Greenland 25k : Putting the Non-Plan to the Test

Two years ago, after a second straight implosion on lap 2 of the Greenland 25k, I swore off this race.  However, like a moth to a flame, early spring had my mind wandering to this race and possibly taking another stab at it with more focused workouts.  This race has had everything in the past - howling wind, snowstorms, exposed baking heat - and year after year, it sells out.  Derek and all the folks over at Colorado Runner Events put on an excellent event, which lends to the appeal as well.  This year, with an increased registration of 1000 runners, it sold out later than the previous two but still was full prior to registration closing.  With the increased cap also came staggered starts for the 3 distances - this was a relief because the 550 runner mass start in 2010 was harsh, and I could not have imagined a 1000 runner stampede to start!

What a view to start the race!

Race Central - almost time.

Unlike previous years that I have run this, we showed up to Greenland about an hour prior to the race start to blue sky, relatively warm, and NOT WINDY conditions - hmmm?  While I know that most racer types relish frigid temps to start a race, I was completely OK with this scenario, especially sans-wind.  When I hopped in line for packet pick up, I got to chat for about 10 minutes with Mr Ace, which is always a pleasant way to start the day!  This guy is a spring of enthusiasm, and was getting ready for his second 50k in seven days with badly blistered feet - wow!  

Anyway, got my bib and went back to the car to get pinned up, put the chip on the shoe, and get in line for the "facilities".  Uh, oh.  The waiting line for the cans ended up being over 15 minutes, which ended any chance of getting a warmup run in.  I'm not sure about logistics or park regs for Greenland, but I am not sure 10 portalets adequately cover 1000 racers....  I wormed my way in to the front area of the start with 3 minutes to spare.  I was lucky - keep reading.

Massing at the start

And they're off - stampede at the start - I was about 8 deep at the start, which was good!

Eventual winner and new CR Daniel Kraft had to pass everyone coming out

of the parking area - we surmise he got stuck in the potty line too long!

LOL on that one - Kathleen remembered seeing this kid hauling onto the course after everyone was across the mat!  I noticed him pulling through because he reminded me of a twenty something Scott Jurek - floppy curly hair and smooth as silk stride.  He blazed a 1:34:38 which blows my mind.  

Now back to the race in front of me.  Start was hopping as expected, but I have a patience problem with wading through people and I always worry about getting tripped, rolling an ankle, going to jail for punching someone who keeps stepping on my shoes, and so forth....  So after about 3/4 mile I had to tune it down a bit as there is no way these legs are rolling 7's for 25k :)  By about 2.5 miles, I had settled in to my comfort zone and started to, for the first time, look around and enjoy the scenery.  Given the vast open expanses here and the complete lack of any shade, Greenland Open Space still has its charm.

Looking over to Spruce Mountain Open Space

Coming off the hill toward the end of the first loop and feeling good.

I hit the top of Kipps Loop climb about on target at 7:49ish pace, and dropped in for the first screaming descent off the back side.  I kept it reeled in a bit given the past experiences of Lap 2 doom.  However, with the turnover I have been doing this spring and my legs being used to better pace, "reeled in" ended up being 6:50 - 7:05 pace, which is newer territory for a comfortable running pace but felt good.  There were already quite a few 50k runners mixed in with the line by this point but I could tell from posture and body language who I was racing with.  The folks with the "I will be out in this exposure for another 3 or 4 hours" look were pretty obvious.  And it was getting warm.

I made the turn at I am guessing 59 and change, though the chip splits aren't up on the Greenland page yet (hope they will be), and grabbed a cup of Heed at the aid station before crossing the mat and starting Lap 2.  I have been pretty dialed on hydration and seemed to be doing really well as far as that goes.  Lap 2 is kind of tricky as the gradual climb back on Greenland trail to the pond starts to tell you where the legs are.  Then the sharp climb over the ridge from the pond twists that down a bit and you must concentrate on regaining some turnover before the second trip up Kipps.  I flagged a bit on mojo here and had to wrap my head around the task at hand.  Unlike past years, I was still running fluid and no signs of blowing up.  Progress.

