LT100 Start to May Queen -- A Runaway American Dream

After the 4 AM start, Tim and I ran together out of town through the darkness as part of the long conga line of bouncing headlamps.  The energy from everyone around us was one of anticipation and adventure.

Tim just a few minutes into the race

Within a few minutes, we came upon a scene that I had been eagerly anticipating for almost a year.  I had heard stories about this one house on the road out of town that throws a raucous front lawn party every year to send the runners off with the proper motivation, and this year was no different.  We came upon this group of crazies partying in front of their house, dancing in their bathrobes and other assorted sleepwear.  We could hear their music blasting well before we could see them -- but the thing is they play only one song, and they play it over and over for every runner who passes by.  And it happens to be one of my favorite songs, from one of my favorite albums, by one of my favorite artists of all time -- The Boss' Born to Run.


I trust you'll excuse a guy who grew up in Jersey in the '70s and '80s for getting a little emotional when he heard that particular song in the middle of the Rocky Mountains as he himself was "stepping out over the line."  That moment marked one of my private highlights of this entire past year, and I won't soon forget it.

Soon after the pavement turned to dirt road, Chris Sullivan (my friend/hotel-mate from the Leadville Training Camp) and Philip (buddy from the Denver Taco Run) caught up with Tim and me and ran with us for a while.  A couple miles later, Tim stopped for a quick nature break, telling me he’d catch up in a few.  He never did, and other than crossing paths near the halfway turnaround point at Winfield, I didn’t see him again for the next 28 hours.

I slowed down a bit to wait for him, but he never caught up.  I was convinced that he ditched me intentionally.  I thought he could tell that, due to my rookie eagerness, I was champing at the bit to let out the reins out just a little, and it was hard for me to keep the pace so slow for that first 13.5-mile section into May Queen Aid Station.  We both knew that the wise runners resist the temptation to go out too fast too early, or they pay the heavy price later in the race, but Tim was much better at obeying that rule.  I figured he ditched me because he didn't want to get lured into a risky faster initial pace and he didn't want to keep telling me to slow down -- it was his polite way of saying "Go for it, you idiot."


It turns out, luckily, there is no "going for it" on the way into May Queen, and ultimately, that's probably a good thing for someone like me.  The trail around Turquoise Lake is a winding, rolling single track that is beautiful but too narrow to allow much passing at all.  So, I had no choice but to settle into my spot in the conga line and plod around the lake at whatever pace the herd was running.  Because I started near the very back of the pack, I found myself stuck behind hundreds of runners who all seemed to be comfortable at a pace slightly slower than I had planned.  


I told myself that being stuck in that line going so slowly was a gift -- it guaranteed that I wouldn't waste energy or burn out from an overly aggressive start.  With that thought I was mostly able to relax and just enjoy the cool morning, but as the pack's pace slowed even further, I got a little antsy as I felt myself falling farther behind my planned May Queen arrival time.  So, I started passing people where the trail allowed as long as it didn't cost too much energy to do so.  One guy, apparently annoyed by my passing him on the narrow trail, reminded me that I still had 90 miles of open trail to pass whoever I wanted.  I knew he was technically correct, but I didn't see it that way.  I didn't want to get too far behind my race plan and find myself stressed out from playing catch-up all day.  So, I mentally dismissed him and continued working my way forward where I could.


I'm glad I did because I ended up being only five or six minutes behind schedule at May Queen (6:27 AM arrival), and while I knew that was no big deal, it was more annoying than I would have liked.  I felt like I could have been there 10 or even 15 minutes earlier with almost no extra exertion.  Next time (if there is a next time) I will start a bit closer to the middle of the pack so as to be surrounded by folks running closer to my pace on the way to May Queen.


My pit stop at May Queen was quick, maybe one or two minutes tops.  I drank about 10 oz of Clip energy drink, dropped by headlamp, kept my cool weather gear (hat, gloves, sleeves and buff) because I was still chilly and forgot my sunglasses.  Molly was there crewing that aid station by herself, and she was easy to find because she was waving a huge green pool noodle over her head.  That was our system to help me find her, and it worked great every time.  We had whistles too, but the noise of the aid stations made them less than effective.


For those who care about such details (maybe you'll be running this race yourself next year!), here's the pacing/timing chart I created and carried along for the race.  I wasn't sure how it would work, but now that I've tried it, I found it invaluable for keeping my head in the game.  I would definitely use it again (with maybe a couple small changes).

