chad brackelsberg on the way up patsy marly the beginning of the wolverine cirque
Today: 20 miles with 8,000 feet of vertical gain
today we covered some serious terrain and some massive vertical gain. i was hopeful my glute injury was past me because day 1 went so well.. no pain, no twinges, nothing. but when i woke up this morning my glute was painfully sore. every step of uphill hurt today.
we started at brighton and basically ran my favorite loop to start the day. up to twin lakes pass, patsy marley, wolverine cirque, wolverine peak, tuscararo peak and catherine's pass to alta. then baldy, down and up hidden peak and backwards on karl's speedgoat 50km course. the descent we got off course and added 3 miles or so before meeting jared at the road by the church.
chad descending baldy in snowbird ski resort (this is backwards on karl's speedgoat course)
from church we climbed. it was cool to see this section in summer because i had skinned up almost this exact route on my way to superior and cardiff pass. it was a painful climb for my butt, but i really wanted to see what ryan mcdermot called "quintessential jared". eventually we arrived at what i believe to be carbonate pass by kessler peak. in the picture below jared is laughing at us because he knows what the downhill is like (check out the video for a good idea on that).
the climb up kessler
at the kessler saddle, jared is laughing at us because he knows what the dowhill section is like
by the end of two days with mass vert the millwood 100 did in fact take me out. as justin angle reminded me "there are bigger fish to fry". chad continued on having to break it up a bit with work travel... but you can follow his adventure on his blog ~ the brat pack.
i love a good project, especially when i get to see new beautiful terrain. chad planned it out and today we started jared campbell's millwood 100 route.
Section 1 - Neffs to Church: 8.6miles / 4,300'
i've run this section with jared before and really like neff's canyon. once you gain the first 1,000ft you are all alone. i've never seen another sole up there... and it's a good stiff climb. chad and i kept a solid pace and arrived at the dropped car at church fork in millcreek canyon in 2hr 15mins feeling great.
Section 2 - Church to Grandeur to Church: 9.3miles / 5,400'
this awesome loop uses a secret trail off the pipeline trail. i've run it a couple of times and it never disappoints because the west side of grandeur is a great steep climb at the edge of salt lake city. it's too bad my stupidity was on full blast on this section. i thought i had taken 50 ounces (which still wouldnt' have been enough), but in actuality i took more like 20. with more than 4,000 feet of fully exposed climbing during the hottest part of the day i was in trouble. by the time we got to the west side of granduer i had no water left as we started the climb. in an effort to stay alive i took a few too many pulls off of chad's cytomax. this meant we both suffered greatly on the east side return to the car.
we finished the day off with a great meal at silverfork lodge. tomorrow is going to be sickter gnar.. and jared is going to meet us on kessler peak to show us the "non-trail" route off the summit.
100 miles, 44,000ft of vertical climb, scrambling, bushwhacking and tons of beautiful singletrack
since i moved to salt lake city in january i've been hearing about the millwood 100. this is a dream 100 mile route that jared campbell put together. as a bad ass climber, mountain runner and backcountry skier i think he knows these mountains better than anyone. doesn't hurt that he grew up at the foot of the wasatch front. he had shown me the route on a map a couple of times, but it wasn't until i saw this google map that it made any sense to me.
i've run or skied in a lot of these areas, but the majority i have yet to see. a few weeks before hardrock jared and ty draney tried to run the whole thing in 3 days.. but with "A" races coming up and 44,000ft of vertical gain it was just too aggressive. so when chad brackelsberg said he wanted to run the whole thing in 5 days it sounded like the perfect last push in my training for the wasatch 100 miler. i took today off and am super excited to get started tomorrow a.m. i'll chronicle each days route here on my blog. here is the schedule chad put together (i added a mile to each day because of the mapping discrepancy).
* Saturday: 18.9m / 9,700'
Neffs to Church: 8.6m / 4,300'
Church to Grandeur to Church: 9.3m / 5,400'
* Sunday: 27.1m / 11,300'
Brighton to Alta: 10.6m / 4,300'
Alta to Kessler to Mill B: 15.5 / 7,000'
* Monday: 21.4m / 7,500'
Big Water to Days: 8.5m / 2,500'
Days to Silver Fork to Brighton: 11.9m / 5,000'
* Tuesday: 22.6m / 10,000'
Church to Terraces: 8.8m / 4,000'
Terraces to Gobblers to Big Water: 12.8m / 6,000'
* Wednesday: 11m / 4,600'
Mill B to Mill Creek: 10m / 4,600'
the view from my new "go-to" run - Wolverine Cirque
it's been 2.5 weeks since i finished the 500 miles of colorado trail. since then i've moved into a new place up big cottonwood canyon, had the OR show blast through town and somewhat recovered.
