Golden Gate Canyon Dirty 30 Trail Run

Another busy week at the office and week of travel.  I arrived back in Denver from Chicago on Friday at 5PM to be greeted by Francisco, who had arrived from Texas a few hours earlier.   We headed to the hotel dropped off our luggage and skipped over to Chianti’s for a nice pasta dinner and a glass of wine.  The food was great, learned about fried capers from the owners of the small Italian restaurant…..they are really tasty.   After dinner we went back to the hotel and got ourselves organized for the Golden Gate Canyon Dirty 30 trail run.   The course is located in the foothills of the Rockies about 15 miles up the canyon outside of Golden Colorado. 

The alarm went off at 3:45AM after a restless night of sleeping.   I’ve been dealing with the tail of a cold where I’m hacking up mucus fueled by a post-nasal drip.   That morning my stomach wasn’t in the best of shape, not sure why, but just had to deal with it.  From the hotel it was about a 70-minute ride across town and up the windy switchbacks to the race start. The weatherman was calling for lows in the 50’s and highs in low 80’s.  When we arrived at the race the temperature was 41F…go figure.  Another cold start to a race, fortunately I had some under armor gear in the car and a warm hat to wear.   Francisco had some arm warmers but that was about it.  The rest of the runners were prepared for a hot day as well.  That never really happened.

We made our way down to check in about 10 minutes before the race start.  There was about 500 competitors in total at the race.  It was a typical ultra trail runner’s event.  A lot of laid back crunchy dudes that look forward to running up the and down the mountains over rough terrain.  Not a lot of hoopla, low key, but well organized.  We were able to easily find Ray in his Hawaiian shirt.  We snapped a couple of photos, exchanged some small talk as we shivered and waited for the gun to go off.

Earlier in the week I had met Meagan, the race director, at the Runners Roost where you were able to pick up your race packets.  I had a really nice chat with her asking lots of questions about the course, aid stations, expected finish times, etc.  She had told me that the 1^st ¼ mile of the race was flat open road before it converted to single track.  When the gun went off the 1^st ¼ mile was on a dirt road, however it was not at all flat.  It was an uphill climb.  The red flags went off right then and there and I thought to myself, if this is flat I’m wondering what the rest of the course is like.  Well, Francisco and I, two rookies on this course, were about to find out.

When the gun went off, Hawaiian Ray looked liked the bullet from the chamber, sprinting up the dirt road with a lot of the other elite ultra runners.  The Mexican Honey Badger and I hung back and jogged slowly up the dirt road as the majority of the pack passed us.  That was quite alright by me.  My male ego simply kept whispering I’ll see you at mile 18.  As it turned out it was more like mile 12-15.

I lost Francisco early and decided just to run my race.  For the first ten miles it seemed like it was all up hill and more like a hike race versus a trail run.  I labored up every climb during the 1^st 10 miles.  My stomach felt like crap.  At second aid station I dumped out my perpetum and filled it with water, wolfed down a bunch of very salty potato chips and chocolate chip cookies while I took of my hat and jacket and replaced it with my IM STG white cap.  I was prepared for a sunny day at high altitude, so I was sporting my Swiftwick long sleeve white compression shirt.  As it turned out I really didn’t need it as the sun was only out for about 2 hours the entire day, during which time I was running through the evergreens and shielded form the sun.  The rest of the day clouds, first light grey puffy clouds, then dark ominous ones kept the sun from us.  As a result, the day was for the most part had a chill to it.

At about mile 12 I began reeling in runners and told myself from here on out nobody would be passing me.  Well it didn’t quite work out that way, as I played cat and mouse with about a ½ dozen runners.  At mile 24 aid station I was nauseous and dizzy.  I had gone through all of my water 50 minutes before and was feeling the effects of high altitude and dehydration.  At this aid station they told me that we had a long 3-mile climb left before finishing the race with a two-mile descent to the finish line.  I must admit, I was pretty spent at 24 and was bonking.   Experience told me to chill out for 5-10 minutes, get my heart rate down, suck down some coke, water, chips and cookies.  I knew that there was another side to this bonk and it was just a matter of time.  While I regrouped 15 people passed me as they rushed through the aid station.  I left the mile 24-aid station after making friends with the high school mountain bike team (the aid station sponsor) and walked down a dirt road and then began to shuffle a slow jog.  After 2 more runners passed me the sodium, water and glycogen had hit my blood stream.  I was feeling good.  I picked up my pace and once again I was reeling in runners.  There simply is no substitute for experience.

At mile 27 there is the “peak”, the top of the mountain.  By this time the dark clouds were spitting large cold cold drops of rain.  I passed the race Marshalls as I was ascending and they were descending from the Peak.  They told me to get up and get back down due to the lightening and storm that was moving in.  When I reached the top, nobody and nothing was there but an abandoned orange tent.  I screamed a passage from Jimmy Hendrix “excuse me while I kiss the sky” I then blew it a kiss, gave it the finger feeling pretty good about that fact that I had reached the top and had a nice decent to the finish line.  About 2 seconds after my gesture there was a flash of lightening and a loud clap of thunder, almost simultaneously….I pissed somebody off..so I quickly apologized, to who I’m not sure, but it felt like the right thing to do.  I proceeded to descend at break neck speed, literally because that’s what would’ve happened if I had caught a toe on one the many rocks that plagued this course.

I felt great at this point with just a few miles to go and most of it down hill.   At this point the skies had opened up and began to shit all over us.   I caught this 23-24yr old graduate student at the school of mines just as she did a superman and bounced off a bunch of rocks.  It was an ugly, ugly, ugly spill.  Fortunately she didn’t hit her head but suffered some nasty purple bruises and cuts.  I helped her up and told her to run behind me, which she did for the next 1.5 miles.  I could see about 6-8 runners in front of me and decided that she was fine and it was time for me to catch those runners.  In my pursuit I not only caught them but several more.  At about ¼ mile from the finish I saw Francisco and thought, how the hell did he get in front of me.  As it turns out at mile 25 they did not allow runners to ascend up to the Peak because of the threatening weather.  I was one of the last runners allowed to go up to the Peak before they cut it off.

As we crossed the finish line it read 7:29:32.  A sub 7:30, for this 50k, while it doesn’t seem that fast, let me say I gave it all I had.   The rain had stopped.  I was pretty beat up.  My feet were bruised from the course due to all of the rocks.  All of the fellow racers congratulated one another.  Each knew just how challenging this course was and there was a mutual respect for conquering it.  There are very few athletes that could’ve tackled this course.  I would equate the technical difficulty of this race as a triple black diamond ski run.  It is a very, very tough track.  Ray finished with a time of 6:58, pretty damn sporty after already logging in 75 miles that week.  He’s getting his game on for UTMB.

As we went to the car to change before heading down to the awards ceremony and grabbing some food, a bigger storm rolled in with lightening and thunder and torrential rains.  We changed quickly and decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel instead to take a well-deserved hot shower.  It was a long day, up at 3:45AM and 7.5 hours on the course running.  We were tired but a good tired.  It’s races like this that are going to get us prepared physically and mentally for UTMB in August.  Till then, I continue to train smart and blog about it…..Cheers!!