pikes peak ascent race report

After a week of anticipation and rest, Saturday morning finally got here and it was time to get down to business. I felt really good about the week leading up to the race and pretty confident that I could go out and get a sub 5.

We got to Manitou a few minutes before the gun went off for wave 1 and started making preparations. I couldn't decide what to carry with me. I figured it would be nice to have a poly long sleeve in case it got cold at the top but with the possibility of rain in the forecast I decided on a light waterproof windbreaker. I stuffed a fleece beanie in the pocket and tied the jacket around my waist.

I made my way to the back of the pack at the start line and jogged up and down the block behind the line a couple times to warm up. Shortly thereafter the gun went off and the crowd snaked through the streets of Manitou. About a block into the race, I noticed my shorts were falling off. I had 4 GUs stuffed into one of the pockets and the extra weight was pulling them down. I quickly tied the drawstring and didn't have to worry about mooning the crowd behind me for the rest of the day. No sooner than I had my shorts tied up, the HR alert went off on my watch. Dammit, what the hell was I doing in the half hour standing around before the race? I shuffled through the menus and finally made the beeping stop. Before I even got to Ruxton, the jacket I had tied around my waist started unrolling and flapping around. I removed it, tied a knot in the middle of it, and then knotted it tightly around my waist again. Finally, about 6 minutes into the race, the junkshow was over and it was time to focus on getting to the top of a mountain.

I yelled at GZ on the curb as I was heading up Ruxton. The rest of the race up to Barr Camp was fairly uneventful. I felt really good with the pace I was able to maintain versus the effort I was putting in. Clearly, the aerobic training is paying off. I was definitely above an aerobic heart rate but it seemed much easier than the trip up to Barr Camp a month prior in the BTMR. I hit all my splits for a sub 5 up to Barr Camp right on target and came into camp at 2:30.

My lack of altitude training really started to shine past Barr Camp, however. I was about 10 minutes behind pace getting to A-Frame and it didn't get much better above that. I focused on keeping a decent pace and not doing anything to spike the HR into the red zone. I think I stopped once during the first mile above treeline for about a minute and then kept crawling towards the summit. The final mile would prove slow with a lot of traffic in front of me. Once we got past the Fred Barr memorial plaque, I found an opening and passed about seven runners in the final couple of switchbacks and darted across the line at 5:28:37. Certainly well short of my "A" goal of sub 5 but I was under 5:30 and set a new PR by 14 minutes and change. Considering the training I was doing in the month since BTMR, I'm pretty pleased with my race.

Of course, I am grateful that my wife and my mom came up to hang out in the wind on the summit to cheer me on even if they could only see me for 4 minutes of the 5+ hours that I was on the course. It truly is an amazing feeling when I hear them yelling at me from the top.

Going forward, I will probably just keep running at slow pace and continue to build an aerobic base. This is the first time since I started running a few years ago that I have some semblance of reason for why I'm doing what I'm doing when I go out running and its nice to see some progress as well. I read Hadd before when I first started running and thought I put those principles into practice in my running. Thanks to GZ and Lucho for ranting on their blogs about how slow and how easy "slow and easy" is really supposed to be. Reading these guys really drove it home and I just took what I read and ran with it (pun intended).