The Inspiration: I want to be better than Alexander Parkerat everything he cares about.
The Fueling: I used my naked belt with a 250 ml flask of water, 250 ml flask of drink mix (120g carbs), and 3 gels. For breakfast, I ate two toaster waffles with Nutella and had some drink mix with ~30g carbs. I had a ~30g of the drink mix in my flask during my warmup. Around the 19 minute mark I had ~40g carbs drink mix with some water. Coming down Bishop peak around minute 43 I had 2 gels for 40g carbs 60mg caffeine. I had another 40g carbs going down Madonna around minute 68.
The effort: My legs felt fairly good going up the P, but my lower calves got pretty tight, an issue i’ve been dealing with on the steeps lately. I struggled to get into a rhythm running across foothill and lost around 30 seconds at the Santa Rosa light, but thanks to my superior route choice I knew I was on track to hit the summit of bishop peak ahead of Alex’s split. I got into a bit of a rhythm on the bishop climb, but it wasn’t a very fast one. Once I hit the summit trail, I lost some hope as I thought I was going to slow, but I chugged along and hit the summit at 38:46, 2:03 ahead of Alex’s split. This boosted my spirits and I felt fine, but not fast on the downhill. I started to feel a bit of jelly in my quads. When I hit foothill, I jumped the fence across the road and just kept my head down as I crossed the field. My climbing wasn’t very good, but going up rock garden felt like the most consistent and in control part of the day. I should have tried harder there. Thanks to my field shortcut, I summited Madonna in 1:08:18, 3:45 seconds ahead of Alex’s pace. At this point I knew I had to just keep moving and I would be all right. I enjoyed the drainage chute descent, but when I hit Higuera I felt bad. I was moving slow. I ran in the road against the oncoming cars. I had a moment where I misremembered the time and thought I was somehow going to lose to Alex, but something like that would never happen. Final split: 1:23:35, new FKT by 2:38.
Route Notes: I made 2 assumptions
1. The official starting point, parking lot R1, no longer exists. Due to construction, the whole area is inaccessible and the closest point to the start of the route that can be accessed is the gate to the P. I think this makes sense as a new starting point as it seems to be the most permanent and distinct.
2. I took the shortest route I could create, which is different from the previous submissions. I believe this is acceptable as it is a point-to-point route and all other submissions took different routes.