Open Trail

24 Sunday Nov 2013

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No big event this weekend but at least I’m running again. Just went a second week without running, except for the weekend. I’m over my cold but was too busy this week. Working from dark to dark doesn’t leave much time for running. I’ve yet to begin my plan to run shorter distances over lunch. I’m off next week for Thanksgiving though. I plan to get in some miles.

I got in 8 miles Friday since I had the day off and 10 Saturday. I ran another 10 miles this morning with Keith and Jen on the Picture Rock Trail – finally open again after the September floods. We ran fairly slow due to some dangerous mud in spots. Running slow on the Picture Rock Trail though doesn’t necessarily make it a low intensity workout. Five non-stop miles up have a way of challenging your heart. I’ve had some pretty fun runs on this trail where I race down but not today. The footing was way too dangerous.

This was my first drive through Lyons, since the flood, on the way to the trail head. Jen, owning an insurance firm, told us stories of some of the destruction during the drive. She pointed out houses that became house boats. Lyons had such a nice parkway along the river that is totally gone now. A real shame. Massive construction looks under way though. Hope the best for them.

Solo

06 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Running

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Boulder Flood, Boulder Marathon, Chris Price

Chris starts off on his run Sunday morning at 8:00am. The air at the Boulder Res is 47° with 7mph winds from the northeast so he wears a sweatshirt. The 2013 Boulder Marathon was scheduled to run from here two weeks ago, but became another victim of the Great September Flood. Chris refuses to be a victim. Today he’s running the inaugural 2013 Chris Price Didn’t Do All This Freakin’ Training For Nothing Marathon. There are no waves or corrals at the starting line. Chris is running this one solo. I have other commitments at 8 but catch up to Chris here on Hwy 36 and Left Hand Road. Well into the second half of his run, Chris still looks fresh. He shouts out that he’s four minutes under his target time.

If there’s any doubt about how strong Chris is running, he jumps up like a rock star for this photo on Neva Road – twenty miles into the marathon. Typical antics at big events. Chris doesn’t need a crowd though. He makes his own party. The sun has warmed up significantly by this time, but the air still has some coolness in it. Chris dropped his sweatshirt somewhere in the first half. The Boulder back roads are so full of bikers and other runners, it almost feels like Chris is part of an official race. I take note of a couple trailheads off Neva Road I might check out for future trail runs.

From a photography perspective, I dare say Chris is fortunate the Boulder Marathon was cancelled. The trees are showing their colors much more this weekend than two weeks prior. I can’t recall the weather two weekends ago but today is just incredibly perfect to run. Chris lets me know here at 22 miles that he’s starting to feel fatigue. I think to myself that I hope so. If you’re not feeling tired after running 22 miles, something is wrong with you. I say this about someone running a solo marathon.

With two miles remaining, on 55th Street, Chris is still flying with both feet airborne. I’ve run 7 marathons myself. Two as a kid so maybe I shouldn’t count those, but five in the last 3 years. I had a little gas left in my tank in one of the Denver Marathons. And I wasn’t tired at all when I finished the Dallas White Rock Marathon at 18 years of age. Otherwise I’ve always been literally crawling at this point. That’s with crowds cheering me to finish strong. Talk about self motivation. Chris really is a one man race.

The finish at the Boulder Res presents a quarter mile long hill, but Chris doesn’t seem to notice. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran a negative split. His family is waiting for him. His daughter runs the final 100 meters with him, but falls behind as he turns on his kick. I wish I’d have been clever enough to string up a finish line tape for Chris to break, but I didn’t know exactly where he planned to stop running.

This last photo is of his final strides. His finishing speed and strength are apparent. His time was a few minutes over 3:20. Good enough for 3rd place in his age division in the 2012 Boulder Marathon. Can you imagine running a marathon all by yourself? Steve Jobs said we all die alone. I’d like to know what thoughts went through Chris’ head to power him through this endeavor. I don’t think he played music. I’m simply amazed. Nicely done Chris.

Kiss the Clouds

28 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Running

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Tags

Boulder Flood, Boulder Res, Denver Marathon, trail running, Ultra

This week included a couple of runs in the never-ending rain. Normally I enjoy the runs where I can literally kiss the low-hanging Colorado clouds. Ever see the 1983 video of U2 perform at Red Rocks? It’s like running in some mystical place with unicorns. This has been all too common place lately. Today though was clear blue sky and I kissed the clouds goodbye. Taking a cue from Jabe’s recent facebook update that the Eagle Trail is open, I headed out to the Boulder Valley Ranch set of trails. I can’t believe I have never run here before. It’s not exactly exciting. Very few trees. But Gadget Girl often runs here with her dog Otis; so does Jabe’s running team. Given conditions, I’m happy to run out here in the prairie grass.

