{"id":244,"date":"2013-09-25T10:19:48","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T15:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/skelmo.com\/?p=244"},"modified":"2013-09-28T17:24:58","modified_gmt":"2013-09-28T22:24:58","slug":"a-new-personal-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/?p=244","title":{"rendered":"A new personal record"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yesterday morning I left Payson around 7am and drove to Flagstaff.\u00a0 The drive was leisurely with a few laughs as I was listening to Howard Stern interview Richard Simmons.\u00a0 I stopped for breakfast at my favorite coffee shop.\u00a0 The weather was outstanding so I sat at an outside table and enjoyed the wonderful people watching that you can only get in Flagstaff.<\/p>\n

I made it to the base of Humphrey\u2019s around 10:30am and parked in the Snowbowl parking lot.\u00a0 The plan for the day was to summit so I could build up some red blood cells at altitude.\u00a0 However, my personal agenda was to see if I could break my personal summit record that I set over 20 years ago.\u00a0 That record was 1 hour and 46 minutes from trailhead sign to summit sign.\u00a0 There was no Strava, GPS watches, or cell phones when I went to school, but that number has been burned into my brain.\u00a0\u00a0 For my birthday, Tracy got me a new GPS watch, a Suunto Ambit.\u00a0 It\u2019s really cool that will last up to 50 hours plus 100% of the features are controlled via a web interface.\u00a0\u00a0 I had the watch charged and ready and pressed start.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0727\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To make my goal, I needed to average about 2.9mph for the 5 miles up the 3000 foot climb.\u00a0 The climb is fairly easy during the approach but gets really steep when you near the saddle and beyond.\u00a0 For the first 45 minutes, I was averaging about 3.2mph so I thought I was in good shape.\u00a0 Once I neared the saddle, the reality of my pace hit me and I slowed to a crawl.\u00a0 The watch is set on 60s intervals, to save battery life, so winding up the switchbacks in some places shows me moving 10 feet in a minute.\u00a0 I kept pushing and once I cleared tree line, the cold breeze hit me and I took off.\u00a0 As I rounded the false summit, I looked down and saw that I only had 8 minutes to go and at the pace I was going, I wouldn\u2019t make it.\u00a0 I hit the gas and with my legs trembling, I started to run in spots. As I sprinted to the crest, I looked down and saw I was at 1:44.\u00a0 With a final push, I passed the sign, pressed stop and came in 8 seconds short of 1:45.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0729\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"stats_hump\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While this was my fastest, it\u2019s only #5 on Strava, with #1 being 26 minutes faster than me (wow).\u00a0 After a quick snack at the summit, I started down and finished about 8 minutes longer than it took me going up.\u00a0 Once I hit the car, I cracked open the cooler and had a little picnic in the front seat.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0730\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today I plan on taking it easy and doing no hiking; just a little yoga and stretching.\u00a0 Tracy comes in tomorrow and we\u2019ll do a short hike up the rim so she can acclimatize to the altitude.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Yesterday morning I left Payson around 7am and drove to Flagstaff.\u00a0 The drive was leisurely with a few laughs as I was listening to Howard Stern interview Richard Simmons.\u00a0 I stopped for breakfast at my favorite coffee shop.\u00a0 The weather was outstanding so I sat at an outside table and enjoyed the wonderful people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hikes","category-mogollon-monster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skelmo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}