Greenland Trail Race 8-mile 2008

The Greenland Trail is a very pretty 8 mile loop trail in Larkspur, Colorado. The Greenland Trail Race can be run as either an 8 mile, 25k (16 mile), or 50k (32 mile) course. Since my spring marathon was a week after this race, I opted to run the 8 mile course (one loop around the trail).
Conditions for this race this year were perfect (unlike last year). The sun was shining, the sky was cloudless, and since it was 7:00 on a Saturday morning in April, it was nice and cool. Fortunately the big snow that hit on Wednesday was completely melted away in all but the shadiest of spots on the trail. Unfortunately that meant that there were stretches of the trail which were pretty muddy and slippery, but the vast majority of the course was fairly dry.
The trail starts at just under 7000 feet elevation, and climbs at a fairly steady rate for the first five miles to its highest point, just under 7400 feet, before starting a steady drop down for the last three miles. I started out pretty conservatively, keeping myself around an 11 minute mile for the first three miles. But the middle two, which had the steepest climbs in the course, dropped me down to 12 minute pace. Fortunately I was more than able to make up the time by increasing to sub-9:30 pace for the next two miles, and 8:21 for the last!

And of course, I had the pleasure of seeing so many of my fellow Runner's Edge of the Rockies members at the race (Coach David builds the race into our training schedules), and my younger sister Sara who met me at the finish.