Bear Chase 50K, Bear Chase Lake Park, CO. (Race Report)

Dear Diary,

Yesterday, I did the Bear Chase 50K in Colorado, near Denver. 

The Good: Very well organized, top-notch friendly, hard-working volunteers, RIVER CROSSINGS that breathe life back into your poor, tired, hot legs and feet (twice!) big-assed medal, nice finish-line party.  It is a great trail run for anyone doing their first 50k.

The Bad: Hot . It was hot.  Did I say it was hot?  If I didn't: it was HOT.  They said it only got up to the 80s, but for running on a trail that's hot enough.  About 2/3 of the course is unshaded, so it gets hot out there.  It's not terribly scenic. 

At 6:49 I kissed Sweet Baboo and wished him a good race, and then at 6:50 sharp, we were off. 

First off, the course is very much like the Palo Duro 50K, in terms of difficulty, except that the trails are a bit more runnable (less rocky, and a bit less technical.)  If you are familiar with Palo Duro, which is my favoritist 50K ever, then you know that you run a 10K loop, and then two 12ish-mile loops. 

The biggest exception is that this race isn't quite as scenic as Palo Duro.  It takes place on a man-made recreation area, in the middle of which is a gold course and a square, man-made lake. 

The first loop is a 10K, and it's nice, and almost completely shaded, and flat, and you think, wow, this is going to be a cakewalk!   

There is a tiny moment of worry and doubt when you notice the sign for loops 2 and 3 point towards a large hill, and you see a line of people snaking up the side of the hill, but you immediately put it out of your mind, because you are on loop1, and remember, if it isn't happening now, it doesn't exist. 

You come in to the start/finish, where you have a bag o' stuff, if you're like me, lose the arm-sleeves and grab the sunscreen, and head out onto the second loop where, eventually, you become one of those people snaking up the side of that great big hill. 

There is a cool part of the course where you have the first big climb (about mile 12 on the first loop and then mile 24, I think) and when you come up over the top of the climb the skyline of Denver is in view.  It's kind of a strange thing to see in the middle of a 50k trail run, but also kinda cool.

At east aid station, someone would run out and ask what I needed, and take my bottle, and then by the time I got there, it was already filled up with ice, which is one of the main advantages to an urban-type trail run.  They never, ever ran out of ice.

In miles 14ish and 26ish you run through a small woodsy section and there are three river crossings.  You can't jump these; you're going to get wet.  They're only about 12 to 18 inches deep, however, and slow-moving, basically what we call creeks in Alabama, not rivers. 

The first time you just sort of natter to yourself and think, I hope I don't get blisters.  But then there is the second time you cross through these.

Oh.  My. The second time.

Sometimes toward the end of the first full loop God decided to hate on me, and turned on the heat.  The back 2/3 of the big loops are out in the open, with no shade, and it started heating up fast, and there is a little over 4 miles between aid stations in the middle of which is the "big" climb on the course.  When I headed out onto the second loop I took my bandana and loaded it with ice at each aid station.  I had been making excellent time, but no more: my pace had been in the mid 12s and it soared during the second loop.  I am a firm believer in the "run as you feel" mentality, so I didn't push it.

On the 2nd loop when I got to mile 26, when I got to the first river crossing, I stopped and sat down on my butt and let the cold water envelope me from the waist down.  And peed.  That wasn't planned by the way, it just happened.  But the sitting, it was fantastic.  I did it again, twice, (not peeing, just sitting) with each crossing.  Renewed, I bid a sad fareware to the cool water and then headed out to the next aid station at Fox Hollow.  I was pretty satisfied to feel that I was well-hydrtated, and my legs were definitely back online.

After Fox Hollow is another sharp, short, but still disappointing climb, and you run a long section through a grassy plains area, much of it near a highway. It is fully exposed and you are hot.  But, like most of the course, it's runnable, and the rivers had awakened me, along with the knowledge that I was less than 5 miles from the finish. 

Plus, at Fox Hollow, I had two small cups of icy mountain dew, and taken two gels that themselves had caffein in them (that I had with me) as well as a Stinger waffle.  It took a short time for those to work their way into my bloodstream, and I eventually came back to life and started passing people. Mostly men.

