Summer of Leadville 2022: Leadville Marathon Race Report

With 40 minutes left before the final cutoff of 3:30 pm, I was rushing towards the finish line of the Leadville Marathon, fully aware that I was in trouble with time. My friends were expecting me in ten minutes based on my prediction from previous finish times (8:03 in 2018, 7:57 last year) but I was three miles away from the finish. My Lead Challenge was almost over before it even began. 

When I signed up for the Lead Challenge in December, I was confident about running and very, very intimidated by the 100 mile mountain bike race. I was so intimidated, in fact, that when given the choice of a 50 mile run or a 50 mile MTB ride at the Silver Rush race in July, I selected the run option.

Who would have known that six months later, I'd be feeling so much stronger and more confident on the bike, but feeling weak and wobbly on the run. Moving to a new home in February meant new running routes, most of which are asphalt and concrete. As my training ramped up, running on hard surfaces started to take its toll on my body. Then I fell off my bike a couple of times, as you do when you're learning to ride a mountain bike. Then I fell twice during a trail run. All of these things led to an injured right knee in April. 

It's still hard to even type the word "injured." After being in denial about it for longer than I should have (aka wasting two weeks wishing it away), I spent two months at PT rehabbing my knee and strengthening the muscles around it. I could only run short distances every other day. I felt super strong biking, but I really questioned my ability to run the marathon. 

Eventually, one week before the race, I went out and ran 12 miles on trails - my first "real" training run for the race. My knee was fine, but my feet and legs were very sore afterwards just from the time on my feet. I knew that my body would be feeling miserable for at least the last half of the marathon. I also knew from prior experience last year (stress fracture in February) that it's possible to do this marathon off a lot of bike volume and not a lot of running.

I was really excited to get up to Leadville, but I was also really nervous about how my body would feel. Would it be impossible to breathe? I live at sea level now. I flew into Denver on Thursday and stayed the night in Lafayette with my lovely former neighbors Lindsey and Mackenzie. It felt really weird to be back in my old apartment complex. Lindsey and I headed out for a shakeout run on Friday morning, and I loved running on one of my old routes and saying hi to the prairie dogs and bunnies that I've missed so much! I was happy to note that running felt pretty normal in Lafayette, in fact, it felt better than running in Little Rock's heat and humidity! This was a good sign.

Lindsey and I drove up to Leadville on Friday afternoon. We checked into our perfectly located airbnb and headed over to the expo. I was thrilled to get to meet my Team SFQ teammate, Kara, and to see my former BSR teammate Zach, his fabulous wife LindsAy, and their ridiculously cute puppies. We also took the opportunity to meet ultrarunning legend Courtney Dauwalter. The exchange went something like this:

Courtney: Hi, what's your name?
Me: Hi, I'm Kris.
Courtney: Hi Kris. I'm Courtney.
Me: I KNOWWWWWW
Lindsey: *shakes head, apologizes on behalf of her friend

Lindsey and I headed back to the airbnb and got our stuff ready for the next day. We made our own dinner (she had pasta, I had my favorite meal of late: rice, eggs, and avocado). We watched some TV and went to bed fairly early.

Race morning came around and before we knew it we were off and running. I knew what to do. You just have to keep moving and spend as little time as possible at zero miles per hour. I preach this all the time. That turned out to be hard to do with so much socializing happening on the course. My absolute favorite thing about the day was that every few miles I got to see someone I knew. But even knowing a lot of people out on the course, I basically spent the whole day alone. I was moving slower than usual. I'll blame the altitude and my lack of run training.

Josie! My wonderful friend from Lakewood Masters, who crewed me at the 100 run in 2018!

Jess, my Gravel Girl friend!

Holy cow, y'all. I think it took me SIX YEARS to meet Cheryl Miller in person, of course I was going to stop for a photo.

The race starts at 10,200 feet in Leadville and then climbs up to 13,200 feet at the top of Mosquito Pass. There are some other climbs and descents in there as well, so you end up with 6,000 feet of gain by the end of 26.2 miles. As usual, I felt better climbing than descending. I had my poles with me and I pulled them out at the bottom of Mosquito Pass for the climb. I used them for the rest of the day - they were more useful for descending than climbing. I used them as makeshift crutches to protect my knee. 

