The Pikes Peak Marathon
Last September I ran my 9TH!?!? Pikes Peak Marathon, on a weather-shortened course. I have also ran the Pikes Peak Ascent twice, bringing my summit count (during races) to 11. This count brings distinct awareness to the frighteningly rapid passage of time because this particular race has played a key part in each year for a very long time.
I suppose the obsession began very early on, when my developing brain noticed a gigantic purple hump on the horizon outside of the window of the hospital I was born in. Colorado Springs sits at the base of Pikes Peak, and derives its water, its weather, its spirit, its very identity, from the mountain. My first forays into nature all took place somewhere on the Pikes Peak massif or its resulting foothills and plains. I believe looking up at something so grand and imposing every day gives an inspiration beyond any metaphorical motivations. The mountains holds a deep geological, natural, and human history, from gold mining to adventure to commercialism to athletics. It was named after Zebulon Pike, who proclaimed it “unclimbable” after being an idiot and wading through snow for 4 days on its lower slopes. If only he could see the donut shop at the summit today, the hordes of fat tourists waddling on its summit block, the paved road gradually ascending the northern slopes, the heavily trafficked trail to the summit visited by thousands of hikers, bikers, runners. He may feel like quite the wussy.
The Pikes Peak Marathon adds to the history of the big hill, starting way back in 1956. The story goes like this: Dr. Arne Suominen thought that smoking was bad for you (the gall, am I right?) and challenged smokers to race him up and down Pikes Peak using the Barr Trail. Obviously, the two-pack-a-day smoker Lou Wille beat him to the top, because of the performance-enhancing benefits of cigarettes. However, Lou didn’t run back down and Suominen beat him back to Manitou, validating Suominen’s false claim that cigarettes are bad for one’s health. That conspiracy lives on to this day.
Hiking Pikes Peak in the glory days
I started watching and volunteering for the race as a kid, during Matt Carpenter’s hey day. He won way too many times, and still holds the “impossible record” of 3:16. Held every year at the end of August, it coincided perfectly with the end of summer and the return to school, a clear marker of when fun ends and work begins. The slopes filled with runners on weekends, and it was a badge of honor to be training for the race up to the sky. Somewhere along the way I wanted to be one of these fools, spending my summer running up and down the switchbacks in hopes of glory. I am not sure I remember all the details of the many time I’ve tried, but I will try to recount each edition of the race as clearly as I can, starting in 2010.
2010
Pikes Peak Ascent, age 16.
You must be 16 years old to sign up. I was 16, so I signed up. All I really remember about this was that I was a very skinny cross country kid, with a long run of 5 miles in the foothills or on the bike path. Any mountain activity was hiking and camping, and I really have no recollection of why I thought that sprinting 3 miles every other day would prepare me for a 7800’ foot climb. regardless, I staggered up the mountain with no water and no food in 3:10, resorting to walking the entire upper half of the mountain. Memories of bonking and dying recede rather quickly in my mind, but I’m sure this was a horrendous experience in the present.
I also remember going to cross country practice the following Monday, where my coaches were infuriated. Somehow, through painstaking and unhealthy fandom of the sport of running, they had scanned through the entire list of finishers and found my name in the 106th position. Something to do with eligibility for Colorado High School Athletic Association or something, and I missed some races, but whatever. A pivotal experience.
2013
Pikes Peak Marathon #1, age 19.
The prior summer I hiked up and down Pikes Peak with friends upwards of 10 times, the last of which occurred during the start of the catastrophic Waldo Canyon fire. Acres and acres of pristine (and overgrown, and dry) forests scorched in an instant, leaving behind unrecognizable charred hills still recovering today. The resulting flooding was quite a nuisance (understatement, I know) for the idyllic Manitou Springs at the base of Pikes Peak. In this whirlwind of natural disaster, I left to the east coast to attend my first year of college in Virginia, during which I had quit cross country and track, started running some 50ks in the Blue Ridge Mountains, lost all grasp of training methodology besides wandering in the woods all day, and just generally had a lot of fun. I returned to Colorado for the summer, thinking I was hot shit with my newfound woodsman-ultrarunning identity.