my new driveway...
my second week back (last week) with the excitement of OR friends being in town and being back in the wasatch i accidentally ran a 75 mile week while telling everyone how tired i still was from the CT. wups.
in the last couple of days i can say that i've felt considerably better. i think i am nearly out of the hole. i think when you do something huge, like an expedition adventure race or multi-day run you dig a bit of a recovery hole that has to be paid back. i'm almost there. it took me 3 weeks to feel normal after the 2006 primal quest. as for my body, it's feeling good. the lower leg swelling was gone in 3-4 days and my joins are all back to normal. i did have one injury from the CT. i strained my left glute running to safety out of a hale storm on snow mesa. i hit knead a massage twice last week to get work done. it really helped and yesterday was the first day i didn't feel it at all while running. i know it's still lingering however, but i no longer feel it day to day. i had entertained the idea of doing my buddy ty draney's el vaquero loco 50km this weekend as speed work. but the van didn't start today and is now in the shop. probably for the best, as i'm sure any sort of race pace would bring the glute issue back.
it's really hard to sit still when i can run right out the door to amazing high altitude terrain. i like the idea of having a 'go-to' loop from the house. i think i might have found the best short mtn run on earth.
below is my finishing video. dakota, ben reeves and dakota's family came out to the junction creek trailhead to cheer me on and see me finish. this video is dakota running behind me to the end of the colorado trail
i did an interview for iRunFar.com with heidi dietrich. it's good. below is an image that ben took after the fact of the bait shop trailer i was holed up in the 1st night. crazy.
my favorite bait shop, where the colorado trail adv almost ended
the fastest known times page has been updated and it's cool to see i did in fact run the 3rd fastest time ever. reading it however makes me wanna give it another go! we'll see.
love this photo. you can just barely see me. that is how it feels to run in mtns this big.
it's just over a week since i finished. recovery is going well. i have pretty much caught up on sleep. the glute (possibly piriformis) injury i sustained running as hard as i could out of a storm on snow mesa, is healing. i can ride a bike without pain. i've got a group run tonight with all sorts of friends coming into town for the outdoor retailer show. should be fun, even if i'm the slowest one there.
484 miles and 75,000 ft of vertical gain later.. and somehow life really is that much sweeter. i'm in moab right now, recovering and making my way back home, which is... yes, salt lake city, not my van down by the river.
i finished the colorado trail on july 23rd at 12:18pm. i ran the 484 miles as fast as i could, which was 9 days, 7 hours, 48 minutes. i believe this is the 3rd fastest time anyone has ever covered this beautiful and awe inspiring piece of trail. i knew from speaking with very fast ultrarunners who do this sort of thing that the record was super tight. i found that out. after 3 days i had run 180.6 miles to the dam road by twin lakes. at that point i was 10 miles ahead of the record pace. but i paid for it the following day where i only logged 38 miles and couldn't stay awake. and so it goes, i made a lot of mistakes, didn't plan well enough for some sections, was stranded a few times and hypothermic once. none of that matters or tarnishes the experience because that is the experience. all of these things are expected when the goal is something this huge ~ the shit that happens becomes the deepest burned memories. it's how you respond to that shit that really matters. all things considered the adventure went amazingly well on 3 days of planning.
i am however having trouble processing it all to create some concise blog posts. there is talk of an interview, which for me mentally is a lot easier. here are a few tidbits, i still haven't seen all the photos and video yet, but here is a selection of what i have.
FIRST AND FOREMOST THANK YOU!!! to dakota jones (young money). when i proposed this idea to him, literally 3 days before i wanted to start he was the most positive person i had spoken with. he believed we could do this, he believed i could break the record and he made me believe both of those things as well. thank you dakota, you are in fact the most remarkable 19 year old i've ever met. that is a testament to the job your parents have done... so thank you beth and steve as well. my crew was rounded out by ben reeves. "good ben" was awesome and organized and i literally could not have done this without him. he even joined me for a few sections. THANK YOU ben!! my lovely assistant linda barton came out for the last 3 days and jumped right into the mix pacing and crewing. THANK YOU linda! it was awesome to have you out there.
young money planning the night before the madness
scott jaime, being the awesome guy that he is came over to ben's house the night before my start to impart wisdom. that was great. in september of 2009 scott ran the colorado trail in 11d 12h 46m. he planned 40 miles days and finished on his 40th birthday. pretty cool. he also joined me on a 13 mile section on day 2 that had us running into breckenridge, colorado (well north of town really). he made this video which i think is a good example of a typical day (at least before it started to rain and hail on me every day).
