Leadville Silver Rush 50 Mile Trail Run

The Ultra monkey is officially off of my back, kind of........ This past weekend I raced in the Silver Rush 50 Trail Run in Leadville, CO. At the last minute I entered the race, hopped a plane and arrived in Leadville 6 hours before the race start....for you mathematicians in the crowd that means I arrived at midnight. So with about 4.5 hours of sleep and minimal nutrition I hit the trails in Leadville. Being a complete novice I took the advice of some training pals and took the first 7 miles painfully slow. When I couldn't stand it any longer I decided to just run and listen to my HR monitor to advise on my pace.

There were several highs and lows in the race. The highs included meeting a bunch of cool people throughout the day, the beautiful scenic views of the rockies, water at the aid stations and crossing the finish line - albeit bitter sweet. This was my first ultra distance event and I decided early on that I wanted to race this course and see how hard I could push myself. This I did and was on pace for about a 9:30 time - until I took a detour at the last aid station that burned a solid 30-35 minutes along with the three diet cokes that I sucked down at the last aid station for energy to finish strong. Even worse was that I led another runner up the same path and detour. She would've finished in the top 5, most likely 4th place in the women's overall category if I was paying closer attention. This type of mistake was a HUGE bummer and I feel simply awful that I completely jacked her race. So the last 7 miles of the race I cooked in my juices trying to shake this moronic mistake ad decided to just run hard. This I did till the last 1.5 miles and realized that I was going to be unable to make a sub 10 finish and simply walked it in as other runners passed me by - a very hard pill to swallow. I learned quite a lot in this race that I plan to take with me to the Leadville 100 Trail Run in 5 weeks. The overall experience was worthwhile and I'm looking forward to the LT 100.

Ultra runners are a different breed - what I'm learning is that most of them are in the sport because they are running from something. This is their escape.

Here's to the "firsts" in life. As you get older there are very few - only this past weekend I experienced yet another. Lot's of "firsts" left on my bucket list.

Cheers!