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.

Leadville Training Camp Days One and Two

I'm back in Denver after two days up in Leadville at the LT100 training camp.  I dropped Tim off at the airport early Monday morning, so he's on his way back home to Michigan for only about 24 hours with his family before he has to get back to work (pilot for American).

The camp was fantastic.  The mountains were magnificent, the running was challenging and rewarding and the people were fun, friendly and very motivating.  In fact, I had such a great time up there over the last two days that I'm considering driving back up tonight for the final run of the camp -- a four-hour night run from Twin Lakes inbound to I-don't-know-where.  I was planning on skipping this run because I couldn't stay up in Leadville all day Monday, but then somebody put the idea in my head that I could just drive back up after work today, and now that the thought's in my head, I can't get it out. We'll see how I feel this afternoon.

Saturday was a great day as we ran from May Queen to Twin Lakes, about 26 miles with about 3,200' gain and 3,900' loss.  It took just under six hours.  I ran with Tim and Chris Sullivan most of the day.  Chris is a buddy of mine from Denver who needed a place to stay during the camp, so he crashed on the floor in the tiny hotel room with me and Tim. 

Chris Sullivan in the thin air

I think it's fair to say, after spending two days in very tight quarters with me and Tim, Chris will never ask to share a room with us again.  I won't get into any of the details as to why I think this, but I will say that my brother has what some might politely call an irreverent sense of humor, and Chris saw things that, despite his growing up in Jersey, will leave scars on his retinas for years to come. 

Still, we had a great time on the trail on Saturday, and I learned a bit about what that section of the course is like.  For example, there's a several mile flat stretch of road (pavement then dirt) coming out of the Fish Hatchery that I had heard people complain about in the past.  I remember doubting these complaints and thinking that I would probably enjoy a nice flat stretch of road after all the ups and downs on the course.  I figured it would be a good place to relax and maybe even make up some time, if needed.  I was wrong.  There's nothing relaxing or fun about that road.  It's flat, straight and, I don't know, somehow annoying.  My plan for that stretch of road during the race will be to put on some music, go to a happy place and just wait for it to be over -- kind of like ________ (you can insert your own joke here).  

I also got to experience the run down Power Line, which was a bit steeper and a bit more of a sustained downhill than I expected.  The lesson for me is to control that particular descent.  I could easily bomb down that hill -- it's got a decent fun-factor to it -- but I would pay a heavy price for it in terms of my quads and feet later on in the race.

Tim at the bottom of Power Line

 Same goes for the descent into Twin Lakes, which was beautiful, by the way:



Twin Lakes



After the run, we had an hour or so to kill before the spaghetti dinner the camp was catering.  Tim, Chris and I were so hungry that we couldn't wait that long, so we went out for a pre-dinner dinner at the Grill -- two enchiladas, beans, rice and Fat Tire to tide me over for an hour til the real dinner.

Between that pre-dinner and the spaghetti dinner, I lost $20 to Chris in a bet.  Earlier in the day, I had learned that there's a tradition at the Silver Rush 50 (a 50-mile race in July in Leadville) that the first man and woman to make it up the short, steep hill at the very start of the race each wins a coveted silver dollar.  I'm planning on running that race as a long training run to prepare for the LT100 because many sections of the run climb above 12,000'.  So when I heard about this silver dollar thing, I started thinking maybe I should go for it (since, as Tim reminded me, it's about the only thing I conceivably could ever win during a race like that).  So, to check out this hill more closely, the three of us drove over to it so I could climb up and see what it was like. 

Tim and Chris stood at the bottom of the hill while I, with my belly full of green chili and beer, scrambled up this very steep hill, which I later learned is used as a ski training slope for what must be incredibly brave kids.  I got half way up and I started to feel my heart thumping in my ears; three quarters up and I could tell the green chili was considering staging a revolt; nearing the top, I felt my heart's palpitations in my eyeballs, and my lungs burned as I imagined my alveoli bursting like bubble wrap.

I stood on the top of the hill, hands on knees, gasping for air for a few minutes then stumbled back down to Tim and Chris' jeers and taunts.  I told them I would rather re-run the 26 miles we had just finished than hike up that friggin' hill again.  Their mocking continued, so to shut them up, I told them I'd give either of them $20 if they could run up the hill without stopping.  Chris leaned his head back to look up the slope and asked, "Does it count if I puke?"  "Sure, it'll still count as long as you don't stop running," I answered.  So, without another thought, Chris took off up the hill.  I watched in awe (don't tell him) as he motored up that hill with barely an effort -- only a slight falter or two on some loose rocks near the top, which unfortunately didn't cause him to stop running.  He reached the top breathing casually, struck an Arnold-pose, then scrambled back down to collect his $20. 

For the next day and a half, about every two to three minutes, Chris found a way to casually mention, to whoever would listen, his newfound wealth, his hill climbing prowess, and my corresponding wimpiness.

Day Two of camp, Sunday, was one of those days I won't soon forget.  Tim, Chris and I, though we didn't run together, did repeats up the Winfield side of Hope Pass, which represents to many people, one of the most heart-breaking sections of the LT100 course -- it's about 2.5 miles with about 2,700' of gain topping out at 12,600'.  It definitely loomed large in my psyche as one of, perhaps the, main hurdle on the course.  Recall that it was on this section last year that my brother, while I was pacing him, collapsed on the side of the trail and announced he was "done."  

Well, Tim didn't collapse yesterday.  Not even close.  In fact, he ran up and down that mountain twice without stopping.  He was doing so well that -- to use his words -- he was able to give out his excess chi to other runners who were struggling up and down the mountain.  If you don't understand what that means, ask Tim.

Me on Hope Pass

Chris did great on the mountain too.  He summited twice, and we ran into each other at the top on our second trip up.  We hung out at the top for a few minutes with race founder Ken Chlouber, who had hiked up to the pass to paternalistically tell each runner individually how proud he was of him/her.  Frankly, it was nice to hear.

To me, the best part of the camp was doing those repeats because it took a good bite out of the mythical aura of that mountain.  I'll probably run it again soon, and when the snow clears some more, I'll include the Twin Lakes side too.

By the way, that fleeting concern I had when we first got to Leadville on Friday ("who am I kidding, etc...") is under control.  It'll probably try to pop into my head a few more times, but I'll be more ready for it.  After this weekend, I feel much better about running my own race and more confident in my training so far.  Though, with less than eight weeks to go, I have a lot left to do.