Breck Crest 'Marathon'

Over Labor Day weekend E, Hoyt and I went back to Breckenridge so I could run the Breck Crest Marathon - it's not actually a marathon, it's only 23 miles, but the website says something like, 'purists will thank us at the end for it only being 23 miles'. The course is basically up over and along the ten mile range and then back down again. You spend a lot of time over 12,000 feet - just under 13,000 actually and this one was a tough one.

I decided to do it to use the aid stations and the 'comraderie' of other people racing - and the aid stations did come in handy, but in reality I was again by myself for the majority of this race. It's ok because at least I knew there was someone out there running with me - even if they weren't actually with me.

I told myself this was not a race for me - it was a training run - and I would only push myself so far as to finish the race, but not at an extreme effort that would affect running afterwards. As I sit right now, knowing I'm supposed to do four miles today - I'm thinking regardless of that fact I might need to skip the 4 miler today. The uphill was unforgiving, and the downhill was much of the same. It really didn't matter how conservative I was, my quads are still not happy with me.

I've learned through this race that I need to learn how to run downhill - I passed people on the way up, but downhill was the only place I got passed. I have a tendency to be timid - especially near roots because of the huge digger I took earlier this summer when I ruined my wedding ring (still haven't gotten it back and it's been almost 4 months). It's something to work on for the future, but I'm ok with it right now, some of the downhill was just way too steep to mess with anyway.

You were allowed to have drop bags for this race and the plan was to pick up my hydration vest for the middle portion then drop it again and use the handheld, but I ended up keeping the handheld the entire time. It worked well for me and now I think I might have to readjust my thinking for the 50k in October. It might bode well for me to just use that if the aid stations are spaced like they were in this race.

I'm not going to go through the splits - I will say I had two miles in the 21 range and one in the 18 range. I finished the 23.65 miles by my Garmin in 5:34 - I thought I was going to be out there for 6-7 hours so I'm really happy with the result and knowing I didn't really push myself - that makes it ok too. I got 8th out of my age group I think there were 14. First and second place or maybe it was first and third came from my group so I've either got to age faster or slower and get out of this 30-39 range. Although I guess eventually they would follow me so whatever.

I meant to take pictures, the camera was with my hydration vest - but there's something about getting up past tree line and being up there for that length of time that makes you just want to get down and that's how I felt. I wonder whether I would have even taken pictures or whether I would have just had to carry the camera for the distance. I googled and found some random pictures of the trails and the Ten Mile Range we were on, here are a few:

This, I believe would be one of the first climbs up the range - all in all there were about four.
Ignore the people on the bikes - again these pictures are 'borrowed' and I have no idea who they are. Once you get up this you get a bit of downhill before the next uphill, and while it's nice to get the relief of the downhill looking forward and seeing this is not at all a good feeling:



I spent a lot of time above treeline on Sunday - a lot. Here are a few other random pictures I found of different parts of the trail:

This is where you begin to go 'down' - yes you did eventually get to go down, but it was at times less than pleasant.

There was one more uphill after this, and it brough you right out of treeline again, and it was UP out of tree line - fast.

I managed my hydration and my fueling well - never cramped and ran out of water only once, which was right before the next aid station. I've got two more 'races' before the 50k where I'll make all of my decisions on what and how to carry things.

I'm happy with the results of this race, it wasn't a race for me in the finish fast sense, and it's hard to enter something and not have it become that for me, but I did it. I don't know whether my results would have been that dramatically different had I actually been in a race mindset, probably not by much, but it's another great accomplishment for me and it's just a build up for the next one....