Pacing/Timing Chart

Chart folds up to about one inch square

You can see this chart contains:  the segment (Start - May Queen); the segment distance (13.5 miles), the segment cut-off elapsed time (3:15) (unnecessary info, I think); total cut-off clock time (7:15 AM); then it has three different timing options (fast, planned and slow, corresponding to 25, 28 and 30 hour finish times, respectively) each with the elapsed segment time (2:15...), the arrival time (06:15...) and the required pace (10...).   The middle option is in a larger font because that represents my goal time for that segment.

The view climbing out of May Queen

After the quick stop at May Queen, I was back out on the trail to start the climb up Sugar Loaf.  At this point, with the sun rising, I was feeling fantastic, like the 13 miles I had just completed was barely a warmup, and I was just now settling into my groove.  As I started that climb up the mountain, the first real climb of the day, I felt absolutely alive with a curious swirl of emotions -- physically strong and spiritually lighthearted.  I thought "THIS is what I've trained for."


TO BE CONTINUED...

Lost In Leadville

I admit that I am directionally challenged.  Streets, trails, large rooms, it doesn't matter -- I get lost easily.  I'm a few satellites short of an operational internal GPS.  But I've learned to cope, more or less.  Frequently, when faced with a directional choice, I play a little game in which I intentionally go in the exact opposite direction from that which my intuition insists is the right way to go.  More often than not, I find that my anti-intuition keeps me on track.

However, this past weekend, I foolishly let my intuition be my guide and ended up lost in Leadville.

I spent last Saturday and Sunday of the Fourth of July weekend up in Leadville in order to get in a few more high-altitude training runs. My plan for Saturday morning was to run from May Queen over Sugarloaf to Fish Hatchery and back -- a route I ran only seven days previously, so you might think I would be somewhat familiar with the trail.  You'd be wrong.

I can report that for the first 90 seconds of the run my intuition kept me on course.  But by two minutes in, I got that all-to-familiar feeling that I was going the wrong way.  Still, I pressed on for a few more minutes hoping I might see a tree or rock that I remembered from the previous week's run to assure me I was on the right trail.  Of course, that never happened.  By the time I accepted that I was going the wrong way, I was close enough to the crest of the climb that I just kept on going to the top.  After summitting, I turned around and ran back downhill to May Queen to start over. 

Reassuring myself that my five-mile, wrong-way jaunt up the mountain was still good training, I reassessed my directional options.  My intuition, after apologizing for its initial error, confidently insisted that it now knew the right way to go.  Again, I foolishly trusted it and set off on my second attempt to find the trail up Sugarloaf.

This time I went about three miles before I was sure I was lost again.  So, I did the only reasonable thing to do in this situation:  I climbed a tree, took a cell phone photo of the surrounding topography and texted it to my brother Tim in Michigan, with the words, "lost. sugarloaf?"



Actual pic I texted to Tim


Within a minute he called to tell me, based on his assessment of the photo, the sun/shadow angle and the time of day, that I was "an idiot."  I was on the exact opposite side of Turquoise Lake, 10 miles from where I wanted to be and heading in the wrong direction.  I immediately realized he was right on all counts.

So, I turned around again and ran back to the starting point at May Queen, cursing my intuition the whole way.  Figuring I still had over an hour to at least get to the top of Sugarloaf (having abandoned my initial plan of running to Fish Hatchery), I set off on my third attempt.  After getting lost one more time (though now that I was more oriented, I was at least heading in the right general direction, just on the wrong trail), I finally picked up the actual trail at my turn-around point near the top of the mountain under the power lines and was able to run the real trail back down to my starting point.  All told, I was out there five hours, and spent only about 35 minutes on the actual trail I was hoping to run.

Later that afternoon, after lunch, I took a hike with Molly up Hope Pass.  We got an eerie and tragic reminder of how unforgiving this area can be when we passed half a dozen police cars, an ambulance, a search and rescue truck and a FOX News van parked in the middle of nowhere just a few miles from our trailhead.  It turns out the two missing hikers from Boulder (Dad and daughter, missing for over a week) had just been found not far from where we went hiking.  They apparently died from a fall likely caused by high winds.

Sunday, I did a 15-mile morning run around the north side of Turquoise Lake covering the only remaining section of the LT100 course that I had yet to run.  It feels good to have seen the whole course now, even if it cost a few wrong turns on the way.