Towers Road -- "24 H.o.T."

The Fort Collins Trail Runners group billed Saturday's epic event as "24 Hours of Towers" -- probably not expecting the event's acronym to be so appropriate and prescient.  The day was HOT.  It had broken 100 degrees in town, and with no breeze, it wasn't much cooler up on Towers Road.

Still, despite the record-setting heat, starting at 7 am Saturday about 75 local runners turned out over the course of 24 hours to run one or more laps up Towers Road.  The route was a seven-mile out and back, or more accurately, "up and down," starting at the campground next to the Soderberg trailhead and going up to the radio towers at the top of the mountain.  After a half mile warm up on level single track, the road gains almost 1,700' over less than three miles, with several sections that are no-kidding steep.

The distance and the grade make Towers Road a great training run, such that it has become a bi-weekly staple of the Fort Collins Trail Runners group.  Unfortunately, because I'm in Denver during the week, I have never been able to join the group for their Thursday assault up Towers Road, though I try to add this particular climb to most of my Fort Collins weekend solo runs.

That has been a trend all summer -- the Fort Collins Trail Runners plan some great group run that I can't join for one reason or another, so I run the same route by myself on the following weekend.  In fact, I've gotten all my ideas for interesting runs from these folks:  Lumpy Ridge, the "Crosier Triple," Round Mountain, to name a few.  Saturday's 24 Hours of Towers marked the first time I've been able to actually run with these fun and friendly folks.  It was a great time and a great workout.

I ran a little over four laps on Saturday, giving me 30 miles, 6,600' vertical gain, and a touch of heat stroke.  At 7 am, on my first seven-mile lap, one water bottle was sufficient, but by the time I finished my fourth and final lap in the early afternoon, three water bottles wasn't enough, such was the heat.

The climb up to the radio towers gives great views of Horsetooth Rock, which sits right next door:

The radio towers at the top of
Towers Road

Horsetooth Rock

Halfway up with Horsetooth Reservoir in the background

After 30 miles, I was hot and tired, but generally I felt pretty good.  I would have liked to continue for one or two more laps, but I had to get home.  I had a second "workout" scheduled at home that I wanted to finish before my daughter Michal got home from work, so we could hang out that evening.  I know that as a seventeen year-old she likes nothing more than chilling with her Dad on a Saturday night.

Saturday's second workout:  The Front Lawn 5K

Michal, presumably thinking how cool it
 is to hang with her Dad on a Saturday night

The next morning I did a 20-mile run around Horsetooth Reservoir.  As I ran past the campgrounds near Soderberg trailhead, I saw Brian Walter (the organizer of the 24 Hours of Towers) as he was packing up after the group breakfast he prepared to celebrate the completion of the event.  He estimated that as a group we ran over 200 laps up that mountain covering over 1,450 miles.

Compared to Sunday's hill-fest, Saturday's run around the reservoir was fairly mellow and relatively flat, giving my quads a break.  Although, as if to punish my whining about Saturday's heat, Sunday pushed the mercury even higher.  So, with two days of unplanned heat acclimatization, I'm a little more prepared for Leadville's midday sun.

Sunday's temp on my car's dashboard

My bottle of salt tabs melted in my car

The trail on the west side of Horsetooth Reservoir

One of the many secluded coves in Lory State Park

The road climbing up past the dam on south end of reservoir 

Horsetooth Reservoir 

The reservoir and one of the few hills on the east side

Overall, it was a great weekend to cap off one full year of training for the LT100.  This was my final serious training week before the race.  For the next three weeks, I will gradually taper my running so that I can fully recover and heal prior to August 20th.  For those that care about the fascinating details of my taper plan, I will follow the traditional schedule of running a reduced volume of 75%, 50% and 25% over the next three weeks with little running the few days prior to the race, and see how that goes.

In an poetic turn of events, on my final real training run on Sunday, I unintentionally created the perfect bookend to my first training run in August 2010.  If you recall, a year ago, I spent all twenty minutes of my first real trail run wandering through the roadside grass on the east side of Horsetooth Reservoir unable to find any actual trail.  Well, fast-forward one year:  Sunday, as I rounded the south side of Horsetooth Reservoir and made my way up that same east side, I again mindlessly wandered away from the beaten path and ended up bushwhacking about a half a mile through knee-high grass unable to find the actual trail.  Even with my sun-cooked brain, or maybe because of it, I was able to chuckle at the irony of the situation -- even though I've come pretty far in the past year, some things haven't changed at all.