This one was a long time coming.
Sometime in the summer of 2022 I found myself on my screened-in porch, my favorite place at home and origin of most of my questionable racing decisions. My college roommate, Jarod, messaged me out of the blue and asked if I had any interest in running the Pikes Peak Ascent with him. I had considered running Pikes Peak in the past when asked by Uncle Ricky and the Harbison trail runners but made a sound decision then that this was probably not a good idea. However, Jarod contacted me 2 high gravity IPAs deep, the exact point where reason goes out the window. I WAS IN. A few months later I was at the computer at the exact moment the registration came open and “luckily” snagged a spot.
Unfortunately, it was only a few weeks after that when I decided to blast out a 5k start a little too aggressively on an already tight Achilles. One little twinge and the whole of 2023 became a dumpster fire of healing attempts and too-early comebacks. Ultimately, I ended up in physical therapy in late summer and, as I turns out, an insanely uphill 13.3 miler was not part of my PT’s treatment plan. Sadly, I had to text Jarod the bad news and let him know I was definitely coming next year. He ran it in 2023 and crushed it with a 4:15.
Now some of you may think, 4:15 for a half marathon? Isn’t that really slow? Yes , yes it is. But most of us are used to half marathons on pavement, with a relatively flat course, and at sea level. The Pikes Peak Ascent is none of these. Well, there are 1.5 miles of asphalt at the beginning. But otherwise, this is a relentless climb from the already high Manitou Springs (6,320 feet) to the Pikes Peak finish at 14,050 feet (just below the summit of 14,115). 7,815 feet of elevation gain per their website. As a flatlander I had no grasp of these numbers. It sounded like a lot though.
By the spring of 2024 my Achilles (thanks to Vertex PT and tincture of time ) had mostly recovered. I was able to defer my entry for Pikes from last year, so I started to think about training. But I didn’t. Hill running is the majority of my training already, and I typically do a half marathon or more every Sunday morning. HOW MUCH HARDER CAN IT BE? We will get to that. I did get roped into the Richmond Marathon in November (when Joyce caught me on the IPA porch), so at least I had been doing longer long runs on Sundays. Suddenly, September was upon us, and I was hit with that all too common feeling of “What did I get myself into??”.
Thankfully, Jarod was OK with me coming a few days early and crashing at his house in Colorado Springs. Having tolerated the tornado of mess that was 1994-1997 Alex, this was quite gracious. My first real pang of fear for this race came when I went up the stairs in Jarod’s house (elevation 7000 feet). Damn, I’m already out of breath here, much less 14000 feet. Ruh roh. Jarod agreed to help me out with getting at least some altitude acclimation in. Ideally, you probably need at least two to four weeks, but who has time for that? I had two days. We drove up to the Crags trail on the other side of Pikes Peak at about 10000 feet. It was about 5 miles, mostly up for 2.5 of that. Yikes, this altitude stuff was no joke. We had planned to jog some of it, but my flatlander ass was huffing and puffing like I was 400 pounds. I power walked it and got really worried for Saturday. Friday was mostly a rest day and we did the official shake out three miler in Manitou Springs and picked up our packets.
The weather had looked dicey several days out, but we were lucky the impending storm front moving in was slower than they thought, so our weather was great on Saturday morning. In the 50s at the base and 30s at the summit. The Ascent is the first part of the race weekend, with about 1500-1800 people racing to the top on Saturday. The marathon is held Sunday, where you do the Ascent and then run all the way back down to Manitou Springs. There are some people who even double dip both races, which, especially in hindsight, is completely and utterly insane.
The race starts in 16 waves stratified by the time you submitted to qualify for the race. I think I put in my Boston time. The qualification standards are not high, they just want to know you (hopefully) won’t die. I got put in the 4thwave but wisely chose to start with Jarod in Wave 8.
The start was in my element. On the roads of Manitou Springs, lots of energy and just a cool funky little town. I thought I was just cruising, but Jarod said I was already going too fast, at least for him. The incline started immediately. I managed to run the first 1.5 miles on pavement but was already breathing hard by the time we got to the Barr trailhead, where the race really begins. The course follows the Barr trail the whole way. The first stretch is known as the “W”s , named for the shape of all the switchbacks, and features a lovely 13 percent average grade. Here I was forced to walk for the first time, and I assure you it was not my last. I probably did the walksies about 80-90 percent from then on. I did my best to power hike it. It gets pretty congested on the trail, but it’s not like I had enough speed to really pass most people. There was a lot of leap frogging going on. After the initial lung punch of the “W”s, you hit the No Name Creek aid station (4.48 miles). I was feeling pretty good at this point. Plenty of energy and nothing hurting. I felt a little less anxiety. It helped that the grade then got a little less steep after that, and (GASP) I was actually able to run some. I mean it was still 8 percent grade but walk/running seemed to work. I was making pretty good time, and I recall seeing I was at 1 hour 32 minutes at an aid station just past 6 miles. Oh man, I am going to crush this. Going to be low 3 hours for sure. I decided to take one of my 2 GUs at this point. I had only bought some GU at the expo the day before when Jarod was incredulous that I hadn’t brought any fuel. Espresso Love GU has quite a bit of caffeine, so I bounded ahead and tried to run whenever I could. There were even some downhill (perish the thought!) sections that I sprinted out. Barr Camp is one of the biggest aid stations at 7.79 miles. My elegant nutrition plan featured a handful of grapes in addition to my water and Skratch sport drink, which I had been chugging nonstop.