That summer I worked as a trail builder for Americorps, a group that doubled as an essential trail-building and maintenance operation and as one that helped at-risk youth find purpose through nature and hard work. I don’t think I was classified as an at-risk youth-at least compared to the weirdos I was spending my summer with, I seemed to have quite a paradisical and privileged life. The work went something like this: We collected tons of the cheapest food we could find and packed it in coolers, then we went off into the woods for 10 days at a time to build trails and camp. 4 days off at home, then 10 more days in the woods, repeat. I know not how organizations like this can train the group leaders to deal with groups like this, how any trail work gets completed, how people don’t die or how they continue to operate year after year.
The strangest youth found their way to this group. One such example is a kid who didn’t tell anyone he couldn’t swim when he dove off a rock into a lake, requiring me and others to dive in and drag him from the bottom. He told us he had a sled dog team, but didn’t have pictures because his dogs were all carried away by birds. He wanted to join the military so he could legally kill people. Worst of all, he called soda “sodie pop.” Somehow we worked together to build some trails, digging through rock, cutting down trees, shoveling and shoveling and shoveling that sweet Pikes Peak decomposed granite. And at the end of each stint we collected our meager stipends, crawling back to the sewers before reemerging when summoned.
An opinion held by Americorps is that members should never run by themselves, in the case that they encounter a mountain lion or hurt their ankle, etc. I did not share the same opinion, so when I could I snuck to my tent (which was set far away from the others) early in the evenings while everybody was arguing over the fire. I ran trails wherever they went, through forests and plains and steep hills. I ran along a stampeding herd of elk at sunset in the Wet Mountains, them spooked by my presence and escaping through a floodplain of willows shining in the evening light and I admiring the pure wildness and unbelievability of the moment. I climbed rock towers in Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, gazing over the expanse of ancient forests and rocks. I ran up a towering mountain in the scar of the Hayman Fire, its slopes laden with wild raspberries and budding aspen seedlings. I bathed in creeks, ate peanut butter tortillas, and gained my first ever muscles from swinging picks and shovels and chainsaws.
The end of the summer arrived, and I said goodbye to all my fellow at-risk youths. I had a few weeks before Pikes Peak Marathon, and the subsequent semester of college. All I remember about these few weeks is that I tried to squeeze the most out of Colorado summer that I could, which meant cracking a rib while cliff jumping at Paradise Cove. I also don’t remember much about the race, except that it went much better than I thought it would; I ran 2:48 for the ascent and 1:43 for the descent, totaling 4:31:13 for 18th place. I was so hooked.
2014
Pikes Peak Marathon #2, age 20.
The rapid march of time continues. Another Colorado summer in between college semesters, this time without quite as many at-risk youths. I spent almost the entire summer just running and camping, with random landscaping and painting jobs mixed in. I ran San Juan Solstice 50 miler, a stunning and perfect loop through the San Juans. To be honest with myself, I ran way too much with no purpose or meaning behind it except for adventure, which is purpose and meaning enough. The end of summer arrived again, its ultimate days punctuated by the ceremony of the Pikes Peak Marathon. August heat poured down from the heavens, accelerating on my descent down the second half. 2:45 up, 1:34 down, 4:19 total. 5th place, a coveted top 10. Drained athletes sat in the creek, its icy waters derived from the high flanks of the mountain we had just descended. I began to think I was actually good at this. Maybe I could win?
2015
Pikes Peak Marathon #3, age 21.
The rapid march of time continues. This time I spent the summer in San Diego, again with random jobs but really just mooching off my parents and running with my entire focus in life on one day in late August, for reasons I can’t explain. San Diego county holds a huge number of deserts and mountains, the trails encumbered with rocks and rattlesnakes. Little did I know that I would live there again for a period, a small blip in the small blip of my life in the small blip of the Earth’s life. I ran up and down every peak I saw on maps-El Cajon, Iron Mountain, Mt Woodson. I made trips to Idyllwild to run up San Jacinto. I put myself in the furnace of the eastern county, where the ridges rise like islands from the skillet of the desert floor. I made very little contribution to society.
This year at Pikes Peak I was more conditioned for the heat of the downhill, but less for the altitude of the Rockies. Nevertheless, I charged up in 2:34 and down in 1:35, 5th place again in 4:08. Making progress at the same event separated by a year is an addictive thing, one that blinds a person to other things they could be doing with his or her time. I was almost under 4 hours; I was almost on the podium. I was getting better, so nothing else really mattered. I am reminded of the Burners in my now-home of Reno, Nevada. They attend Burning Man religiously, year after year, their careers and relationships and friends all in place to support the one week in August. I make fun of them, yet I am the same.
