Colorado Springs

So for those of you who don’t know, last week I officially moved to Colorado. What had always been a dream of mine became reality when I was offered a position to teach high school French in Colorado Springs (also, just found out that I’ll also be the middle school cross country coach!? Now I have TWO chances to screw up today’s youth). The transition from 6 feet of elevation to 6,000 has been a tad disheartening, but my ability to run again totally makes up for that. You read that right – I’ve eased back into running, replacing the pancake-flat pavement of the Chicago suburbs for the awe-inspiring landscapes of the Rockies.

Now, my training is nowhere near the volume that it was back in May/June, but I can honestly say that I’ve climbed more in one run here than those two months in Illinois combined. My new go-to workout (which I’ve completed three times now) is something called The Incline, about a 10-minute drive from me over in Manitou Springs. It doesn’t actually include much running, but instead consists of roughly 2,000 feet of elevation gain over the course of a little more than a mile, all up some crudely-made steps. I was told a good athlete could expect to make it up in about 30 minutes (my first time was 29:55…yeesh), and I’ve since brought it down to 25:58. You then run down a winding trail ~4 miles back down to “ground” level; the round trip usually takes about an hour, and typically leaves me craving copious numbers of donuts (so you know it’s a good workout).

It was during my most recent climb that I noticed banners announcing the Pike’s Peak Ascent, a ridiculous race that climbs the same trail I’d run down (and then some). While I’d heard of the race before, I did a little research and discovered that the course starts at 6,300’ and is a 13.3 mile climb to the top of Pike’s Peak, more than 14,000’ above sea level. There’s both a half-marathon (just to the top) and a full marathon (up and back down), and both are in about a week (August 16-17^th). Obviously, having just moved to Colorado, I’m nowhere near ready to climb a 14-er, on top of the fact that I haven’t run in more than 6 weeks. But, because I’m an idiot, I decided to sign up!

Thankfully, the full marathon was already sold-out (good excuse), but there were still a few spots open for Wave 1 of the Ascent. Because it’s such an epic and difficult race, you need to have a run a qualifying marathon time in the past two years to register; fortunately, my last race at the Yankee Springs Trail Marathon was fast enough for me to qualify for the faster wave.

While registering, the website asks you to make a prediction as to what your finishing time will be, and because my half-marathon time is right around 80 minutes, I figured it’d take maybe 90 to make it to the top. Uhhh, not quite – the website recommended you add 30 minute to your best marathon time. Whoa. If you want to read about the race, its crazy amount of elevation gain and partial pressure of oxygen, click the link here: http://www.pikespeakmarathon.org/course.htm#Course.

Because my teaching will start this Wednesday, I’m not going to have much time to train this next week, making this race extra…interesting. Check back next week, as I’ll be sure to write up a recount of this brutal suckfest!