I was still feeling pretty good at Barr, which is at 10,200 feet, but things started getting a little rough after that. There’s some flat to downhill for a bit right after the camp, but then sh!t got real, real quick. The grade gets cranked up to 13 percent, and you can forget about running that, especially at that elevation. The trees start getting a little sparser, and you can even make out the peak from time to time, which seems impossibly high. The grade here is just relentless, and I can feel those 14-15 minute miles getting a lot slower. After what seemed like an eternity, I walked into A-frame, the last major aid station at 11,950 feet.
It’s only a 5k from the finish from here. I distinctly remembered Dean Schuster asking me how fast he thought he ran the last 5k of the Ascent. I knew it was brutal, so I threw out a ridiculously slow number for him ( a 19–20-minute 5ker) , 45 minutes. He said an hour and a half. Um, what?? He posted some video of him huffing and puffing above the tree line on Facebook as proof. Surely it couldn’t be that bad. But I had to admit I was feeling a little lightheaded and beat down by this point. I took the GU right before A frame and grabbed another handful of grapes. In my oxygen-deprived haze, I had a bizarre moment where suddenly I turned around and saw Jarod, then saw someone in an inflatable Trex costume cheering me on. I was really confused. Jarod had been slowly gaining on me for the last few miles. I stopped to get a selfie with Trex but then had to take a few seconds to not feel so passy-outty. Jarod appeared to have the intent to run with me to the finish, but I told him I was going to have to take it slow. As if the blistering 28-minute pace from Barr to A wasn’t slow enough. I was able to come back to Earth after a few deep breaths after A frame and suddenly I was above the tree line. It’s an absolutely incredible sight, just miles of perfect alpine scenery with snowcapped mountains and ice blue lakes. The trail leveled out for a bit to allow me a little Rocky Mountain high, and the GU kicked in, so I caught a second (oxygen deprived) wind. I even tried to trot a little, but I caught a case of the faintsies, so I figured that was a bad idea. There’s a timing station two miles from the finish and that seems so close. I still have a hard time seeing the peak, and there is just a huge wall of rock going upward for what seems like forever. Every time I look up it’s bad, because a) it seems a lot longer than 2 miles and b) the sudden upward gaze wants to make me feel all woozy. From then on, I just went to full zombie mode. One foot in front of the other, follow the people in front of me. A stocky dude in a blue shirt and a tiny woman from Nebraska and I had been together for the last several miles, and now we we’re locked into a brotherhood of pain in the death march to the finish. The last mile has another marker, and I swear I was hallucinating the kazoo band playing Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. But I did see them in a YouTube video, so I guess I was at least semi-lucid. The final mile is just soul crushing. The course has super steep switchbacks with even some rock scrambling at points. You can start to hear the finish line from a long way off, but you look up and you can see the conga line of oxygen deprived zombies still going up forever. They call these the “16 golden stairs” but it seems more like the route to hell than heaven. At one point I went over a crest and expected the finish line to be there. I almost cried when I saw 3-4 more “golden stairs” to go. Finally, I rounded the last turn and there was a straight path to the finish line. I thought maybe I’d run and do some triumphant pose, but I slumped to the finish like an episode of the Walking Dead and kept walking so I wouldn’t pass out. Jarod and the race photog caught the moment of beauty below:
I finished in 4:29 with a blazing 20:10 per mile pace. Rocked a 52nd in age group. I had plans of touring the summit house but I was completely wrecked. I changed into some warm clothes and I could barely lift my shirt over my head. I started to come back to life with some coke, but I was too weak to eat a cheeseburger we got at the summit cafeteria. If big boy can’t eat a cheeseburger than something is definitely not right. We ended up riding down on the first bus available, which takes about an hour with all the twists and turns.
The grade is so steep that you have to switch buses halfway down so the brakes don’t overheat. The second bus driver must have a side job in Nascar because we were getting thrown all over the back of the bus. One of Jarod’s friends almost had to puke out the window, which I was scared of causing a Stand By Me blueberry pie style vomiting incident since we were all a little queasy from the altitude. The after-race party in Manitou Springs was great with a free beer and pizza.
Would I do it again? My answer at the finish was HELL NO. But then again, there are always afternoon IPAs on my back porch.
Tour de Blue Shoes 