2016
Pikes Peak Marathon #4, age 22.
I was a recent college graduate, exiting the invincible bubble of academia into the harsh reality of the modern world. At this point, all I wanted to be or do was a mountain runner; the world was enticing and exciting, the summers full of long days of memories and vibrancy in the wilderness. Instead of using my expensive and hard-earned geology and chemistry degrees, I did more landscaping work while living at my parent’s house. My boss was a retired postal worker who really just did landscaping to keep busy; but he hired me and other people to do the work for him so that he wouldn’t be busy…This may be confusing, but his meaning may reveal itself to me in my own golden age of retirement. Most importantly to me, the work was flexible and paid cash, so I could spend every moment running up and down Pikes Peak.
If I remember correctly, this year was an extremely hot one. Again, the August ritual arrived in a blaze of sunshine, the cool morning pine trees roasting in the sun by the time we blasted downhill. My focus this summer was improving speed and downhill ability, rather than hiking around on 14ers all summer. Acclimation really isn’t as important to performance here as fitness is. 2:24 up, 1:23 down, 3rd place in 3:47. I arrived in the echelon that I aspired to be in, the podium of the gods, the sub-4 hour club. This was my Olympics, and all I wanted was to keep going faster.
2017
Pikes Peak Marathon #5, age 23.
Immediately after the 2016 race, I flew to South America to travel with my sweetheart Adrienne for 5 months, an amazing and life-changing trip that I will probably document in a separate post. I arrived back home in Colorado Springs with about $30 to my name. A series of random events and encounters got me my favorite job of all time at The Bear Cave in Manitou Springs, where I sat at a chair and read books and greeted the occasional passerby looking for gaudy metal wall and yard decorations from Mexico. My understanding was that the owner of the shop was recently deported and commissioned his sister, or cousin, or aunt or whatever to run the shop; she was entirely uninterested in doing so, so gave me keys to open and close whenever and vague directions to “try to sell as many things as you can, even if you give 50% off.” One of the many beautiful things about the Latin culture is that they can see the overly-complicated silliness of credit cards and taxes, so I was paid in cash that my new boss simply removed from the register without making any note of it.
While I sometimes wish I was still living my best life at The Bear Cave and running up and down the Manitou Incline every day, professionalism and new adventures called. As the prior paragraph indicated, I didn’t give the slightest care towards what my job was and only whether it was located in a mountainous and inspiring location. One day, while counting my massive piles of assorted and crumpled bills, I found a job listing for an environmental chemistry lab in Steamboat. So my mama dropped me off in Steamboat and I started living there.
I should mention that up to this point, I was simultaneously running a bunch of ultramarathons-50ks, 100ks, 100 milers, with Pikes Peak being a key event amidst the long and slow. My focus in the summer of 2017 shifted to Run Rabbit Run 100, an ultramarathon in Steamboat. Along came my first persistent running injury, at the ripe old age of 23; shin pain that wouldn’t go away. Troubled training, too much between the rigors of working full time and running with the vigor of an 18-year-old with too much time. At this year’s Pikes Peak, August arrived in its blaze of late summer glory, yet I was limping to the start line with a mouthful of Ibuprofen. 2:23 up, 1:25 down, 2nd place in 3:49. It was my first time running a slower time than the year previous, but climbing the podium next to the champion Remi Bonnet was special.
The next month I stubbornly walked almost the entirety of Run Rabbit Run, barely making the cutoff. I arrived at the finish line as an amputee found in the desert, blistered with sunburns, gaunt and starving, vomit and salt and blood crusting my body. I learned that day the value of quitting; it isn’t valorous to stumble through the woods in a blind fit of stubbornness, missing all goals and aspirations and hating the activity in the process. I also made the determination to start running shorter and faster, following my success and running from my failures.
2018
Pikes Peak Marathon #6, age 24.
The best I ever was.
I am arriving at the years of which I remember race details, training details, competition details. Just in time, because 2018 is one I hope to never forget. Pikes Peak is a race with so many pieces to put together, the altitude and the distance and the grade and the heat and the splits all part of one Rubik’s Cube I have not yet figured out. 2018 I came close, maybe as close as I ever will.
