# Race Report - Mt Rushmore It's a bit late and I've never done a race report before, but I wanted to try this out, remembering the journey and all that. I prefer remembering and reviewing over looking too far ahead like one does with New Year's resolutions. My training for this race wasn't anything special. I was coming off of a trail marathon in April, so I had decent conditioning already. I tried to time my long runs for Saturdays/Sundays with another nearly-as-long run on Wednesdays and other run days dispersed as my body allowed. In the future I'll try to be more specific about my routine, but I didn't have this in mind when I was training this time. The race itself is right outside of Mt Rushmore, only a few miles away at the finish line. It has numerous gorgeous views of Mt Rushmore and the surrounding Black Hills. This is South Dakota, so the area is not very populated. Rapid City, the hub of the area, can hardly be called a city. But that's not a bad thing if you love nature and the outdoors. With multiple national parks, forests, and monuments in the area, there is plenty to see and do. I honestly didn't know the distinctions between those until I visited here. This was probably the hardest half marathon I have ran to date. My memory isn't perfect, but if I recall, the first 7-7.5 miles were almost purely uphill. I've never seen so many people walking on a half as I did this early into a race. My training did not prepare me for that. Texas has hills, but the ones near me do not measure up to that incline nor the distance. It was beautiful though. You could see across all the hills and watch as the faces of Mt Rushmore grew slowly over time. The next 3 or so miles were mostly downhill. Contrary to most casual runners, I'm in the camp that prefers uphill to downhill, so the sharp decline of this stage of the race was the most miserable for me. It's really because of the impact to my feet. My ankles have been riddled with sprains, ligament tears, and other injuries, so I was on high alert for this period of the race. The final stretch was mostly flat relative to the rest of the race. We got some of our last great sights of the mountain and we rushed into the town full of music and people cheering. Races in small towns are fun because it feels like the whole town comes out to celebrate. Overall, it was a great race, probably my slowest time yet. But I'd love to come back in the future. The whole trip is something I'm adding to my reverse bucket list. | | | | ------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | | ![[PXL_20250913_170908879.jpg]] | ![[PXL_20250913_160159631.jpg]] |