"the easiest 58 miles of my life" video
start video at waterton canyon - denver colorado - 4:30am july 15th
fun with mosquitos on sargents mesa video
highest mileage week ~ questions right after finishing are always fun
"what hurt the most matt?" ~ questions right after finishing are always fun
what i learned: if i learned anything it's that you must, at all costs surround yourself with positive people. i don't even care if it's delusional. it matters.
this winter i sat down and planned my season. i though it would be cool to leave july free for something huge. my initial idea was to summit mount rainier, then without stopping circumnavigate the mountain via the 93 mile wonderland trail... the rainier summit-circ, as i came to call it. as far as i know this hasn't been done... and giving credit where it's due i think ty draney was the first one to suggest this to me.
well with the summer never arriving to the pacific northwest the wonderland isn't even close to being melted out enough to follow. the trail is still completely under snow. in june i got word from a local "it's still march conditions on the rainier."
i had to figure out another july mega plan. i asked the twittersphere and facebook for alternate ideas. meghan hicks responded with "The Grand, Middle, and South Tetons, then a Tetons circumnavigation? Yeah, that's a good idea and you know it! ;)". it was a great idea, and was in line with the whole summit-circ thing. running up the grand, middle and south teton.. then running my circumnavigation route around them would be pretty awesome, and tough. however the more i thougth about it, it just didn't seem to be big enough, i wanted something i would almost certainly fail at, or die trying.
this past weekend while at the hardrock 100, surrounded by these amazing mountains and these inspiring athletes i decided... i'm going to run the colorado trail. i'm not so bold to say that i'm going for the record, because everyone, including dr. david horton says it's "tight". so tight in fact that the last few records have taken mere minutes off the previous time. the fastest known times page gives a great recap of the record and the attempts. it's basically 58 miles a day of tough high altitude trail for 8.5 days. i will say that i'm going to run as fast as i can.
at hardrock i asked young money, dakota jones to run with me. since he's running the white river 50 at the end of the month it wouldn't be a good idea to run 500 miles just before. so he offered to crew me, which i am eternally grateful for. he and i will jump in the eurovan tomorrow and scout some of the access points. i'm pretty worried about the eurovan being able to even make it to some of these remote spots. access is an issue... but we'll just have to do the best we can without 4 wheel drive. which essentially means i'll have to run further before seeing my crew and getting aid.
when i picked sean meissner up at the denver airport he was holding an old school book about the 55 colorado 14'ers called colorado's fourteeners, 14,000 foot mountains are high, very high. to put it into persepective mount rainier is 14,410 feet high and it's not uncommon for climbers to get altitude sickness before the summit. i've seen it happen first hand.
flipping the book open sean says that there are two 14'ers on our drive to leadville. perfect. that got me started, then i managed to summit eight 14ers in the next 5 days.
below is some details, pics and videos i took.. simply to share the adventure. i LOVE Colorado Mountains!! Friday July 2, 2010 - Grays Peak (14,278ft) & Torreys Peak (14,267ft)
gray's peak with sean meissner. i'm going to guess that summiting 2x 14ers the day before the leadville marathon did not help his performance.. which makes me really appreciate the fact that he wanted to do this and share my 1st 14er with me!
Running down Torreys Peak after summiting..
Saturday July 3, 2010 - Mount Elbert (14,433 feet)
i watched sean and my client jen nichols finish their leadville marathons, then i headed out to get the highest summit in colorado, 2nd highest in contiguous US... mount elbert at 14,433ft!! i felt good and tried to run/hike fast. managed the 4,500 ft climb to the summit in 1hr 45min and hammered the 4,500ft down in 51mins.
Sunday July 4, 2010 - Mount Massive (14,421 ft)
today my coaching client jen nichols, sean meissner and myself set out for a good hike up, run down the 2nd highest colorado 14er - mount massive at 14,421 ft. it was jen's first 14er!!
Monday July 5th 2010 - Missouri Mtn (14,067 ft), Mt Oxford (14,153 ft), Mt Belford (14,197 ft)
i wasn't feeling great to start, but i was moving pretty good. a nice hiker on the way down said "at the speed your moving you can get all three summits!"... and so i did the 15miles w/7,000ft of gain to get Missouri Mtn 14,067ft, Mt Oxford 14,153ft, Mt Belford 14,197ft
as you can see in the video running the east ridge of missouri was amazing. in an attempt to make a loop out of it i descended the west ridge toward elkhead pass. it wasn't a great decision. i feared for my life on the "rotten" and dangerously loose class 4/5 slopes. the book says "This routes Class 4 rating disguises a serious and dangerous climb. What should be Missouri's premier mountaineering route is so rotten that it is relegated to this authors nightmares." ah, yeah so i read that after the fact.