I lead a more stable life than I had in the past, with days spent at the laboratory and mornings crammed with workouts. I ran much faster than before, hammering uphill tempo intervals at the top of the ski resort until I tasted pennies in my mouth. The altitude in Steamboat was just a little higher than Colorado Springs, the altitude where you can run fast but still get acclimation benefits. I ran as hard as I could up and down dirt roads, trails, flat roads. I did 3 running workouts a week, laced with long runs in the high Zirkels and camping and biking throughout the wild paradise of Routt County.
I arrived at the end of August yet again, at the same start line I had been at 5 years in a row. This year Pikes Peak was part of the Golden Trail Series, a fledgling race series that is now the most competitive and prized pursuits in the sport. My mindset didn’t change now that I was lined up next to all the European killers; it was the same race and the same mountain and the same perfect August ritual. From the gun I chased a couple people up the W’s to No Name Creek, and then along the rolling middle portion to Barr Camp. Suddenly and without warning I saw the leader walking on the hideous switchbacks to A-Frame; I passed with renewed energy and the race was mine. I rallied up above treeline and came to the top in 2:17:22 in first place. I distinctly remember a strange and empowering, yet oddly diffuse in negativity, feeling, as if I was crashing the party. Like the helicopter wheeling above and the cameras flashing and the spectators commenting that I didn’t belong there, like I wasn’t wearing their brands of clothing, like their European heroes have been cheated.
Down I went, clinging to my position and flailing wildly downhill in order to make sure the European heroes were cheated. With despair I heard footsteps behind me and Dakota Jones stampeded into the trees right at A-Frame. I tried in vain to hold onto his heels, but he was gone. At least he was an American hero, not a commie European. I kept pushing, but without my current knowledge of fueling and hydrating, I started to fade during the last 3 miles down to the finish and was passed by Oriol Cardona, a European hero who is also stunningly good-looking. How infuriating. But the podium spot held, and I crossed in 3:37:34, a time that put me solidly in the high society of sub-3:40ers.
Despite this huge victory, all I could think about was how close the taste of glory and immortality was, how the true victory slipped through my grasp with Dakota’s record-setting downhill. My biggest regret throughout all of my Pikes Peak races was that I wasn’t happy, that I wanted more and that I didn’t soak in the accomplishment that I would probably never surpass again.
2020
Pikes Peak Marathon #7, age 26.
I missed Pikes Peak in 2019, which I legitimately thought was not an option in my life. Unfortunately I sustained a stress fracture in my hip after rushing to train for…you guess it-Pikes Peak Marathon…after my appendix ruptured resulting in a lengthy hospital stint. In between, I had moved to San Diego and back again, this time living on Ruxton Avenue. I could literally stick my toe out the door and touch the hallowed course of Pikes Peak Marathon. I took a job as a Park Ranger on Pikes Peak Highway, unable to release the magnetic grasp of the great mountain.
Adrienne and I lived in an ancient and rotting block of cement, one that is characteristic of the funky and undoubtedly haunted town of Manitou Springs. Mice ran through the walls at all hours, skittering through invisible passageways and partaking in our food in shaky cabinetry. I spent the day worshipping the upper slopes of Pikes Peak, driving around and talking to tourists, checking brake temperatures on descending automobiles, encountering hordes and hordes of visitors from every corner of the globe. Side note: the expression “every corner of the globe” makes no sense.
I ran Barr Trail almost every day, the only other interruptions being adventures to neighboring trails and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, another magical place on the Earth that I have a deep obsession with. Again, I was waiting for August; but the magic waned this year. The Covid pandemic cancelled every other race on the calendar, and Pikes Peak itself did what they had to do to run the race. Waves, masks, all that jazz; it just didn’t seem like it held the magic that it had in the past. To add to that, forest fires ravaged Colorado in August of 2020, gently placing a thick layer of smoke on our sacred course. Still, I wanted to continue to climb up the board, to set a faster time year after year, to break Matt Carpenter’s impossible mark. So I lined up and struggled. The spark wasn’t there, the obsessive fitness wasn’t there, I was cursed by the entity living in my small habitat on Ruxton. 2:26 up, 1:29 down, 6th place in 3:56.
2020 Pikes Peak Marathon. The Covid, the smoke, the hauntings: all quite disappointing
2021
Pikes Peak Marathon #8, age 27.
