FormerHangie
En-Route
I do four or five athletic events every year. Most of them are 5K or 10K running events, but I usually throw in a short distance triathlon most years. We have a new person in our marketing department who is an avid runner, and I casually mentioned that not far from our office, the Atlanta running of the Quarry Crusher event was taking place. What that is, is a 3.7 mile running event, where the first half of the 3.7 miles is running into the Vulcan Materials quarry. She thought it was a great idea, and immediately started trying to recruit other staffers to run the event. Now, this is no ordinary run, in that 1.85 mile one way trip down, it's 600 feet of vertical, which of course means it's 600 feet vertical up for the second 1.85 miles. We wound up with eight of us who were foolish or naive enough to try this.
Saturday morning dawns overcast and humid, with temperatures in the 50s. As you might have expected, a quarry looks something like a moonscape
and has some impressively large equipment in it.
The start time arrives, and we head off into the quarry. It's kind of a large square hole with a road winding down on the periphery. The road is made of compressed silt and is nice to run on, not too soft and not too hard. One of the three sides is not too steep, but the other three are more than a little so. I personally have some issues with the IT band in my left leg, and have to keep my steps short so as to not antagonize it. It's very tempting to extend your stride going downhill, but I just can't safely do that, so I don't. I had started towards the front with the woman from marketing, since she had a good shot at winning her age division she needed to be up front, and she wanted someone to go up with her, and that turned out to be me. On the way down, three of my coworkers passed me. I just had to let them go and keep my legs underneath me.
So, we start getting towards the bottom and we start hearing music. The quarry had gotten part of a marching band to play for us. The sound echoing off of the rock walls added an additional surreal touch to our already spacy surroundings.
It's not too hard to get to the bottom, as you'd expect. I stop for a few seconds and stretch my hamstrings, then set off up the road. The road starts off not too steep, but the climb seems to last forever. After a while the road steepens more, I start to run out of lungs, and have to drop back to a powerwalk for the steeps. Once things flatten out, or more correctly, get less steep, I go back to running, and that's my plan for the rest of the race. I manage to pass two of the coworkers who'd passed me on the way down, which almost feels good.
I finished in 42 minutes and 20 seconds, good enough for 10th out of 18 men in my (old) age group. I'll take it, I've never been much of a natural athlete and mid pack is the best I can expect in a group of serious runners.
I wasn't planning on doing this event next year, but it now I'm getting some peer pressure at work. A couple of them want to do the Double Crusher, essentially doing the quarry twice, which sounds more like punishment than fun. Once is enough for me.
They have a number of events across the country, if you're into these sort of things.
https://quarrycrusherrun.com/
Saturday morning dawns overcast and humid, with temperatures in the 50s. As you might have expected, a quarry looks something like a moonscape
and has some impressively large equipment in it.
The start time arrives, and we head off into the quarry. It's kind of a large square hole with a road winding down on the periphery. The road is made of compressed silt and is nice to run on, not too soft and not too hard. One of the three sides is not too steep, but the other three are more than a little so. I personally have some issues with the IT band in my left leg, and have to keep my steps short so as to not antagonize it. It's very tempting to extend your stride going downhill, but I just can't safely do that, so I don't. I had started towards the front with the woman from marketing, since she had a good shot at winning her age division she needed to be up front, and she wanted someone to go up with her, and that turned out to be me. On the way down, three of my coworkers passed me. I just had to let them go and keep my legs underneath me.
So, we start getting towards the bottom and we start hearing music. The quarry had gotten part of a marching band to play for us. The sound echoing off of the rock walls added an additional surreal touch to our already spacy surroundings.
It's not too hard to get to the bottom, as you'd expect. I stop for a few seconds and stretch my hamstrings, then set off up the road. The road starts off not too steep, but the climb seems to last forever. After a while the road steepens more, I start to run out of lungs, and have to drop back to a powerwalk for the steeps. Once things flatten out, or more correctly, get less steep, I go back to running, and that's my plan for the rest of the race. I manage to pass two of the coworkers who'd passed me on the way down, which almost feels good.
I finished in 42 minutes and 20 seconds, good enough for 10th out of 18 men in my (old) age group. I'll take it, I've never been much of a natural athlete and mid pack is the best I can expect in a group of serious runners.
I wasn't planning on doing this event next year, but it now I'm getting some peer pressure at work. A couple of them want to do the Double Crusher, essentially doing the quarry twice, which sounds more like punishment than fun. Once is enough for me.
They have a number of events across the country, if you're into these sort of things.
https://quarrycrusherrun.com/