Got to the aid spot at the base of the climb hoping for a Heed cup but the tanks.were.dry.  "Can you hang on a minute while we're mixing?"  Um, like, I am racing here....  So I grabbed a water cup, drank half, and tossed the other half over my head.  The breeze we had to start had completely ceased and the second time up Kipps with the overhead sun was definitely warm.  Felt bad for the 50k folks to go two more rounds on that - ouch.   Took my last gel about 4 minutes from the top of Kipps - one of my bigger mistakes was not having a couple more gels - and I knew I had to grind one out of the legs to push over the top.  Ended up about 1:20 slower on the second time through the climb, which is a good sign.  However, I hit the crest and started running calculations on some "silent" goals I had.  Sketchy, but I spent a lot of time preparing for it, so I decided it was all or nothing.  A younger guy I had been running with for a good portion of the time drug me over the top and we picked our way through the eternal line of 50k runners on the back side.  We had traded some chatter earlier but were in red light zone at this point.  He asked me to pull through as he was not sure what he had left, so I did - but realistically I didn't know either.  I told him that I was going for broke, but might see him again...  

   

Smelling the Barn - mission almost accomplished.

There were a lot of runners to pick through the entire way down the backside descent, most of them 50k folks in damage control mode with the quickly mounting heat.  At one point I was hitting sub 6 paces and knew this was simply not in my sustainable range.  However, in the heat of the moment, the brain doesn't function like that!  By the time I hit the turn off the Kipps Loop to the main drag for the last .9 miles my fleeting dream of sub-2 Hours was all but gone.  I have no business running a 6:05 mile (and I am OK with that) and it was going to take that from my fuzzy-brained calculators but still I rolled.  Three quarters out, for the first time all day, one of those neural twinges hit my left calf.  Then two hit my right.  Why Me?  I almost said it out loud, but tried to push through.  Then it hit, at one half mile out, my right toes curled under my foot in a ball and I almost toppled.  I pulled off trail, unable to move my foot, and desperately dug both thumbs into the ball of twisted mass that was my right calf and pushed them all the way to the bone.  Within what I guess to be about twenty seconds I was hobbling, then running gingerly, then flogging for my life!  I vaguely remember my young friend going by screaming at me to get up and run - and I thanked him at the finish.  I pulled in behind him for the last half and he shouted "Not a word - I am this close (holding up his thumb and finger about a quarter inch apart) to having both calves ball up and I am hanging on..."  

And so I rolled in at 2:00:48, nearly a 10 minute PR and quite a satisfying day.  The barely structured training program I had concocted worked well and the efforts of the previous 2 months paid off.  The strong second lap and all out finish vanquished those lingering demons this race had left me with in the past.  Granted, in those previous years, I had no training schedule to speak of and really expected more than I had worked for.  This year was different.  For someone in their 40's who is mostly a 3 day per week runner, I would say that I have to be ecstatic with where I ended up.  And I planned the peaking pretty well too.  A month ago, I ran a two lap trainer here and yesterday took another 13 seconds per mile off that effort.  So I am happy.  And now I do not have anything hanging over my head about Greenland, which is OK by me.  Unless the flame draws me in...again...  (Or when Kathleen is recovered and decides to go for the Masters Women's win there :) )

Here are the numbers, for those who must know:

2:00:48 

22nd overall, 5th masters 

7:47 per mile if you use raw 25k, or 7:45 if you use the race's advertised distance of 15.56 miles

               BTW, I ran good tangents - Garmin showed 15.57

1987 calories burned  ( I only ate 300 during - oops)

1380' elevation gain - pretty "flat" for out here

73 degrees, 7% humidity at my finish time - that's right Midwesterners/Southerners - single digit humidity

Shoes: Saucony Kinvara2 

We finally got to meet Craig and his family after the race, and hung out for a while chatting up race recap, future trail runs, etc. - Good Times!  Craig and his son both won awards - sweet!  After that, we got to run into the entire "Ace" clan in the parking lot, including Mrs Ace, the kiddos, and the rest of the family who were visiting from Montana - pretty neat!  We stayed for a bit to see some of the front 50k runners come in.  We were absolutely stunned when Peter Maksimow came in at just over 3:22 for a new course record - 5 of the 6 CR's fell yesterday, even with the heat.  We were hoping to see Brad finish before heading out and he rolled in with an awesome sub-4 hour finish.  Good day all around! 