You know, I always feel bad for men when I pass them.  I just do.  Usually, they are super fit-looking men, in their 30s or 40s, with close-cropped hair, muscles, and spandex. They have on their zensah leg sleeves, small, efficient and aerodynamic waist belts with fluid, and you can tell they work out.  Everything about them screams aerodynamic.  Everything about them shouts efficiency.


And then *I* trundle past them like a large pack mule.  I usually have a very large floppy hat on, and a back pack full of my crap; I usually have gels, sunscreen, asthma inhaler, various pills, maybe a towel, some TP, maybe a snack or two, some lipstick - shutup - and I'm wearing a bandana loaded with ice, an ipod, and large, round sunglasses.  AND I'm carrying a handheld bottle. Plus, I'm doing some sort of slow shuffle jog when I pass these guys.  I usually just say "hi" or "nice job" or some other inane thing, answer a comment about why my tattoo has a horse on it, and then I'm on my way.  But I do feel bad.  Not bad enough not to pass them.  But bad. 

Big-assed medal. Or breastplate.

I had some waves of nausea at one point but I tried this trick that Sweet Baboo found out about: I grabbed an alcohol prep pad and waved it in front of my nose, and the nausea when away. 

But the last mile or so I became rediculously consumed with passing more men, so I sped up quite a bit and in that heat got a little wasted again.  So then I came into the finish, where of course Sweet Baboo had been done for over an hour.  Holy crap, it was hot . "Do you want any pancakes?" 

Uh, no.  Do you want me to throw up on your feet?

I got a big-assed medal, seriously, this thing could be used to stop bullets.

Eventually, we headed out, and accidentally stumbled upon--accidentally, I swear--a Popeyes chicken place. We got home about 10:30 last night, and I'm whooped. 

I want to give a shout-out to Jennifer, who gave us a place to sleep and fed me the night before, how awesome of her!  She also did this race, and finished, too.  I met her at my failed Bighorn 50 mile attempt. 

All in all, not a bad way to spend a weekend. 

Next Up: The Point Defiance 50k, in Puget Sound.

...

Self-pity days are what your union fought for.

Dear Diary,


13.  So I guess I'm doing a triathlon on Saturday.  I was actually feeling pretty good about not having a ride to the Chile Harvest triathlon this weekend.  Outwardly I was all, well darn it, I guess I'll have to miss it. And inwardly, looking forward to A Day of Sloth, as well as not humiliating myself in front of hundreds, given that
A) I haven't been in a pool during 2011, and
B) I have been on a bike once, and I've ridden 10 miles total, on a flat bike path, during 2011.

Police were posted at all trailheads, including this one near
my house.  

The Chile Harvest triathlon, you may recall, is the scene where, two years running now, I have done the bike portion WITH MY BRAKES ON and then struggled on the run which, I might add, occurs in temperatures upwards of 90 degrees.  It's the state team championship.  All the New Mexico Outlaws, the multi-sport team of which I am a member, go in full Outlaws regalia.

So, but, then I made the mistake of posting publicly on the New Mexico Outlaws message board that I wasn't going to be attending because my ride (Captain Baboo) has guard duty that weekend.  No sooner had I done that then the club president, herself  Dreadpirate Rackham, emailed me at work and said basically, oh no you don't missy and added some other stuff I can't quite remember.  "Your complacent ass" was in there; I remember that.

In the very center of the picture at top is some tall TV
antennas.  Can't see them?  That's how high
it is.  And THAT'S where the finish line is.  

12. Then, the next day, at 6 am. I'll be doing a foot race that goes from around 6200 feet up to 10,400 feet over 9 miles..."race" being a very loosely used term here, but after all, you get that "finisher" shirt at the finish whether you're first or last.  They do not allow earphones, given that it's a fairly narrow trail up the mountain, so I guess I'll sing to myself to keep me company.  That'll also keep the bears away.  Trust me you haven't heard me sing.  Win-win.  

Blonde.  With an E.

What makes this race even more interesting (other than the ass-busting altitude climb and the fact that I get all drama queen with gray-blue fingernails and gasping at high altitude) is that I didn't have much of a chance to do a lot of practicing on La Luz this year, owing to the fact that for a sizable chunk of my training period the trails were all closed (see picture, above) and THANK GOODNESS they opened them up just in time for me to humiliate myself TWICE in one weekend.