I need to keep up my trail running. I signed up this week to run the Durango Double Ultra, a 50K (30 mile) trail run through the San Juans. My first ever ultra. This wasn’t on my radar but with my two marquee September runs cancelled, I need to up my game for October. I’ll follow this ultra the next weekend with the Denver Marathon. New plans. Hard to explain but maybe this has happened to you before. You train hard for a marathon. Sometimes when an event is cancelled, you feel like you escaped a bullet because you weren’t quite prepared. I was ready though. This might have been overly optimistic but I thought I had a chance at an 8 minute pace which would qualify me for Boston. When you reach that level of fitness, you sort of want a replacement marathon. Only thing is now I have to maintain this fitness level another month. I can do that. If I survive the ultra, I’ll be primed for the marathon.

My Team Naked partners plan to run Eagle Trail tomorrow. I have to bail on them to drive my in-laws to DIA. It’s a large trail system. I parked at the Eagle Trailhead near the Boulder Res. The first trail here is a 3.7 mile lollipop. Eagle Trail begins as a half mile stick, then forks left while Sage forks right. The two forks join up again 1.35 miles later to form the loop. I forked right onto Sage and then right again onto Cobalt.

This led me to North Broadway Road where I returned on yet another fork right called Deggee Trail. Not sure how you pronounce that. I could have returned more directly but I wanted to get in a long run so took a number of exploratory trail spurs. I forked right on Hidden Valley Trail which I could have taken earlier for another loop option. I also humped up onto Mesa Reservoir on the return. I think on future runs I’ll make a large loop out of Hidden Valley Trail and the Sage/Eagle combo. That’s probably good for a 6 mile loop. Twice makes 12 miles.

Much of this trail is fairly pedestrian. In fact, the first loop is double track. Still, gaiters are a good call to keep the little pebbles out of your shoes. I think the muddy trail warning sign could be dialed back a bit from poor to fair. The mud’s not extreme, although sticky in spots. The trail is nice and soft, feels good on the knees. Look at that blue sky in this last photo. About time. Plus the temperature was a fresh 54°. Perfect seasonal running conditions have returned to Boulder County.

Georgia Pass

22 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Colorado Trail, Running

≈ 6 Comments

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Boulder Flood, Boulder Marathon, continental divide, Mount Guyot

The email came in at 11:16 Friday night, just as I was going to bed, officially notifying me that the Boulder Marathon is cancelled until 2014. Disappointing of course but not surprising. This flood is a disaster. But you know what? Anyone can run a marathon. Try running 16 miles over Georgia Pass. I got in a 7 mile run Saturday with Steve and went out this morning at 5:30am, but not to run my planned marathon. Instead of running 26.2 miles on the Boulder backroads this morning, I ran along the Continental Divide with Keith and Chris in the mountains above Breckenridge. I’m not disappointed now. This pic is of us on the pass at 10am with Mount Guyot (pronounced gui-oat) in the background.

As of last night, the weather called for rain, turning into snow. Instead, the temperature was 41° and the rain didn’t begin to fall until around 12 or 13 miles. Ideal running weather. The three of us were comfortable wearing runner shorts and 2 or 3 layers of shirts. As you can imagine, there were very few others out on the trail. We encountered one hiker who started ahead of us, with his dog, and a couple more on the descent. Plus four mountain bikers crossing the trail on a jeep road.

We reached the trailhead via Tiger Road, which runs east from Hwy 9. After 5 or 6 miles, we took the left fork to the North Fork Swan River. The right fork leads to the trailhead on the Middle Fork Swan River, but it would have been a shorter run than we wanted. We were looking to run about 13 miles. The Middle Fork would have been 10 miles. The North Fork turned out to be 16 miles – out and back. The trail is segment 6 of the Colorado Trail. This entire CT segment is 31 miles from Kenosha Pass on Hwy 285 to Gold Hill on Hwy 9.

This section of trail isn’t as smooth as the other sections between here and Denver, but the 6% grade was manageable, considering we were running up to the Continental Divide. We started just under 10,000 feet and the Pass sits close to 12,000 feet. Trail shoes are advisable given some of the rocks, and the rain making it slick, but both Chris and Keith navigated fine in street running shoes.

