Cavanal Killer

A couple weeks ago, I ran/ walked/ crawled the Cavanal Killer here in Poteau.

Since I live on the backside of the World's Highest Hill, it taunted me the entire drive in.

Can you see the towers on top?  This is from the parking lot that we started from...

The first part of the race is nice, gently climbing.  I got to almost 2 miles before it *felt* hard.  That was just the hill playing a trick on me lol!

I've had dreams that I'm running up steep hills and had to crawl on my hands and knees to make it...  This hill put those dreams to shame.  The switchbacks were terrible, then around mile 3 there was a false sense of hope with a slight downhill and *flat* section.  

About a quarter mile from the finish, some of the top finishers were coming down the hill and said I was on the last climb of the race...  Um, last climb?  Hasn't this been one continuous climb?

Finally the finish!  My goal was to finish under an hour...  I finished in 1:00:03.  Grr...

The final stats...  Close to 1800 ft gain in elevation in less than 5 miles.

After I grabbed something to drink and a snack, I decided to be one of the crazy ones and run back down the hill.

Here's a view from the top.  The pictures were taken last summer.

Now that I've had a couple days to recover, I want to do it again =)