Bear Chase Trail Race 50k

I have just returned home from a much needed massage following the Bear Chase Trail Race 50k in Lakewood, CO.  It was a pretty spectacular event; well run and on a great course.  This event was meant to be a psuedo-culmination of my training cycle, with the upcoming Bootlegger 50k in Vegas a potential bonus on the end of a long season, so I was hoping for this to go well, and it did indeed.

The race was a fairly large one, and included a 50 mile, 1/2 Marathon and 10k event as well as the 50k I ran.  All 4 of these races used the same course loops, one a 10k loop around Bear Creek Lake, and one a 20k loop that circled the whole park, both of which shared the same start/finish/crewed aid-station area.  For the 50k, we did one lap of the 10k loop, then 2 of the 20k loop, with 1,950' of climbing, though I'm not sure if that was per lap or overall.

My preparations and pre-race for this went well, and going in, I was, based on the times from last year, aiming for a 3:50.  With this in mind, I left Alice and Anthony at the start line with instructions for what water bottles and nutrition to hand me each lap, and estimated times through of :46.00 for the first 10k, and 2:18 for the 30k.  The race though, went a little differently than my plan.

I'm not about to narrate everything that happened during the race, but I ended up running far more aggressively than I anticipated I would, coming through the first 10k in :40.42, then the 30k mark in 2:06, and feeling pretty good.  At this point, it started getting pretty hot out there (there was a high of 88 on the day according to later news reports), and my shoes hit the end of their supportive lives, so I slowed a bit on that last lap, but ended up coming through the finish line in first in 3:37.40.  Great, right? Not apparently.

To be clear, I'm in no way griping, the following circumstances were just pretty comedic:  I cross the finish line and proceed to stop, and stumble around a bit, expecting someone to say something, seeing as how I just won and all, but nobody does.  No cheering from the crowd, no acknowledgment by the announcer, no sign of Alice or Anthony. It is in fact oddly quiet.  At this point, a race volunteer comes over to me and sweetly instructs me that I'm stumbling in the wrong direction.  The aid-station is over there, to the right.  I'm done, I inform her.  Realization strikes her face, she gives a cheer, and eventually the announcer catches on too.  This kind volunteer gets me a chair, and some other excellent volunteers generously fetch gatorade and water.  However, my wife and buddy are still MIA.

It is a few minutes before the next finisher comes through.  I greet him, say congrats, but still no Alice or Anthony.  A few minutes more, and I begin to get really curious. I want to change my shoes, and get to some nutrition in my bag, but don't really want to walk myself to the car just yet.  I look around, and eventually see Alice sitting a ways away among some other spectators.  Still seated, I start waving to her, which manages to catch her attention, and draws them rushing over.  The resulting conversation went something like this:

Alice:  "Oh my gosh, did you just finish?!?"
Me:  "I've been done for 15 minutes."
Alice: "What!?!"

As it turns out, Alice and Anthony weren't expecting me for quite some time, as per my instructions and goal time, and the fact they didn't hear the announcer or any cheering, because no one thought I had finished.  This is all made doubly hilarious because last year at Imogene, Alice wandered off from the finish line in Telluride to get my bag from the car, only to miss me finishing.  Both were good races, so maybe I should encourage her to get distracted at the end of races more often.

In any event, the Bear Chase was a great event, and the course was really quite beautiful.  Definitely worth attending/racing.  I will post pictures and media as they become available.