I was pleased we were able to run up with very little walking. The first 3 miles between the North and Middle Fork trailheads served as a pleasant warmup. The grade steepened after that. Chris seemed unaffected, although he slowed down at times for Keith and me. The pass appeared as soon as we rose above treeline. I was more exhausted than I expected; I assume from not walking more on the ascent. We decided to all return at our own paces. Keith wanted to be cautious. I wanted to run fast but knew I was too exhausted to keep up with Chris – who wanted to sprint the 8 mile descent. He nearly did. This picture – which you might need to click on in order to see Chris – shows him 100 yards ahead of us after only 30 seconds. Chris reached the trailhead about 20 minutes ahead of me, giving him a 3 hour, 16 mile run. He out-ran me on the return by about 2.5 minutes per mile. I was hoping to keep up with him on the cancelled marathon. That might have been wishful thinking.

With Chris as our driver, Keith and I enjoyed a few ales at the Dam Brewery in Dillon. Their pub fare is really good. My cheese burger was outstanding – served to order. Could be I was just really hungry – my Garmin suggests I lost 1900 calories. I’m still working on overcoming that deficit, having eaten dinner and thinking of lemon meringue pie.

The rain followed us back to Boulder County. Hopefully nothing dramatic. My running is now largely on streets which I hate. The trails are slowly opening but not enough yet. I’m debating whether I should run the Denver Marathon in October. That’s on streets. Might be a good match for my current training.

Trail Closed

14 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Running

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Boulder Flood, East Boulder Trail, Flaming Foliage Relay, National Guard

When half the streets in town are blocked by the National Guard in Humvees, it should come as no surprise all the trails in the county are also closed. Still, I expected the East Boulder Trail to be open given its high ground. But then it does lead down to the raging Boulder Creek after three miles. So I decided to run Prospect Road leading east from my house to County Line Road. This made for a 6 mile run. And the hard-packed dirt surface emulates the Boulder Back Roads I’ll be running on in next Sunday’s marathon. I ran into Keith who was returning from the same course. Later, Steve pinged us to text that he also ran this course, taking it a bit further on Pipit to the flood waters.

After well-deserved naps, our relay team met up last night on Keith’s front porch to eat and drink our relay supplies. Somehow this led to tequila shots which I’m fairly certain were not part of our relay provisions. I’ve come to terms with my disappointment in the relay cancellation. In light of the suffering of some of our neighbors from the unprecedented flooding, everyone seems to have come to terms with the letdown. For the less empathetic of us, there was tequila.

We are less sympathetic to the plight of Paul, the Roads Less Traveled race director. He refuses to refund even partial registration fees. We paid $1100 as a team for registration, plus another $300 for volunteers. I should say paid volunteers, but the race director doesn’t use that oxymoron as a descriptive in his emails. I understand Paul would have some expenses to line up porta-potties, etc. But I know these vounteers didn’t work Friday. Their inability to get past the rock slide is why the race was cancelled. Never mind they could have driven a back route along Hwy 285 and Guanella Pass. These mercenaries weren’t as committed as us runners. I won’t dwell on this. It’s not constructive. I do think Paul could at least promote a discount for next year’s event. What are your thoughts on race directors who don’t provide even partial refunds? Or on “paid” volunteers?

The Great September Flood

13 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Running

≈ 2 Comments

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Boulder Flood, Flaming Foliage Relay

My call Thursday afternoon to confirm our two rental vans at Enterprise in Longmont was routed to the Boulder location. I was assured two vans were available at 55th and Arapahoe. Five minutes later Kelly called and was told we could not have our vans. When Kelly stressed how critical these vans were for an adventure run in the mountains, he was chastised over how people had lost their cars and homes to the flood. Still, I consider us victims too. Albeit further down the scale of desperation. Plan B had me driving the Honda Odyssey and Steve driving his Toyota Land Cruiser. Less certain was whether we’d be able discover an egress route out of Longmont in the morning. We moved up our schedule to meet at Steve’s house at 3am.

Steve’s CDOT Mobile app suggested an escape route down Hwy 287 and east on Hwy 7 to I-25. En route, we read the email from the FFR Race Director delaying the run until later in the afternoon due to a rock slide on I-70. Plan C was to breakfast at Denny’s on I-70 and Kipling at 4:30am to consider our options and hope for further communication from the race director. We were not the only diners there. Everyone appeared sober.

Eventually we returned home to await further word. That word was emailed hours later at 8:28am, stating the relay was cancelled. Not surprising but in my sleep deprived state, devastating nonetheless. I’m too tired to work effectively. Maybe I’ll check email after a nap and complete a task or two. Maybe I’ll just watch CNBC all day. More than likely I’ll go for a run but I’m not sure where. It’s difficult to go for more than a few blocks in this town without hitting a roadblock. Naturally the trails along creeks are submerged. The start to my regular LoBo Trail contains a 10 foot deep chasm – washed away by the raging Left Hand Creek. I need to run though, I have a marathon next weekend. Plan D might come to me after a nap.