Christie, I'm long winded, but if your up to the challenge of reading this all the way through, there might be some good stuff in all my ramblings here! My experience has been that your legs will be a little stale on Sunday so your ascent time during the PPM will be off a little from Saturday, but not near as much as you might think! Then on the flip side, I find that the downhill is like a whole different race, so provided you've hydrated well and kept some calories coming in you should be free to fly on the downhill!!! Enjoy, especially if you like the downhill better! I've run either the PPA and/or the PPM every year since 1989, but I prefer running just the PPM since I am a better downhill runner than up, but over the years I've attempted and completed "The Double" twice. The gap between my two doubles is 16 years, but I found the results similar (although slower, 16 years later). Here are the stats...in 1992 I had what is still my second fastest PPA in 25 tries...the next day, I was just 11:02 slower to the top during the PPM. In 2008, I was 6:55 slower on PPM day. I think the 2008 gap of 6:55 actually would have been closer to that 11:02, but if you know about 2008, that was probably the worst weather year ever! The last mile of the PPA was a huge traffic jam, and the narrow trail was even more narrow than usual, because with the snow nobody was real interested in venturing off to the sides of the trail to "4-wheel" around other runners, since you couldn't really tell what you'd be stepping into. That slowed us all down a lot that year. My strategy for the Double has been to go for my time on the PPA when I have fresh legs and then the pressure is off on Sunday! In 1992, during the uphill portion of the PPM, I remember feeling like a race horse stuck in the gate, because I had been running uphill for 2-days. I could not wait to get to the top and fly back down! To date, through 21 PPM finishes, the 1992 descent during the double is my second fastest...just 2 minutes & change off my descent PR. In 2008 during the double, even with icy conditions on the top mile during the PPM, I still managed to squeak my descent in under 2-hours. Good luck to you! Go for your Ascent time on Saturday. Pack a recovery drink/snacks in your drop bag that you'll get back at the top when you finish the PPA (There's also food available for $$ in the Summit House if nothing you packed in your drop bag sounds very appealing at that moment in time!) Force yourself to drink/eat within a half hour after finishing, even if you don't feel like it, and DON'T LINGER ON TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN!!! Get off of there like your life depended on it! Get back down to town, relax, and get ready to have fun on day 2! P.S. I have no experiance with acclimatizing but have heard that coming in right before the race is just as good as coming in weeks in advance! Think of it as sneaking up and scaring yourself! Your body will be over and done with the double before it even knows what hit it!