Tuesday July 6, 2010 - Mount Shavano (14,229 ft)
today i was super tired. this was a straight hike, no running at all on the way up. i also had plans of hitting tabeguache peak after shavano, but i knew very soon it wasn't going to happen. i need to rest!! mount shavano was a good 13 miles with 5,300ft of gain. sadly my last 14er for a while. here is the view from the summit looking at towards tabeguache peak.
the san juan solstice 50 miler (formerly lake city 50) takes place in the same mtns and terrain as the venerable hardrock 100. i aspired to be accepted to this race one day (so far 0 for 3 attempts). the sjs50 is widely considered a "mini-hardrock" at just 1/2 the distance. the race is 50 miles of san juan mountains with 13,000 feet of vertical gain. it features an amazing(ly hard!) extended portion on the continental divide, above13,000 ft. i've never run that high before.
this race was on the calendar as a training race, a C race. leaving my belongings in storage in salt lake city i headed to moab where i stayed with montrail's wonderkid dakota jones(pictured below). we quickly realized we were doing the same trip which included the san juan solstice 50 miler and some fun in colorado on our way to denver. from denver we were both flying to pace/crew at the western states 100 miler. i'll have to write another blog on the colorado eurovan adventure with young money. it's been a blast, but for now i'll stick to the san juan solstice 50 race report.
since arriving in the colorado mountains i'd been suffering from fatigue. i was tired all the time. i took this as a sign that i was acclimatizing. "we were now at real altitude" i thought, and my body just needs time to get used to it. the research shows that you get stronger every day you are at altitude. that is contrary to the belief that you can show up the day of the race and "trick your body" into running well. i'm aware of no reasearch to back this notion up (please provide if you are). either way i had 3 days to get situated, and it was clear that wouldn't be enough time. my body has never spent any time this high. lake city, colorado is at 8,700 ft and i was more tired and asthmatic than normal.
5am the gun goes off and we run up mill creek from the park in lake city. it's kinda dark. i'm in the front pack with darcy africa (who won the women's race), dakota, scott jamie and ryan burch are right in front of us with gary grellin pulling off the front.
the race features two 4,000 foot climbs right off the bat. the first climb sucked. i mean i have never felt this weak, this bad. i could not breath. i was being passed by everyone and their cousins. i counted two women and likely 30 other people in front of me at the 1st aid station about 1hr and 3,000ft into the first 4,000ft climb. my spirits were low. i thought about dropping out for a moment. then snapped out of it. that was ego talking. i thought, "i'll come back tomorrow and finish the portion of the race i didn't do today". but that was one of the stupidest thoughts i've ever had in a race. i was here, afterall, to train. if i just kept running i'd have the best, supported training run of my life.. with full aid stations! the ass kicking i was getting was exactly why i signed up. it's just sometimes hard to embrace that. once at the saddle, the views were amazing. that was all i needed to turn the attitude around. i started to just enjoy being out there, knowing it would be my hardest training session of the year thus far.
on the way down i passed almost all the runners that had passed me on the climb. i was probably in 6th place now and feeling much better. the second climb started up a dirt road and i ran that with dave phillips, who had won the race the year before. my climbing ability was non existent, so as it started up the second 4,000ft climb he slowly pulled away. two more runners caught me on that climb. by the time we had reached the continental divide at 13,300ft i had caught back up to having them all in sight. the four of us then had fun race and passing and pushing each other on the continental divide.
from there i raced pretty well, conservative, or ah... scared really, until i could smell the finishline. i was pleasantly surprised with my downhill ability. charging down into slumgullion aid station i passed a couple more of the guys i had been battling with. in the end i accomplished my goal of finishing under 10 hours and it was hands down the best training session i've had since returning from injury. almost immediately after i finished my lungs became inflamed and i had a lot of trouble breathing. hard effort in the high country will do that i suppose.
darcy africa ran a great race and won the women's race in 10hr 13min. the real highlight of the race however was young money running 14mins off (the altitude mutant) matt carpenter's record of 7hr 59min. this kid has some serious talent... amazing run dakota! congrats.
if you stopped running, you would die. i couldn't feel my hands, or my arms. the t-shirt i had on was soaked from the rain down low. i can't remember a time when i was this cold, and i've gotten frost bite on my toes backcountry skiing before. i have been in similar, and frankly much worse weather conditions. but in those instances i was wearing more than just a t-shirt!