Oh - and forget Gluten-Free for a minute,
Kathleen insisted - Black Forest Roulade Was Mandatory!

Greenland 25k Trail race - done!

Steve's Greenland 25k trail race is in the books and it was all good!  His unofficial finish time was 2:00:48, a 10 minute PR.  One of his calves cramped a half mile from the finish - the kind of cramp where the toes curl beneath the foot.  He had to stop briefly and let the toes unfurl and then was able to finish well.  He did great.  He is very pleased with his result and I am so proud of him!  Race report forthcoming.......

Spring in the Mountains - A Few Days in Pagosa Springs

Skip back a week and we took a little time to run away from home, heading down to Pagosa Springs.  We were nearing the end of the life-cycle for Kathleen's nuked thyroid gland, so timing was sketchy but we figured we would just make lemonade if the lemons got hurled our way!  We have lived in Colorado for going on 22 years, and, aside from a marathon drive one time from Moab to Cortez, through Durango and over to Gunnison in one day, we have not spent any time in the southwest part of the state.  While spring is maybe not the ultimate time to visit this area given that some of the iconic trails are in the high country and they get TONS of snow, we decided to do a little snooping around anyway.  With the requisite 5 hour drive one way, it isn't somewhere we would pop over to on any given weekend, since 10 hours of driving cuts into play time.  So off we went...

One thing we ALWAYS do before heading new places is to get the "dirt" on trails.  There is a well organized group of races in the Pagosa Springs area that are put on by Morgan Murri under the umbrella of Gecko, which raises funds to help children get reconnected with the outdoors.  Morgan was super helpful with emailing us details about the area, giving us some advanced notice on trail conditions, and providing great maps to download on the Gecko website.  Timing was unfortunate as we caught him in a busy week between out of town races - we would have liked to get in a run with him.  Next time for sure!  Read about the children's program, as well as the race series, by clicking on the logo below.  Oh, and then sign up for some races while you are at it!

 Tuesday Run 

Enough trails within that "little" map to run several days out here

We wanted to hit up the trails that make up the Turkey Track Trail Half Marathon, so we headed out to the race start in the Turkey Springs recreation area north of town on Tuesday.  We knew that there may be some mud in spots since there had been a decent little snow on Sunday right in the middle of spring drying on the trails.  It really was not bad at all given the fact that most of our time was spent between 7600' and 8200' on mostly forested trails.

Launch point - Fourmile Stock Trail - a mulit-use/ATV trail

Kathleen climbing Fourmile Stock Trail

Finally on the sweet singletrack

After climbing Fourmile trail, we took a left down a dirt road, watching for the trail to take off to the left that is used in the race.  The trails are distinct, but not marked, so paying attention to the the map helps.  And the singletrack was worth the wait - pristine and primitive may best describe it.  It is refreshing to run narrow trails that are not trampled by 100,000 of your "closest friends" every weekend.  Sometimes being far away from the Front Range is NOT such a bad thing! 

Nicely thinned and neat forests - they do it right down here

One of many sweet trails - we could have posted hundreds of photos, 
however, running them was more fun!

Beautiful meadow, but we weren't supposed to see it...

We were blissfully cruising along, clicking off the miles of awesome trails when we arrived at this huge meadow.  Unfortunately this was not part of the half marathon course.  But when you are digging the trails and enjoying the scenery, sometimes things go unnoticed!

Ignorance is bliss on trails like this!

So on we went, cruising through some neat forest that had recently seen a huge amount of elk traffic, although we saw no elk this day.  Having briefly calculated what some of the turn points should be on the course, at a certain point we started to realize we ... were ... lost.  Now, on a day when you are feeling great and running unbelievable trails, this is a minor issue.  However, when you are keenly aware that any time in the near future your running partner could completely run out of thyroid hormone and crash,  "lost" becomes an unnerving event.  So I turned on the nifty little "Return to Start" function on the Garmin and compared it to the map.  The images didn't jive ... hmmmm?  Fortunately, we had a phone conversation with Morgan on the way out to the trails that morning and he had mentioned that the Turkey Springs Road was as far west as we wanted to ever go on the trails.  Second fortunate event was that I had printed both the Half and Full maps from the website.  We ended up on a road, heading approximately NW according to the GPS.  I made a couple out and back trips on some trails and had Kathleen wait at intersections to save some mileage on her legs.  Finally off in the distance I could see a T intersection and picked it up a bit.  Luckily it was signed "Brockover Road" - part of the Marathon course - woohoo!!! 

