Quarry Rd TT

Quarry Rd, popular training route for anyone attempting a hilly trail race like six foot track. It's basically a fire-trail with steep downhill then steep uphill then flattish to the end then return, about 12.5km all up. This has become a regular testing track for me to see how I'm going, the start is less than 2km from my house so it's nice and easy to go for a hit-out once in a while.

With Jungfrau marathon 3 weeks away I figured it was time to try it again, my C2S race wasn't as good as I'd hoped so I was looking for a confidence boost. Quarry Rd is a tough run to get right, having run it so many times I know you have to go hard the whole way to get a fast time. That means going hard on the descents and also on the steep climbs while managing to keep the pace up on the flat section on the Dural side. The hardest thing is probably mental, every time I go for a fast time I know it's going to be a painful run so it's difficult to be in the mood to go hard.

I started fast down the hill and pushed hard to the bridge, on the climb i felt like I was slowing a bit so made sure I ran hard on the flat section to the other gate. Turned and started on the return leg but I felt like I'd lost too much time, tried to pick it up on the descent to the bridge but was struggling a bit on the last climb then pushed it to the end. I reached the gate in 50:43, scraping a few seconds off my previous best of 50:50 so really happy with that and a little bit surprised because I thought I'd lost too much time. Some of the time improvement can be attributed to the recent work they've down re-grading the surface, it's definitely a bit smoother and probably a bit faster, but to get even close to my best time means I'm going reasonably well.

Garmin connect

Start of the pain

 

Bridge at the bottom