Delirium 32k

Welcome back! This time come join me for Delirium 32k! A few things to start, Delirium takes place in Anniston, AL, and is a different style of race. The 32k was a course of four different loops of varying lengths. You had to run each loop once but in any order you wanted. Which makes for an interesting race because you never truly knew who was in front.
I ran with the idea that I could only affect the things around me. I’d never know who was in front, so everyone new I came upon, was in front. I managed to not have anyone pass me the entire race, so I had no clue what position I was in when I saw a runner ahead of me on the final loop.
He passed the intersection a head of me, but I caught him quick. I stayed behind him trying to figure out if he had all four loop bands on. When he showed fatigue, I passed him. I still needed to pick up my last band and he passed when I did. Now knowing that we were both finishing, we picked up the pace. As I’ll explain later, knowing this section of course, allowed me to choose wisely on where to kick. When I did, I did not stop until I was gassed out. When I turned to see him pass me, I realized, he was 75ft back. So I did everything possible to finish before him, and got him by 5 seconds. It was only after I finished, that I realized it was for 2nd Place.
Studying maps is important. Had I looked at a topo map better, I would have realized it wasn’t a flat race, but I looked at enough to make some tactical choices. There were two sections we ran a lot, the Spine, and Baby Bear Loop (1.5ish miles), so I attempted to use that to my benefit. Papa Bear (5+miles) ran “up” the Spine so I chose to run it first. It gave me a good look at how technical the Spine may be, knocked out a climb, and allowed me to map out some distances for future references. All of the loops were slightly connected, so this was key. “Bomb Dog” is the long loop (9+) and included the majority of climbing/descending. Up and down, super technical, big climbs, and big flowy decents, it was fun to run. By the time I got to “Mama Bear” (3+) I was starting to tire, and I really just grinded through. This is where the distance mapping came into play. The last lap for me was a 1.5ish mile loop that I had already run 3x. I used the knowledge of the trail to affect my decision on where to kick for the finish.
Super fun race, and I’ll be looking for more Dirty Soles races to attend!! Thanks for watching!
#ultrarunning #elevateyourrun #fueledbythefeed #summitrunco

[@runninghikingsouthkorea4852]

Way to go!!! Some of the rocky sections of that trail looked tough to run on. Second place!!! Yeah!!!

[@grennangoeshiking]

The climb was worse than the rocks, and I mostly saw then when climbing.
Thank you.