Leadville 100 Training Camp

Blogger gave me a work-around to whatever broke my blog, so I can keep posting.

So, Friday I left for Leadville and slept at about 10,600 feet in the trees east of Leadville.


The training camp starts with breakfast, socializing, and a 26-mile run. My plantar was feeling okay, but I wasn't feeling like pushing my luck, so I dragged butt. Like last year, since it's not a race, I hung-out at the aid stations and ate. Inbetween, I ran slow and steady. The weather was fairly clear so I took advantage of my new OR cap with full sunshade that wraps around the neck.

It was a nice day and a nice run. Easy. I decsended very carefully down into Twin Lakes. My plantar felt the pounding but wasn't too bad.

After 26 miles, even Coors tastes good.

That night, I drove way up on Ball Mountain and spent the night nearly 12,000 feet high. It was a very calm night and not too cold. I had the windows open and didn't worry about bears so high up.

In the morning, I listened to a radio station from San Isidro, California. My iPhone had picked up a signal that reset the time to Central instead of Mountain, so my iPhone woke me up an hour too early. My watch battery had died, so I had no convenient way of verifying the time.

Day two had us meeting for breakfast again, and then boarding the buses for Twin Lakes. We parked a mile up-river of where the LT100 will cross the river.
Again, I took it easy, but this was the first time in very many months that I had gone running two days in a row.

Because of the pulmonary edema I'd had just a week before, I didn't push the uphills, and because I didn't want to put the brakes on much, I let myself fly down the south side of Hope. After being injured for three months, and barely running at all in the past two months, it was exhilerating to blow down that mountain passing everyone in sight. But my plantar was feeling the strain at the bottom. After hanging out at the aid station, I turned around and ran back - skipping the 5-mile round-trip to Winfield and back.


Hope Pass!

I kept dipping my left foot in the water every chance I got. The cold kept he swelling down on my heel. When I got back, I stood in the river for a while.
More beer.

I slept again up high, but this time only at 11,600 feet.

In the morning, I ate breakfast at the Provin' Grounds. It's definitely the place to go to run into every athletic person in the valley.

By lunch, I had decided that my plantar would suffer badly if I did the night run. I bailed and drove back to Denver.