Kat'cina Mosa 100k August 2, 2014

Well, this was my 5th attempt at a finish for this course. Year one-2009, dehydrated at Windy Pass streach, which made me time out at mile 38, little vally. Year two- made it to mile 46 in 2010 but had a lot of problems due to POTS that year and timed out, 2011- suffered a stress fracture so I worked at the Correl aid station instead, 2012- tried to run this course a few months after having a hysterectomy, got to Big Springs 2 hours after the cutoff, 2013- was having some PTSD symptoms about DNFing, yes PTSD symptoms related to races since the last 4 years have been a fight back for my health and running. I dropped at mile 13, and went and helped out at Big Springs. 

So for 2014- I got a running coach last year, and have slowly started completing races again. I thought I had this one for sure. Still struggle a bit with uphills, and this course is a lot of uphill. I did fine but was a little short on time after reaching Windy Pass at mile 29 at 1:45. The cut off for Little Valley is 4:30 to be there and complete the 1.5 mile in and out. So I rushed out of Windy, and managed a great fall coming down Windy and landed  square on my lower back about 4-5 miles down. At first I ignored it, but it got excruciatingly painful to breathe or move the next 3 miles, and I was an emotional train wreak both because I was in a lot of pain, but more because I had my heart set on finishing.

Now trying to figure it how to increase my tolerance for hills, running with POTS means my body works 3-4 times harder to get up and stand up than most people, and hill climbs are challenging. It's much better then before, but still needs improvement. Going to be doing a ton of uphill climbing in the next 3 weeks to get ready for Wasatch 100.