Highland Sky 40 Miler, An Appreciation
I'm calling this an appreciation rather than a race report. If you want a blow-by-blow, I-did-this-I-ate- that-I-got-this-split-at-AS4 kind of report, there are several good ones out there. Let's start with what was for me the emotional--and I think literal--high point of the race, Aid Station 7. Pictured is AS7's brilliant crew of volunteers, who obviously love their job, and made mine so much easier. When you get to this stage of the course, around 30-something miles, you know in your bones why HS40 has been called "mile for mile, the hardest on the East Coast." So says David Horton, and that's high praise indeed. The man knows from hard. At AS7, you still have the aptly named vertiginous "butt slide" ahead, but you've survived the worst: the 2000 foot climb in the first 8 miles, the subsequent battering descent through rocks where you lose most of that altitude, and the re-climb back up to Aid Station 4. Sta...