My Third Hardrock

I ran my third Hardrock in July. Here's the report.

Before 

I flew from Fairbanks, Alaska to Durango, Colorado a week before the race. I got my rental car and drove to Silverton. The next day (July 4) I picked up my race gear that I mailed to my friends' house in Ouray. I ran the Telluride to Kroger's Pass section of trail. The climb went well, but on the way down my quads started to burn so I deliberately took it easy. I spent the evening with friends in Norwood, CO.

I drove over to Lake City and did the Sherman climb the next day. My legs were unfortunately quite toasted from the Kroger's climb the day before, but of course I could still hike. 

The next day the air quality was terrible. Did I mention there was a fire? The Gold Mountain Fire started under 1/4 from my friends' house in Ouray about a week prior. Thankfully that's on the east side of town and prevailing winds kept pushing it east away from town. Of course that means it took a lot of wilderness with it instead. 

So instead of driving back to Silverton/Ouray I just looked for clean air on the map and drove south to Pagosa Springs. I watched the embarrassing USA-Belgium soccer game in Pagosa Springs and camped at Lobo Overlook at 11,747 feet. 

The air was OK-ish in the San Juans the next day so I drove back to Silverton and camped in Cunningham. I went back to Durango the next day to pick up Amy from the aiport, and went to race check in. We camped in Cunningham again.

Start 

I started the race. There was a bear in a tree a block from the race start, which was fun. Several people, myself included, thought it was fake, but it was definitely real. 

The first climb was nice. It was fun to get Putnam out without much suffering. My friend Tod caught up to me on the way down to KT, but I couldn't hang with him for very long at all. I stopped to pee and he was gone, and well into the Kamm Traverse before I left the KT aid station. 

 

I did pretty well up the Grant Swamp climb, and passed a few people on the loose steep descent, which to me is a lot of fun, and though I don't think I do it "fast" because I'm not running, I suppose I do it faster than many other. Once it's on real trail, though, most people I'd passed caught up to me.

 

I'm sure there was a perfectly good reason for me to be looking at my phone in such a gorgeous setting.

I saw my friend from Norwood at the Chapman aid station, but was quickly passed leaving it by fellow Virginian Ben. Each climb was getting worse than the previous one. The descent into Telluride was fine, even fun, because Zack Miller was running on the course just a few weeks after coming in fifth at Western States.

Amy crewed me in Telluride, and I met a friend of a friend on the climb out of town. They dropped me on the climb and got to Kroger's Canteen  before me. I caught up to them on the sketchy descent, and they quickly caught back up on the trail descent and I never saw them again. That was the pattern. 

 

I had to poop on the road run down Camp Bird Mine Road. There wasn't really anywhere to go, or any water to clean up with, so I was uncomfortable for a while until I passed a campground with a latrine close to the bottom. This long road descent is why people think this direction is faster, but I didn't make up any time on the road, my feet hurt. I generally am not good at this--my feet are just painful when running on roads in the middle of long ultras. Unfortunately this was pretty much my theme for running this year: "my feet hurt." 

I got into Ouray before dark. It was hot, and I didn't feel great. Amy and my friends were there, but I knew the night and the rest of the race was going to be hard. 

The climb out of Ouray was OK, except that smokey air started blowing in, and I started tasting it. It got dark, and it quickly got cold. I'd been cocky leaving Ouray and thought I'd be OK getting to Grouse, but it was so cold that I asked for a pair of latex medical gloves from Engineer aid station. Luckily I'm friends with the aid station director, so she called me a wimp and gave me the gloves. 

The rest of the climb was fine (though still very cold), but I went loopy on the road descent to Grouse Gulch. Thankfully it was just an easy to follow road, but my imagination started going, and I started wondering what type of aid station the next one was. Was it the sheep shearing aid station, or was it the fashion contest one? Eventually I made it there, and it was just a normal aid station. I didn't have any caffeine, so I laid down on a cot in the back to try and take a nap. I got up, and asked them to drain a blister. While they were working on my feet I realized a buddy was in the chair next to me and he hooked me up with caffeine. (Blister-wise it turns out that the Kiprun Summit Max's are just a little too narrow for me. I get blisters one my right foot pinky toe every time.) 