I saw Lindsey running back down the pass as I was heading up, on her way to fourth place overall female and first in her age group. Then I saw Josie and Kara on their way back down. Finally, as I was reaching the top of Mosquito Pass, I saw Zach on his way down. He stopped and said we should take a picture. "I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS, ZACH," I yelled, "I have to make the cutoff!" But he had his phone out so I stopped to snap a pic.

Zach commented later that he was worried I'd miss the cut by a minute and then he'd feel responsible.

I was four hours and 30 minutes into the race when I reached the turnaround point. I didn't even stop to take a selfie at the top of the pass. I knew I was in trouble with time. I hurried down as fast as my legs and poles could carry me. I stopped at a porta-potty at mile 20 and then headed up the Trail of Tears, the one-mile segment that is straight up a steep hill, with loose rocks and no good line to take. I saw a man sitting on the side of the path about 3/4 of the way up. I told him he had a quarter of a mile to go. A few minutes later, he passed me on the descent, jokingly complaining that it had been more than a quarter of a mile. We had about four miles left to go.

At this point, I switched my watch from race time to show the time of day. I knew the finish line cutoff was at 3:30. I kept moving forward, slower than I'd like, but my legs were done. Approaching the final aid station, there was a volunteer standing at the top of the hill. "Once you pass me, it's less than three miles to go," he said. I looked at my watch. I had 40 minutes left. I know how great I am at wasting time on Leadville race courses. I thought to myself that it would be completely humiliating to not even officially finish the first race of the Lead Challenge. 

Passing the aid station, I saw someone lying on the side of the trail ahead of me. It was the man who had passed me earlier. I yelled to the volunteers that there was someone in trouble. They rushed up to help him and I heard him protesting: "I'm just resting." A few minutes later, I guess he was fine because he ran by me, telling me to hurry up, that the race was almost over. What the heck. 

I ran as fast as I could towards the finish and counted down the miles. My quads, feet, and calves were burning.

My watch buzzed: It was a text message from Shelly. "I'm thinking about you." I ran, grateful for the encouragement, grateful to her for somehow knowing that I'd need it.

My watch buzzed: It was an Instagram message from Jess. She was sharing the pictures we'd taken on the course. Great, but uggh. I still had more than a mile to go.

My watch buzzed again: It was Lindsey calling. God DAMMIT Lindsey do not call me to ask me where I am and why I'm not done yet. (I love you Lindsey.) 

As I approached the final descent into town, I knew I was going to make the cut. Lindsey and Kara greeted me and ran in the last tenth of a mile to the finish with me. The time limit had been extended for some reason - we had been given an extra three minutes. I crossed the line at 3:25. I'd made the cut by 8 minutes.

My teammate, Kara, who had finished an hour earlier. And Lindsey running in her slippers.

I am so grateful to my amazing coach Nell Rojas who got me to this start line. I know that with her guidance I'm in good shape for the rest of this series. I'm thankful for my amazing friends and Team SFQ teammates who cheered and supported both in person and from a distance. And I'm so grateful to have a husband who understands me and supports this training that's taking hours of my time (I'm also grateful that he's not mad at me for being faster on the bike now than he is. 😉 )

My love.

I'm so happy and relieved to still be in the Lead Challenge. As long as you start one race, you get to start the next one. I just really, really, really want to finish all of them. My next start is the mountain bike race (yes, that's right, I switched from the run to the bike) at the Silver Rush on July 10. 

Wish me luck because I'm going to need it! 💕

Unbound Gravel 50 Mile Race Report 2022

It's been almost ten years since I first heard about the Unbound Gravel race in Emporia, Kansas. These are the facts that I knew about the race formerly called the Dirty Kanza: the race was all on hilly dirt roads, it was 200 miles, and my most accomplished cyclist friend Jenny had just completed it, during which she had a crash that resulted in her stapling her thigh back together with an actual stapler. Jenny and I had just finished our first full distance triathlon at Ironman Texas, and when asked which event was more difficult, Jenny did not hesitate to say it was the 200 mile bike race, no question. Holy cow. Also, hell no.

Flash forward ten years and I've got a gravel bike that I love riding and I'm living in Kansas City, Missouri, only an hour or so away from Emporia. Of course I needed to check this event out. With other big goals on the calendar and still harboring an unhealthy amount of fear of the 200 mile route, I opted for the 50 miler. I convinced Orissa to drive up from Texas to ride as well.

