear her out and apologize, however I kept looking at my watch because I didn't want to be late for the start!

Call it a warm up, because I ran back to Sarah and we ducked under the tape in a better position.  We pushed a bit harder today off the start and up a steep, steep, start.  It helped us avoid a lot of the bottle neck going into the single track.  To summarize the day, there was a lot of flats and runable terrain.  We didn't run any of it super fast, but we were steady and we landmarked the whole day.  "run to the tree."  Or "lets run to that bridge".  There was still a lot of climbing, but less descents and a really muddy technical section which people walked.  I got out front, picked good lines and Sarah and I flew past people like they were standing still!  we made a lot of time up in that section.  We also honed in our aid stations and spent less time screwing around and got in and out.  We worked really well together!

Sarah and I ran in an icebreaker top and shorts all day.  The only thing we added were arm warmers and a vest at the summits.  I couldn't believe how well icebreaker worked.  People around us had gore-tex pants, jackets, long sleeves, you name it!  We were in bare minimum and the icebreaker insulated us and kept us perfect!  It was awesome!


Stage 3 was the first stage we actually looked at the results.  We didn't have time or interest the first few days and we were suprised to see our 10th place finish.  It was really motivating!  We once again focused on our recovery and our 'crew' took great care of us.  I think this was the stage that Trent even hand washed cow shit off my shoes.  That is LOVE!!  Just for the record, there was a lot of cow shit on the first 4 stages.  A lot!  It got everywhere... and I thought for sure I was going to get sick from the shit that got on my hose at one of the aid stations.  yuck!

1 comment:

  1. Hi Rene,Thanks for taking the time to post all this, I have enjoyed all the posts from the 7th horrible day to you both finishing. You are such an inspiration, I only hope I can be as proud to do something as awesome as you did.

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