Category Archives: Race Reports

Telluride Mountain Run

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At the end of August Steve Cummins and I motored down south to participate in the ninth running of the Telluride Mountain Run. It’s a race that offers three different distances (13, 24 and 40 miles) which traverse the ridgelines and peaks above town. All three courses are pretty tough relative to most other races of the same lengths due to the elevation gain associated with each (5,000, 9,000 and 14,000 feet respectively). In fact it’s tough to find a race as steep as this one anywhere in the country in terms of vert-to-mileage ratio in addition to average elevation above sea level.

 

Saturday morning at 5:30am rolled around and those of us running the 24-miler were off from the Telluride Town Park (with Steve running the 13-miler, I wouldn’t see him until the end of the day as his race started at 8am). I didn’t get to the start line until 5:32 and thus set off a few minutes late behind the pack of runners, following the headlamps south from town into the mouth of the Bear Creek drainage. Keep Reading….

2023 Copper Triangle – aka Redemption of the Cycling Zambo

One consistent thing about my biking ‘career’ is that it has almost always felt like a massive struggle. Contrary to most other sports (particularly those involving mountains and/or endurance), biking has never really felt natural. Or easy. Or consistently enjoyable. Or that I was ever any good at it. Over the past 20+ years I’ve discovered all kinds of novel ways to realize that me and biking simply aren’t an instinctive fit. I mean, just the inherent challenges of going for the a casual ride are seemingly endless. Keep Reading…

2023 Crooked Gravel Race

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Crooked Gravel is part of the Ride Collective, which includes the classic Copper Triangle, a few races out in Grand Junction and then a tour in New Mexico called Enchanted Circle (which got cancelled this year due to construction projects). It was close to Denver and looked intriguing so I signed up. The race was a hard start at 8am and roughly 350 riders were participating in the 67-mile course. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated at the start with a bunch of people elbow to elbow, a good portion of whom looked like they were “in it to win it”. My unofficial goal was to finish in under 5 hours. Read more…

The 2022 Bear 100

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I think the only reasonable way to make yourself sign up for a 100 mile race is to do it in a moment full of impulse, peer pressure, and some sort of other life high. A bold declaration of “f*ck it” helps too. Or at least, that was my experience. When I signed up for the Bear 100 back in late 2021, it took all of these things to make me finally pull the trigger.

 

I’ve been a runner and a climber for pretty much all of my adult life. Over the past few years I have discovered the joy of combining the two together. What began with an eye opening first 50k at the 2018 Dirty 30 quickly evolved into a slew of follow up races, long mountain running days, and many, many hours on the trails. By my count, I had run a marathon or longer 19 times before doing the Bear. So, in many ways, I definitely felt like I was ready. But 100 miles sure felt different. Because it is. Keep Reading….