Mountain Running Roadtrip: Leadville (Part 1 of 2)

This past “weekend”[i] I took a little road trip to the west. I want to be sure I take advantage of my (now limited) time in Colorado and be sure I hit all the destinations that I consider sacred – and my judgment of sacred is likely quite skewed. The plan was to go to Leadville to pace a friend for the last 15 miles of the Leadville 50 Mile Trail Run, then continue westward to Arches National Park in Utah for some scenic, red dirt trail running. Read on to see how strange I am.

Leadville

The first stop of my excursion was Leadville, CO to pace my friend Tony for the last 15 miles of the Leadville 50 mile trail race. Our plan was to meet at an aid station, then climb about 1400' over the next 4 miles before we had a mostly downhill 10 miles to the finish. Tony’s goal was to finish under 8 hours, which would have easily been a Top 10 finish. His ambitious goal (and track record to justify it[ii]) combined with the respect I have for any linear stretch of earth with the appellation "Leadville" before it, made me apprehensive that I'd be able to get through the last 15 miles without being left behind by my friend – who would already have accumulated 35 miles of damage on his body.

Let me make an aside to convey to you why Leadville is the Pebble Beach [with Beth Page Black layered on top of it], of trail running. Leadville is an old mining town 10,000’ feet up in the mountains of Colorado. It used to be known for two things: mining and brothels. Once the brothels were shut down, the Army moved in and discovered that the mountains in the area were great for training its 10^th mountain division. To put it another way, the U.S. Army surveyed the rugged terrain and said “Great! This looks like a perfect place to make our highly trained, elite soldiers suffer”, then set up camp. Move ahead to the early 1980s, and the local mining industry is all but shut down[iii]. With the town slowly suffocating from economic ruin, a local man sought some new means of resuscitation. Creating one of the hardest footraces in the world was his solution, and thus, the Leadville Trail 100 was born. As described in the book Born To Run, first imagine the Boston Marathon course and take away all the spectators and crowd support. Now dump a whole bunch of rocks and roots on the road. Run it twice, but throw in a mountain pass at the end of the second repetition that will take you up 2,000’ and back down. Now, put on a blindfold (to simulate the total darkness of night in the forest), turn around, and do it all again. Oh, and you do this with a sock in your mouth since the air is so thin at 11,000’ you can’t exactly breath well.

Back to my weekend. Unfortunately, Sunday was just 'one of those days' for my friend Tony - the kind that shows up unannounced, unexpected, and at the worst possible time - like Cousin Eddie in the Griswold's driveway. About an hour before our expected meeting time, I started getting texts from Tony saying that his legs were ‘shot’ after 24 miles, and he was feeling nauseous. I tried to do my best ad-hoc pep talk via text message[iv], but to no avail. He dropped after 30 miles, and I drove up the backroads of Colorado mountain country to pick him up. Needless to say, he was more than disappointed, as this was only his second career DNF[v].

The lesson from my Tony’s experience? No matter how much of an endurance junkie you are, don't run 65 miles the week before you attempt a 50-Miler. Respect the taper, and respect the distance. 

Given this abrupt change in plans for the afternoon, I needed to get some miles someway, somehow. This run was supposed to double as an key workout in my taper to my own 50-miler two weeks away[vi]. I still needed to get some miles in for the day, and found myself at the race's start/finish line, so off I went into the out/back course. I wasn’t going to do a full 15 – I just didn’t have the mental agility to wrap my head around a 2+ hour run by myself at that altitude, and on that terrain. Instead, I did 3 miles outbound on the race course, and felt like I was at a good turnaround point. As I was heading out, I passed the leader in the race and the second-place runner on their way to the finish. This was a small thrill of its own, but as I was about to turnaround to go home myself, I saw the third position runner heading my way.

My thought process at this point was probably something like a good herding dog – I came to Leadville to help somebody get to the finish, and damn it, I was going to do it even if it was for a complete stranger. So as the third-place runner approached, I asked if he minded if I ran with him. I don’t blame him for being surprised, as this was an odd and perhaps creepy request. However, once he realized I was serious, he seemed very receptive to the idea. It turns out his name was Joe (you can read his running blog here), and he had won the 50 mile mountain bike race on the same trail the day before. He says he was struggling at the time we crossed paths, but I have to say the man was running very strong.

So off we went down the home stretch. When the trail was wide, I tried to stay a few meters ahead of Joe to be his rabbit; his target to chase. However, when the trail got narrower, I didn’t want to block him in any way or obstruct his vision of the terrain ahead, so I got behind and tried to apply a little ‘pushing’ pressure. As we neared the last turn of the course, I told Joe I was dropping back to make sure I wasn’t anywhere in the background as he approached the finish[vii]. Then, in maybe the coolest sequences of spontaneous synchronicity I’ve ever been a part of, Joe said ‘Thanks’, waved his water bottle at me, then flipped it 12’ straight up so that it would come back down to Earth, ready to be caught, just as I ran underneath it, which I did. With his hands free, Joe was ready for his perfect finishing photograph. I have to commend him on his power and determination over the three miles we ran together, he really showed me how to zip up your Man-Suit and finish like a pro.

With 6+ trail miles at 10,000’, I felt like I got a sufficient enough workout for the day, and said goodbye to Leadville. I can’t say for certain if I’ll ever go back as a racer and not just spectator/pacer, but I have to say the idea doesn’t strike me like the certain death that it once seemed to be.

To be continued: My run in Arches National Park.

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[i] I don’t have a job, so in reality, every day is like Saturday for me. However, the purposes of this post, my ‘weekend’ was Sunday/Monday.

[ii] This guy is a marathon running machine; spending most of his weekends leading 3:10 or 3:20 pace groups in marathons across the country. He seems to only have a vague understanding of the words 'limitation' or 'sanity'.

[iii] By then, the town had become mainly reliant on the mining of Molybdenum, a mineral used in the making of stainless steel. The early fruits of these mountains were prescient of the hardening and refining of runners that would someday tackle their trails.

[iv] “U R GOING TO DO GR8”, “WTF can't quit!”, "GIT'R DUN". I didn't actually say this, but I can imagine that there are people who would actually send messages like this to somebody who had just run 24 miles and felt like crap. I am highly suspect of their effectiveness.

[v] It's fair to note that he has probably started at least 75 races of marathon distance or longer (rough estimate), and the first DNF (and only other) DNF was a 200 mile relay race he tried to run by himself.

[vi] White River 50 on July 30.

[vii] I’ll concede that all runners at this distance (yours truly included) are at least narcissistic enough that if there’s not at least one finish line picture that looks like it could be on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the entire race is slightly tainted for the rest of eternity. Such is the permanent void created by the absence of good photographic evidence.