We were at the intersection with Turkey Springs Road, which we knew would take us all the way back around to the car.  The downside was that my rough calculation had us at 4+ miles out and well over 13 miles into the run, already past Kathleen's longest since her RAI treatment, and her energy was flagging.  So I told her to continue at whatever pace was comfortable and I was going to hammer to the car, then head up the road and pick her up.  So I had an unplanned tempo session and made a courtesy taxi trip to catch her on the road.  It turned out to be a great run, with just a little sketchy period thrown in!  Given some more time to explore and familiarize with the trails on the marathon map this could become a great place to hang out!   Ended up with around 18 miles and 16 miles on the day - a bit more than we were looking for but well worth the extra effort.

Shoes - Saucony Pergerine

Thursday Run

Given the big effort Tuesday, we decided to take a break Wednesday, instead driving over to Durango to do some shopping and snooping around.  It was a nice day to have some down time and Durango will require another trip down to this part of the state at some point in the near future.  Plenty of trails there too, yet some of their stellar ones require a summer time visit when the winter stash has cleared out.  One thing we knew for sure, if Kathleen had legs we would be back out in Turkey Springs on Thursday morning.

The "other side" of Fourmile Stock Trail

Thursday we woke to rain, which at home means "don't worry about a run today".  However, away from home it often means "watch for a good window and go for it".  So the rain stopped and we took off for the trailhead.  Given the sketchy weather scenario and the chance of rain and/or snow, we decided to do some trails very close to Turkey Springs road in case a quick getaway was needed!  We noticed on Tuesday that Fourmile continued across the road where we turned as a singletrack, so we took off that way, which is also a cross country ski trail in the winter months and is marked at junctions with the blue posts.

Sweet forest trail - plenty of water over in this area

Notice how tall the blue ski trail posts are - a "little" snow falls over in these parts!

Loamy forest trails emerging from winter's slumber - some wet...

...and some already dry.

Awesome singletrack - mile after mile

About forty minutes in, it started to snow.  It was kind of that graupel, or corn snow, and so we headed back just in case.  We were about out to the Piedra Stock Trail, west of Turkey Springs Road when we turned around.  We thought we would throw our shell jackets on and see what happened.  We made it all the way back to Newt Jack Road, which was the turn for the race, and the sun emerged.  We ditched the jackets and decided to catch Turkey Springs Rd and loop all the way back around to the west and hop on the Fourmile Stock trail again - it was that good! 

This appeared to be some sort of lava-type flow that cut through this meadow

Kathleen cruises through the pines

Think twice about running over these - not as easy as it looks!

Not quite the yoga circle from the Rim Trail in Aspen, but someone spent a little time on this!

We ran most of the remainder of the route just ahead of the next round of the storm.  We had about a mile descent to the car on the Fourmile, the same stretch the races finish on.  The rain started slowly, then picked up in intensity and we ultimately finished wet but smiling.  We eeked out another 13 mile run on excellent trails.  Another awesome day!

Shoes - Saucony Peregrine

Quick Jaunt before heading Home

Early morning over the San Juan River

Overlook on Reservoir Hill

Friday morning before heading home, we decided to try out some trails on Reservoir Hill, which is right in town across the highway from where we stayed.  The trails are steep to get up on top, then wind their way around the hilltop, eventually dropping back down one of the sides.  It is used for Nordic skiing in the winter, but you wouldn't catch me on these trails on skinny skis!!!

Continental Divide overlook, San Juan River below

Cool looking benches along the disc golf course

We made the outer loop of about 3 miles and hopped across the highway to get ready for the trip home.  We had some early signs that we may have squeezed everything out of Kathleen's thyroid  that we could have - of course, you probably already read earlier in the week that this was indeed the case.  But we had a pretty good time burning that little organ up on this trip and we most certainly need a return trip at full steam!  While we may not have timing on our side, health-wise, to make it down for Turkey Track races this year, it is now in the proverbial bucket.

Highway 160, heading east to Wolf Creek Pass

Bye, Bye snow - Wolf Creek Ski Area on the way home