Air 

So I was caffeinated and had my blister drained and taped and I was ready to go. The first bit was good, but then the air was crap on the way to American Basin. By the top I wanted the race to be cancelled, and fully expected that it would be. This wasn't healthy! Somebody died on the course last year in shitty air (that later completely blew out) and this air felt way worse. But nobody else wanted to stop. I texted friends to try to get a sense of whether the race was going to be cancelled. A couple dozen runners passed me, and none of them wanted to turn around with me. One of them even had the audacity to call the disgusting filthy orange-red sunrise beautiful! What's wrong with everyone?! Haven't they read the air quality research by Michael Anderson, John Voorheis, Reed Walker, and Marshall Burke or am I the only one because I just happen to know all those guys personally? Don't they know this is bad for you?!

But eventually I went over Handies. Finally at the top there was an older runner (perhaps with his daughter as a pacer?) who appreciated the gravity of the situation. He was taking a break on the summit of Handies. He wasn't stopping, but at least he was also not enjoying himself.

Since I wasn't quitting, the only thing to do was descend the other side. The descent to the road was OK, and the aid station was nice, but then the road section to Sherman was very hot and exposed. The climb from Sherman was hot but shaded in the lower section. My tiredness came back to me so I tried to take a dirt nap, but it didn't really accomplish anything (other than maybe alerting my friend in NYC to my having stopped for several minutes).

The Pole Creek descent was hot and hazy. This is supposed to be a runnable part, but the trail was so dry and dusty that I couldn't imagine adding to the horrible smokey air quality and making the air quality worse by stamping and creating dust. Pole Creek itself was low, so this whole day was hard to find places to wet my arm sleeves and hat. I remember listening to a podcast about the book Wind in the Willows, and wishing that I cared one single solitary bit about Wind in the Willows.

Finally, I made it to Maggies Gulch, which was crazy hazy, and then from the pass above Maggies to Cunningham I thought they'd cancel the race. They had to--the air was fucking disgusting. Jamil Coury passed me, but didn't seem like he wanted to complain about the shitty air with me and kept moving at decent pace (and finished an hour and six places ahead of me). I ran with my ice bandana over my face to breath better, but that only worked when it was wet, and it didn't stay wet for very long.

 

 

Finish 

I wanted to quit at Cunningham. Amy was there, and a nice aid station volunteer asked what he could do for me. I think I said "You could tell the RD to cancel the race because of the air quality, or to have cancelled it at Sherman 12 hours ago, or at Grouse 20 hours ago!" and he (and Amy) took it well and laughed and said "In the realm of things I have control over, is there anything I can help you with?" I took my N95 mask from the car and began the final climb. It was very hard to do the climb wearing a mask, so I took it off, and thankfully, in the time since descending into Cunningham and it getting dark and cold, the air had completely blown out and I could no longer taste it at all. It was clear, cool wind.

That didn't mean it was easy, as it was now the second night, my mind was going loopy again, and I still had no caffeine. I passed one runner on the climb, but was bummed that it wasn't Jamil, and I was alone and wishing for the top, unable to concentrate or do anything other than count my steps and look at the elevation on my watch.

Aside from being a little sketched out crossing a steep gully or two at the top of the descent, I felt like I made good time on the descent. I saw a couple cars on the dirt road, but that's it. I finally passed another runner on the local ski hill in town, and finished in 43:41.

It was really hard. I didn't even take a picture of myself at the finish (but the race photographer did). Amy, and my friend Tod (finished in 34 hours) and his wife Amanda were there, so I had a veggie burger in the the gym with them and crawled into my tent and went to sleep. 

Photo Credit Travis McWhorter Lobo Photo NM

 

After 

I woke up fairly early and couldn't fall asleep again, so I started packing up, and remembered about the Depletion Mile just in time to drive over to the track. Started by Mike Wardian, it's a silly mile on the Silverton track at 7AM just after the cutoff of the race. I ran about an 8:30 mile, good enough for second place man (of two!) among those who ran Hardrock. I thought I did pretty good, but Nick Coury crushed me, I think running a six-something mile after finishing sixth place.

The air quality and/or the heat didn't get everyone, but it definitely got me.