ok rewind to friday, which was like an ultra family reunion at the sign in for the pocatello 50 miler. jared and ryan put on such a great race the year before that pretty much every runner i knew for 1,000 mile radius was there to run either the relay or the 50 miler. that included my good buddy and fellow montrailian sean meissner.
the race started at 6am. it was in the 30s and kind of threatening to rain at that point. i had my jacket but handed it off to my lovely assistant linda barton one minute before the start. not a smart move. the start was as expected.. nuun ultrarunner luke nelson blasted off the front, joe grant following him with a few of the relay runners in the mix as well. i was content to keep them in sight for a while.
had you asked me before the race i would have said that scott jamie, joe grant, luke nelson where going to battle, with nuun ultrarunner karl meltzer pulling away for the win as it got more technical. as i got up and started to get ready karl emerged from his truck and said he wasn't running today. his ribs hurt too much. probably the best decision he could have made.
back to the race... by my math i came through the first aid station 1-2 minutes behind luke, joe and scott. i could see them just up ahead of me, i was in 4th overall. i was well within my ability, not pushing any anaerobic numbers on the heart rate and feeling very confident. as we got to the first climb i noticed the carcass i had heard jared and luke joke about. it acted as a sort of confidence marker. i was in fact off course the second i looked down slope at the carcasss, rather than up slope at the markers going up the bushwhack section of the course. i ran out the trail that along the river for a few minutes. i started to think about what luke said "if you don't see a marker in like 100 feet you are going the wrong way". realizing i might have gone the wrong way but convincing myself i hadn't see a red marker indicating that i was off course. eventually i freaked and ran back cursing as i went anaerobic to get back on track. looking at my watch i had wasted about 8-9mins.
i could see jumpin jay aldous up ahead of me (one of the talented runners & bloggers on the MRC site). i focused on power hiking the bushwack and caught up to him. pulling away from the others below. we hit the false summit and continued up. i remember what roch had told me and followed the barely visible streamers to the left, then to the road where i picked the pace up a bit. jay told me later he had to "regroup" at the top. i ran alone on the road and missed a right hand turn that dropped you down to the 17 mile aid station. i ran a bit more vert then started to drop down following the main road. i came to a gate with no flags on it and knew i was off course... again! back on track i then passed trevor and then jay again. i ran into the aid with station with ajw and host of others hot on our tails.
the aid station wasn't very good for me. i had told jay "i'm not going anywhere without my jacket", knowing the last climbe as another 1,000 ft higher than the first one. there were loads of people blocking the aid station when i ran in. i started to go the wrong way. i got a bottle and a thrive ball and headed out. problem was i had no fuel, no jacket and no thought process and hadn't dropped my trash. total shit show really.
after running uphill for a minute i realized i had no fuel. i ran back to the aid station and grabbed gels from the table feeling pretty stupid. on the climb i realized the extreme cold had sapped a bit more energy from me than expected. even though i had eaten as planned, i was bonking. maybe it was the extra urgency i ran trying to make up lost time, who knows. having not grabbed any nuun i was now onto my emergency electrolyte pills. of course i dropped them in the mud. i then decided to walk a bit and get my head straight. a few friends passed me at this point. one was jay who said "you didn't grab your jacket!". at this point i was too far to go back for it.
the next climb i tried to recover a bit. in the process i got passed by a couple runners. i was still in a t-shirt! so i was focused on regrouping and getting ready for the last and biggest climb of the day. as the aid station approached and the terrain flattened out i started to feel good. down into the 2nd major aid station i passed a couple of runners. this is where the race ended however. jared and ryan had some unprepared folks getting hypothermic on the ridge. jared actually esported a couple of people off who he thought "wouldn't have made it". wow. really with the storm it was almost impossible to follow the course markings. jared is such a bad ass that he wouldn't have cancelled the race if he didn't absolutely have to. i was disappointed but i understood.
as i write this a whole week and a half later my forearms and thumbs are still a bit numb. the nerves have not returned to feeling "normal" after being frozen during the race.
all in all a great experience and a great training session. i had a side bet with sean meissner. i think he needs a porn mustache to go with his pink vest, but it looks like we'll have to wait until next year to settle the score (if none of that makes sense click here).
"Unfortunately I don't know the meaning of the word moderation." For endurance athlete Matt Hart this fact has thus far worked out alright. Matt is a member of the Montrail National Ultrarunning Team. He is also a member of nationally ranked adventure racing team DART-nuun. As a solo athlete Matt challenges himself with endurance mountain biking, ski mountaineering, and ultrarunning events. In December of 2005 Matt left his job at Microsoft to pursue his dream and race full time.