11.  Wednesday, I
took a SELF-PITY day (it's in your human resources manual.  Go check) and went and spent Groupons.

9. I also decided to be a blonde again. That's BLONDE.  With an e. Because I'm worth it.  And yes, I used a Groupon.

8. I will be meeting the head of behavioral health for a local hospital soon to discuss my new internship placement.  A bit more about it: It is in a local hospital.  Both of our largest hospitals here have acute psychiatric wards, which is where you go if it is determined that you, due to a mental disorder, are an immediate danger to yourself or others.
Note: Acute psychiatric wards are not for you to threaten your teenager with or to take your kid to because she throws temper tantrums.  They will be sent home, and you will have lost ground in the war against bad behavior.

As you well know, I lurves me some crazy people.  We'll see if that holds up after 9 months spending two days a week in an acute psychiatric ward.

7.  Wednesday's Pity Party slothful day of indulgence, courtesy of Groupon, was fab.  Got my nails done, got my toenails done (I pretended to be asleep to avoid the inevitable questions about missing or half-grown-in toenails).  I got a massage.  Then I ate cake.  YES, CAKE. I'VE HAD A TOUGH COUPLE OF WEEKS.

One of the pairs I bought.  

6.  I also bought some shoes on Ebay, so, I'm all healed now.  And yes, I am that easy. If you're a man, you don't want someone more complicated than that.  If you're a woman, you don't want to be more complicated than that.  I like to stick to the same thing, over and over and over.  For work shoes, I like Aerosoles, Clarks, and Indigo by Clarks.  For fun shoes, I like Naughty Monkey.

And no, they aren't wedges.  I think wedges are ugly.  I don't care who that offends.  They're frankenshoes.  So there.

5.  Text message from Daughter:
I had to block [roommate] from facebook.  
She has decided to hate me this week.

Hmm.  What to reply?
What'd you do - eat all her food?
Have you run her her long distance bill yet?
Is she sick of cleaning up after you yet?


In the end, I went with   Oh, my, girl drama.  Hope it all works out.

Taken in our back yard about two weeks ago.

4. It is officially "Monsoon Season" in New Mexico.  I talk about this every year, but here it is again: Monsoon season is a time during the year when, in the afternoons, the sky fills with dark, threatening clouds.  The wind blows, sometimes lightening starts fires up on the mountain, and there is a hell of a lot of noise that scares the shit out of my dog.
Sometimes it rains.

3. In the past two days, I've slept about 18 hours.  That's so not like me.  I feel like I could sleep more.  I suspect a creeping depressive reaction to the VA debacle.  Maybe not.

2. I'm really pissed that one of my Italian cypress trees out front apparently took a serious hit this past winter and has dead spots on it.  I always wanted some of these, and now I have them, and now it has dead spots.  I know that's a very minor thing to complain about, but it annoys the hell out of me.

1. Sweet Baboo feeds birds.  We spend a third-world family's annual salary on bird seed.  We have about a 1/3 of an acre, so there's lot of birds.  We also have a large pond.  Most of them are natives - mourning doves, finches, quail, and so on.  Anyway.  Some of them are pigeons.  At any given time, there is a large number of birds at the north end of our back yard, pecking away at the ground, looking for some of that seed.
The end result is this: in addition to all the other things that are cool about the Dream House, whenever I walk into the back yard - either from the driveway coming home or from the house, leaving - a large flock of birds rises in a mass ascension in a cloud of wings, and the end result is that every day I feel like I'm in my very own romantic movie set in Italy - you the know the scene where they run through the square, hand-in-hand, disrupting a flock of birds.  EIther that or Mary Tyler Moore.  Either way, it's kinda cool.

...

Do something, whenever you can, that scares you.

Friday we arrived in the area of the Leadville trail run, and even before docking at our accomodations there was a planned run in the morning.  We started out from twin lakes: Me, Sweet Baboo, Ken, Jean, and Mo.  Some other guy showed up from Massachusettes, but he was actually from Romania, and that's all I know, so that's all I'll say about him. 

The area is breathtaking.  I took pictures.  I'll upload them when I get home.  jagged peaks that once held glaciers, well above the tree line, some with bits of snow still on them.

