Return to Razorback Ridge

Today's MWTR catch-up was Razorback repeats - from Kersting's Court up to Razorback Ridge, back. Rest and then to the top of Carter and back.

As I started slowly jogging (would love to say running, but think my slow trudge is too slow to say running) up Baldwin, I realized I had not been to Razorback ridge for a very long time. And that lead me to recall the very first time I ever tackled razor back ridge.

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Cue the going back in time music and imagine the images are getting wavy, as we reappear one morning in the summer of 2007. I had just started doing boot camp with Eric and think it was around the 2nd or 3rd week. Early enough that I still had no idea what I was in for. We met at the middle school and car pooled to Sierra Madre. Before that morning I had no idea what Razorback ridge was, and, in fact, had never heard of the Mt. Wilson trail. I didn't even have trail shoes.  Eric gathered our keys, we walked up the hill to the trail head and up the trail head to the road. At the time, I felt like the walk up the trail head to the road was the work out. I'm sure I was breathing heavy and my legs were feeling it. We stopped where the trail to Razorback ridge hits the road.

Then we were told what we were doing - Razorback ridge repeats. The goal was 3 in the time we had. How hard could it be?  The veterans took off in a flash, and  then I started out. I was not going too long when my calves were screaming - not to mention my lungs. So I stopped for a second.  Without question, I was out of shape. It was why I was in boot camp in the first instance. So I would hike up the hill, stop to catch my breath and let my calves relax and continue until I finally (and want to emphasize finally) made it to the top.

My memories of that morning going up were:

1. Will I ever get to the top? This seems to never end - although I see others up there.
2. Woo hoo someone is coming down, so I have to stop and get out of their way.
And
3. People do 3 of these things?   (As I was a bit demoralized being passed by others.)

I think it took may have taken me 20 minutes to get to the top that morning (might have been a little less, but probably not much less), which is simply just slow.   Going down was not too much better being my legs were so shaky it was hard to come down quickly without feeling my legs would collapse under me.

My last memory of that morning was getting back into the car to drive home and shower. As I moved my leg to hit the gas pedal, my leg started shaking from the climb that morning, I waited a minute for safety's sake.
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Coming back to 2011 and today's run - turns out in the time it took me in 2007 to get from the base of the hill to the top was the time it took me to actually run all the way up from Kersting's Court, up the trailhead and up to the top of razorback. Took me less than 6 minutes (after running up the hill) to do what took like what seemed like forever in 2007.
Time up was 20:02 minutes (although ran all the way up Baldwin to the trail head for the first time), Time down was 12:48.

I rested 12 minutes (was not sure what the rest time was, but by then I was bored) and then headed back up Carter. The first few minutes, my legs felt like sludge - like I had sandbags tied to my feet. That wore off after a bit. Took me 7:59 up to the top and 5:36 down (13:35) - no walking involved.

I know my overall times for today were not blazing by anyone's account - but did get out there to make up the run and working on running more and more uphill without giving up and walking. And the best news is that I have clearly improved by leaps and bounds over my first visit to Razorback.