I had missed the mark in 2020 and wanted to experience the magic of 2018 again, only now realizing how great that day really was. I had moved to Reno, Nevada for graduate school at this point, and by this time had made a name for myself in running beyond the confines of the Pikes Peak Marathon. Still, I held the illusion in my mind of a perfect day, of breaking the record that stood so high above my ability. I would still return to the ceremony that had absorbed my 20s.
My hubris let me blast off the start line much quicker than my body was able to sustain, my splits at Barr Camp faster than my quickest prior. Still unwilling to learn fueling and hydration and instead relying on being as light as possible and carrying nothing up the mountain, I suffered a slow death above treeline, falling further and further behind the leaders. I vomited, I tripped, I walked. I reached the summit in 2:23 and lurched downhill in 1:31, for a total time of 3:54. I again cleansed my soul in the creek, this time replacing blind ambition and the need to continuously improve with an overhead view of where this mountain has brought me in life, an appreciation for the people I’ve met on its slopes and the moments that I will never experience again. I have developed friendships, interests, lonely moments of magic presence on its subpeaks. I have gotten engaged on the top of the Incline. I named my dog Pike.
2023
Pikes Peak Ascent #2, age 28.
The Golden Trail Series returned to Pikes Peak, this time bringing its cadre of European Superheroes to the Ascent instead of the Marathon. Because of its stature as the premier event of 2022, and because the next week held another Golden Trail Series event in Mammoth that I would participate in, I opted for the uphill only edition. I had recently recovered from almost an entire year with a torn plantar fascia, missing the 2022 Pikes Peak Marathon and just grateful to be walking again. Competition burst at the seams all around me, and my fire had been doused by injury after injury; I lined up in the second row and held no hope of any glory. This year the golden August magic was scrubbed away by the dying September hillsides. The race had moved to September for a variety of reasons I can only assume were governed by the economics of the board and the fantastical buffoonery of the City of Manitou Springs Parking Gods.
I raced entirely different than I had before, easing up the first half to Barr Camp and running the top half of the mountain faster. I finished strong to the applause of my friends and family and was proud to move up 15 spots in the second half of the race, but the 2:22 was only good for 17th place. That day Remi Bonnet broke Matt Carpenter’s Ascent record, an impossible feat that I had aspired to when I was but a wee child. I was starting to realize the massive improvement that the sport was undergoing, that historic times were lowered year after year. I was not quite satisfied, and gave myself grace and gratitude for just being able to run. The next day I was incredibly sick, infected with the Covid, sent to the high and dry Mammoth Lakes to suffer in another underwhelming performance at Mammoth Trail Fest.
2024
We arrive at the latest installment of my story here. I was able to add Pikes Peak Marathon to my race calendar because of the September shift, a late addition that was precipitated by a disastrous race against the European Superheroes at UTMB OCC in August. Here I almost fainted on the initial climb, even while running slower than I do when jogging my dog each morning. I persevered until halfway, when my dizziness and unstable tottering reminded me of my ill-fated journey at Run Rabbit Run. I returned to Chamonix on a bus, on which I threw up explosively.
I was in relatively good shape, but still the August magic was not there. Quite possibly I am realizing that there are other worthwhile things in life to pursue, even if that just means other races. The September death reigned all around me, and the day in question received a blinding and freezing snowstorm that locked the upper mountain in an inaccessible prison. I question the council’s decision to move the race to September, but here we are regardless. The morning of the race arrived with a haunting announcement trumpeted on social media and email; the race would be shortened to Barr Camp and back down, a measly 14 miles of the easy and fast part of the mountain. Up we raced into the cold fog, the 10 years of Pikes Peak sunshine a distant memory. My heart was entirely not into it. This wasn’t Pikes Peak, this was Half of Pikes Peak, a sham, a skeleton of the glory it should be! Or at least that’s what my tired mind told me, as I was passed time and time again. I ran my fastest time ever from Barr Camp to the finish, but the reason was obvious. 1:10 uphill, 39:40 downhill. 5th place. An hour and 13 minute PR?
My family was at the finish, as they have been almost every time, and I could still see the pride. The customary creek bath was forgone this year, as runners wandered off in search of jackets and heaters and food. The summer memories and ecstasies seemed to be tombstones, replaced by the autumn memories of a future generation.
I left puzzled, wondering whether I would return and for what reasons. My desperate search for glory remains unfulfilled, if only because I didn’t embrace it while I had it.