In early January we learned that both of our applications for the race had been accepted. In February, Trent and I moved to Little Rock. Kansas City would have been pretty far away to make a comfortable home base for the race, and places in Emporia had been booked since before the lottery for the event even opened. Orissa and I got a cute little Airbnb in Wichita. 

Because packet pickup for the 50 mile race was on the same day as the event itself, we drove to Wichita on Friday, settled in, and drove over to Emporia in the morning for packet pickup and our 9 am race start. We got there early enough to grab a donut and take our time getting to the start line. The 100 and 200 mile races had started a couple of hours earlier. There was even a 350 mile event that started the day before.

As we lined up in downtown Emporia for the start, Orissa and I shared that we were both feeling quite nervous. I wasn't sure why, because we had decided ahead of time that this would be a bit of a joyride with no goals except to stay upright and enjoy the day. We rolled out with 500+ other riders and slowly made our way out of town and onto the gravel.

Oh, did I mention it was raining? It was sprinkling before the start and we'd decided to start the race with our rain jackets on. I think I can confidently say that there was some type of rain falling from the sky for the entire duration of our race, but it was light and lovely enough for the first 20 miles that I eventually took off my coat. It was difficult for the first little bit of the race to get into a rhythm because of all the people around us. We passed politely, staying in the doubletrack lanes. I felt surprised every time someone went outside the lane to pass, but eventually Orissa and I started to do the same thing. 

I had an idea that we would follow the same pattern that I've been using on my training rides - stop to take a gel every hour and use that opportunity to stretch. It became clear after a while that neither of us wanted to stop because that would require making our way back through the packs of people that we'd just passed. It felt like the course would just stay crowded for the entire event, but eventually the crowds thinned and we mostly were by ourselves. Just us and the cows. That was probably about the same time that it started to actually rain. 

We shrieked when we heard a loud clap of thunder and I hustled to get my raincoat back on. From that moment on (I think we were around mile 25) it was nothing but pouring rain. We decided to bypass aid stations to avoid getting tangled up in other riders. We had backpacks filled with sports drink so it wasn't necessary to stop anyway. The water began to pool on the roads, making it difficult to see ruts and pot holes. Our bikes became noisier as they picked up grit from the road. We stopped at one point to check Orissa's front rotor, but there was nothing either of us could think of to do to fix it. As we passed other riders, some of their bikes sounded insane. One man laughed that his bike was about to fall apart under him, and I worried that he might not actually be joking.

They hadn't published the routes for the race until a couple of weeks before the event. Orissa and I had speculated about how much time it might take for us to complete the 50 miler. For my Leadville training, I've been riding a very hilly 50 mile route on my mountain bike that takes about five hours each time, so we surmised that a five hour finish might be reasonable. We were thrilled to find ourselves heading back towards town much earlier than that, and we ended up coming down the chute at 3:48:02. What a fun day!

It was really fun to race and it was really fun to feel SO GOOD racing. The hours of training around Lake Sylvia that I've put in have helped so much. Learning some skills from my new MTB hero friend Ari and racing on single track at the Ugly Gnome mountain bike race last month has helped to sharpen my skills and my confidence as well. I felt like I was flying up every hill with no effort on my gravel bike. The shocking part is that I felt myself flying down the other side of each one with confidence - confident in my handling skills and my ability to choose a line. It was great to practice riding with other people in a race on rocky double track and I feel so much more confident about the upcoming bike races in Leadville this summer.

At the finish, Orissa and I were soaked and freezing but we chose to take the time to take our bikes to the complimentary bike wash sponsored by Muc-Off. What an amazing feature at a gravel race. We rushed back to the car to change into warm clothes and watch the other racers come in. At some point the sun came out and it felt hot as we stood along the chute watching the mud-splattered pros and other heroes of the 100- and 200-mile races coming in. We even claim that we saw Peter Sagan cross the finish and coast around the side of a building on his bike, away from the crowds.

The event was inspiring and exciting and I can say for sure that I'd come back and do the 100. I'd even do the 200 if I can find a way between now and then of being less fearful of riding on dirt roads in the dark. In the meantime, I've got one week until my first race of the Lead Challenge next weekend - the Leadville Marathon. The Summer of Leadville is about to start...here we go!!!

It wouldn't be a race without donuts.

Another cyclist told me "you look like a magical fish." I love these beautiful kits!