Z1 GG x 3 55' 50' 52'

ZR/Z1 Hyannis-Norvan Falls

Stairs 50'

Z1 Indoor Bike 30'

GG x 3

Four years since I established this VK course and helped to clear out the overgrowth, deadfall, add some notches on the immovable logs and a safety rope on the Crux with Rudy K to make it more runnable (it was mostly Rudy actually!) ... I finally got to do a hard push up it. My first hard VK push in 3 years.  This is the steepest VK course in North America coming in at 2.6km and 1000m vert. Alex Ricarde's time of 36' on this course is world class and equivalent to his time that he ran to win the VK in Chamonix last year. Which is also around Kilian Jornet's fastest time at Chamonix too. So that's a good baseline measure for those attempting it. Anyone who goes sub 40 up this is a beast.

Chose the hottest part of the day for some heat training and it was as hard as I expected as there is absolutely no respite the whole track up! Immediately my calves weren't happy after some release work yesterday (need to do more I guess) - so it was a pretty brutal slog to be honest. Just hung onto sub 50 which was realistic given where I'm at and that I didn't come into this fresh at all but I would like to shave 10 mins off this by next year once I can train more for power and speed again.  

Looks like with all the undisturbed tree litter i'm the first one up the trail this year and a few times I was second guessing myself where the trail went. There's presently 5 tree falls across the trail needing to be cleared out. All but one can be passed by pretty seamlessly, one big one before the first rope climb needs a quick goat track bypass.  All the rest of the deadfalls are after the first rope climb and before the crux in the midsection of the route.

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James Stewart

VK Completely Necessary TT

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Z1 GG x 3 55' 50' 52'

ZR/Z1 Hyannis-Norvan Falls

Stairs 50'

Z1 Indoor Bike 30'

GG x 3

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