Woke up before my alarm somehow at around 03:25am and felt quite good and excited. Had a relaxing morning including some light breakfast (toast, coffee) and then drove over to Polichaski around 05:30am.
It was still a bit dark around 06:00am when I started warming up but got light quickly. Same clockwork warmup, 10’ jogging, drills, 4x strides.
NB: Went lightweight for this one so only outfit was: light laspo t-shirt, super light windbreaker (LaSpo Blizzard), leki poles + glove things, LaSpo Prodigio Pros (these are getting old!), sunglasses, buff, belt w/ 1 bottle + gels
Plan was to hopefully snag my own FKT from Polichaski to Summit (and RT if I felt good). The time was not easy as I’d given it an honest squeeze when I was quite fit last summer (7/20/24, 2 weeks out from UTMB-Q and 8 weeks out from Manaslu). I followed the same workout pattern I’d done that day: 2’ on/ 1’ off up Polichaski and 3’/1’ up the horses climb and to the summit.
This ended up going very well. I got up in 54’40 (and FWIW, I’d thought 55’ was a good time to shoot for, as I think last year I was up in about 58’30, so I was extremely close to that). From there, I ran a very strong stretch on horses (24’59, my second fastest ever for that split) and then made very good time getting up to the summit. I thought under 100 min (1h40) would be very solid (the record was 1h42) and I was well under that at 1’38’34.
I flipped immediately and retraced my steps all the way back down. I got a tiny bit turned around in the fog coming off the summit that probably cost a minute but then made good time down off the pyramid and back onto the runnable trail. Really let myself run this descent and it was also my second fastest split ever running down that piece in 11’42 (3’58/km), which is not trivial.
Finally, went DOWN the polichaski for the first time this year, which is also not trivial. Going downhill through the carwash is just an invitation for a broken ankle at high speed, and then hitting the really steep grassy section is an absolute quad destroyer. Totally brutal descent but had a huge PR on that segment running 27’30 (previous best was like 31’).
Hit the bottom in 2’32’38, a full 20 min faster than my 2h52 RT time. Really, really pleased -- and legs were totally jello walking across the street to grab a ride home.
Good shit.
Fuel: 4 gels, 1 bottle maurten 160, 1 bag splash acid frogs (250 cal)
810 calories = 324 cal/hr
Splits (from my watch)
Polichaski: 54’40
Horses: 24’59
Traverse: 9’11
To Cima: 10’36
Down from summit: 6’50
Traverse: 6’34
Horses: 11’42
Polichaski: 27’32