Cheyenne Mountain Trail Race Recap

This past Saturday was the first annual Cheyenne Mountain Trail Race 50k.  This was also my first full on certifiable ultra, trail or otherwise.  In fact it was my first competitive race in quite some time, since early last September.  It has been a challenging first year of work on my doctorate, and that was kind of the story of the lead up to this race.

Driving down to Colorado Springs on Friday, I was feeling fairly under-prepared. I lost essentially all of February to illness and work demands, and my recent workouts had been fine, if unimpressive as far as I was concerned, and on the inconsistent and spotty side.  I was excited for the race, and eager to see how it would go, but not expecting anything spectacular.

Having not been to Colorado Springs in ages, I had forgotten how beautiful the mountains are here, and even just two short hours south of Boulder, considerably more desert-y, which I actually prefer so that was a nice surprise.  The race was taking place, as the name suggests, at Cheyenne Mountain state park, and basically involved 2 figure-eight loops, with varied terrain, a few technical patches, and about 1500'+(?) of climbing per lap.  The design made the course reasonably spectator friendly, a fact I appreciated, as my college teammate and our wives had come, and they would have several opportunities to see me go by.

After a short warmup consisting of 10 minutes of running and then my Active-stretching circuit, I headed over to the start line.  I will say the thing I think I most liked about the start of this length of a race is the relaxation of the start line.  It's a lot more enjoyable to be able to stand on the start line casually chatting with the people next to you as opposed to the atmosphere on the start line of a track race, which is akin to the feeling of knowing you are about to get punched in the face.  There's just always a lot of intensity building up on the track, but with the first few strides of a 31 mile race being not super worrisome, this wasn't the case on Saturday.  That being said, when the gun (I think they shot a gun?  I actually don't remember...) did go off, we did get moving, and quickly.

The course took us up a road from the parking lot, and 3 guys charged out to the early lead, and I settled in behind them, and we hit the singletrack as a quartet.  We were moving well, but the pace was comfortable, and it seemed this might be our group for awhile, then around 5k the guy in front of me (later to be identified as Jason Schlarb), made a significant move, a shook up our order.  I tucked into third, and the initial leader began to fade off the back as we climbed the first half of the '8' on our first lap.  By the time we came back through the start/finish area, I was comfortably running in second, and feeling pretty good, a feeling that would continue through the second half of that lap on the more daunting and challenging part of the '8.'

It seems needless to detail all my random thoughts, but with it being my first ultra, I had the following revelations over the middle 20k of the race:

• Chocolate Clif shot is not a good choice for cold mornings when you aren't carrying any water
• Wearing a watch might be helpful in the future.
• I'm not sure what the etiquette on sharing lead duty is when you're racing single-track.  I felt like a leech tagging along in second, but there wasn't really anywhere for me to safely pass and share the work...
• Why, on April 24th, is it snowing and windy?  I'm still getting used to this Colorado weather.

So with those random thoughts, as we were about 5k into the last lap, I was still comfortably in second, and Schlarb and I were starting to create some separation on third, and cemented this on the downhill into the start/fnish area, and mile 23.  Rolling down into this area, I was feeling really strong, and pretty excited that I was in the top two.  I enjoy the tension of a good race, and this certainly was one. As we passed through a wide section at the bag drop, Schlarb went for his stuff, and I finally got an opportunity to share some of the work up front, and took the lead, with Schlarb slotting right behind me in second.  We ran like this for about a mile, and then began the long gradual climb up towards the technical part of the back loop, and I could feel the gap between he and I widening a bit.  Now only about 24 miles in, it seemed like if I was going to get an opportunity to make a move, this might be it.  I was feeling strong, so I started what felt like a significant move, and I had built up a pretty good gap as I blew through an aid station without any hesitation and headed on towards the 40k mark.
Just as I was getting pretty enthused by what was happening, my highly inadequate base caught up to me, and I hit a wall like I have never even imagined.  Words cannot express how bad this felt, and the last 600' of climbing on that loop were a death march.  It was all I could do to keep focused on moving forward and not worry too much about the catch I felt must be coming.
The effort ended up being so intense that my descent back to the final aid station, something I tend to consider a strength, was hampered by feeling completely and utterly wobbly.  Luckily for me, as I hit the 45k mark and turned towards the finish line, things started to come back together, and I cruised in, not as strongly as I hope to in the future mind you, but decently, for the win, which was a huge and welcome surprise (particularly the $500 prize money, because, you know, while that is by no means my motivation or impetus for running or racing, graduate students aren't exactly raking it in...).  I finished in 4:09.04 for the 50k, a good first effort. Post-race, I did hear some GPS bearing folks saying the course may have been long, but I don't know what kind of difference that would have actually made, and I don't feel like standardized distances particularly matter much.

Overall the race was excellent, and Epic Endurance Events, the organizing group, put on a really good event with great volunteers and a wonderful course.  I'll certainly be back next year. If only they could control the weather....

Neither my wife nor friends took any pictures, but there are a bunch up at the Epic Endurance Website, http://epicenduranceevents.com/ and at pikespeaksports.us, which also has a nice write up of the whole event, and includes an unfortunate, but accurate, quote in which I sound like I had to go the bathroom during the race. Below however, is the awesome giant check I won, which frankly, is almost as good as the actual cash:

With that one down, and a resounding success, it's time to actually do some focused training, and start looking for some further racing opportunities for this spring and summer...