Mountain Air Marathon

I wish I could say this race was fun, but...
It was TOTALLY AWESOME!!!
Yeehaw, what a great consolation prize after missing RRR50.
Anita F left Steamboat very late. I let her call me repeatedly all night. Especially after the motorcycle accident, the last thing I wanted to hear is that Anita fell asleep at the wheel and died or got hurt! Besides, she had just done 50M and was going to run a marathon! If I lost sleep, big deal! I had the EASY end of the deal! So I kept giving her logistical support through my iPhone/GoogleMaps until 2:12am.
I was parked high on a ridge at the end of a county road. A very great place to spend the night. Unlikely to have anyone interrupt me and tell me to move. The coyotes yapped a few times during the night. If I had to put up with the yapping regularly, I suppose the novelty would wear off. Instead, I loved it. Few critters sound as ridiculous as a hillside or desert full of coyotes all trying to out-do each other with silly sounds.
Frost was on my windshield in the morning. I overslept by 10 minutes - and paid for it.
I rushed to Gunnison too late, but Anita was on the bus and had the bus driver pick me up on the way. I was so disorganized. At least it was only a marathon - and paved too. Then she gave me coffee! Aaahhhh!!!!! So I helped Anita through the night, and she helped me in the morning. What a DEAL!
At the start, I met some friends from Denver. I met several new people, too. I was very irreverent. Surprised, huh? (OK, so you're not surprised.) I spotted a cute young thing and had to rib Anita - "Oooo, Anita, she's even cuter than you! No doubt. Look at those LEGS!" My god, she had Leslie-Legs! I'm not kidding!
I met Michelle from Virginia, Paul from Phoenix, Muguin?sp? from Denver, and - I'm so bad with names - John? from Denver. I've run with these two guys before, but they run with the 6:15 DTR group and i do the 5:30 group, so we haven't spent much time together. And Joyce! Let's not forget Joyce. i get to see her again at the Boulder 100 in a month.

The race. Okay, I didn't race. I stuck with Anita the first 12 miles and talked incessantly. I bragged how I didn't feel any of Saturday's 50 miles! We did trail trash talk. But at the first uphill, she told me she needed to listen to her "devil-music", which I took as my queue that I was going too fast and her tired legs needed a break.
S O kicked it up and caught up to Michelle Smith. Michelle is BIG! Very full-bodied and as tall as me. Get this - she was sucking wind because of the altitude, and came in 2nd!!!! I stuck with her and tried to pace her. There was lots of slight uphill in the latter miles of the race. Nothing we Coloradans would notice, but enough to sucker-punch a Virginian. It was like me on Sugarloaf - hypoxic from foam in my lungs, but the leg muscles were not taxed. So she totally amazed me. She came in 2nd and would have been even faster if she had been acclimated! GEEZ!
Anita, after running 50M the day before, won her age-division!
The views were very fantabulous. Maybe even stupendiscular! The temp at the start was a windless 30-something that warmed up to about 60 at the finish.
They had big horse-drinking tanks at the finish filled with ice-water for us to soak our legs in. What an awesome idea.

Okay - I'm back on an even keel after the Leadville debacle. Ready for my ususal race-every-weekend mode into November.