WHAT HAPPENED AT LEADVILLE

     Well, it's been three weeks since the race, the blisters are almost completely gone, and I've been waiting for clarity to settle in as to exactly what happened at Leadville. Little by little the fog has cleared and I think I know now why I didn't make it to the finish. IT WAS JUST TOO DAMN HARD.

     The facts are these: they give you thirty hours to do the 100 miles but they also have check-points with cutoffs at various points along the course. If you don't make it to these points within a certain time, they give you the hook. We knew that, of course, and planned our pace with those cutoffs in mind. I made it to the forty mile cutoff at Twin Lakes in good shape and started up on over Hope Pass which, at 12,600 feet is the signature feature of the Leadville 100.


     The research we'd done said the way to handle the altitude is to never go completely anaerobic. You always keep moving forward but you never get to the point where your heart is beating so hard you can feel it all through your body--even if it means slowing down to a barely moving shuffle. I thought we'd done enough work and been at altitude long enough before the race that I wouldn't have to slow down too much. I was wrong. Whenever I pushed the pace my heart felt like it was going to jump up and explode out of the back of my head. At some points I was moving so slowly I'm sure the untrained observer couldn't have discerned any movement at all.  Once I got up and down the pass I had to really hustle to make it to the turn-around check point at Winfield. I made it with a few minutes to spare and took off back toward the pass, hoping that lighting would strike and I'd find a way to go faster on the way back. That really isn't as ill-logical as it sounds. The far side of Hope Pass doesn't drop down as far as the way up--it's steeper but shorter so, maybe..... In any case, it didn't work. The further up I went the slower I had to go and I didn't make the cut-off at 60 miles.

     The funny thing is, once I got back down off the pass, I felt like I could have finished the last 40 miles if they would have let me keep going. Unfortunately, it was no dice. Nineteen hours of effort and the hook. So, the question is, now what? I feel like I need to know if I could really go a full hundred. Maybe the thing to do is to try one without a double mountain crossing in it. I'll have to give that some thought.