We started out and after a mile or so I heard a mention of river crossing,  and I, uh, HUH?  river crossing?  Oh, well.  No big deal.  River crossings in New Mexico are streams that may or may not have water actually in them, and most of the time, you can just jump across them.

So as we jogged along, every once in a while I would run across some water, pretty still, about 4 to 6" deep, where some slow-moving streams crossed our path.  Finally I asked Ken, "so, is this the river?"

"Not yet," he said.

Then we got to the river.

Oh.  Shit.

It was an actual river.  With cold water was moving fast.  I mean, it wasn't the mighty Mississippi or anything, but there was no way you were getting across this without serious wetness.  My time across, I stepped down...and down...and down...until I was ass deep in rushing mountain cold water.  I was almost freaking out, not because I was ass deep in cold rushing water, but because it was fast, with a strong current, and it was pushing me backwards.  Lucky for me I had that Clydesdale in back of me to keep me from moving.

So I came up out of the river, soaking wet from butt to feet, and then we headed up to the trail head and parted ways.  The plan was, those training for Leadville 100  would go up and over Hope pass, which is around 12,000 feetish above sea level, and then back up and over from the opposite side. 

My plan was to make it to the pass and come straight back.  They moved on ahead, and Baboo had flour in a water bottle and whenever they made a turn, he marked it with the flour, and so in that way the path was marked. 

It was a long grind.  I get pretty breathless at those altitudes, so my resolve was dissipating rapidly.  I realized as I got pretty close where I figured the pass would be and realized, I had no way of knowing when I had reached a "pass".  I didn't grow up in the mountains. 

Was there a sign saying, "HOPE PASS"?  or, "You have reached The Pass"?

A greeter?  

I hiked up for a couple hours, saw a couple of ruined cabins, and hiked a little more ways up, decided I was tired of climbing this thing and, well, hell, *I* was not getting ready to run Leadville 100 so I headed back down the path to the bottomland.  I found out later that I was within a half mile of the pass, so I'll call it good.

I took pictures. I'll up load them at home.

But then, on the way back, I was alone.  I got the river, and walked up and down the beach, trying to find away across without a 200 pound man to cling to, and I made a couple of false starts, walking back to shore when the water go deeper.  It's not that I was afraid of drowning or anything.  It's mostly that I had electronics, including my phone, in the pack and was afraid of being pushed over backwards, underwater, and ruining them.  That, and maybe hitting my head on a rock and drowning. 

I turned around and came back to shore, finally decided, I'll just wait until they all come down off the mountain so that Baboo could provide a nice anchor for getting across. 

But that could be hours. 

Finally, I thought, I can do this.  I can do this.  I stood there for a really long time thinking that.  I stuck my handheld in the chest strap of my hydration pack, grabbed a long stick, and stepped back into the water.  I got to the deeper part, and even as the water pushed me backward, while I was stepping backwards, I continued stepping sideways, facing into the current the way Baboo told me to do, and then, well, then I was on the other side.   

It was one of the weird, trimphant moments when nobody was around but me to know it, but there it was.  So I took a picture of the river, and now it's on my cell phone.  When I get home, I'll upload it here. 

Later we drove to Leadville, altitutude 11K or so, and ate some really awesome Mexican food. 

THIS morning, Saturday morning, I woke really tired.  I didn't sleep well, and had had about 9 hours of sleep in two days.  Baboo and I headed out to Leadville again, and got coffee, and by then I was a little nauseated, and my head was starting to hurt and pound a little.

 I'm no fool, so I begged off the run and went back down to 8000 feet to rest.  I looked up altitude sickness, and it had a list for "mild" sickness that went like this:
Symptoms generally associated with mild to moderate altitude illness include:

•Difficulty sleeping (check)
•Dizziness or light-headedness (Mmmm.  Maybe)
•Fatigue (check)
•Headache (check)
•Loss of appetite (no, not really)
•Nausea or vomiting (check)
•Rapid pulse (heart rate) (check)
•Shortness of breath with exertion (you mean more than usual? check)

So tonight, we're supposed to do an "after dark" run.  I really want to do this, so I'm going to rest and hopefully feel better to go later. 

It occured to me when I was walking around a gift shop the other day that I want to have the kind of life where I can to see, and be among, the things that most people see on TV or in paintings. Running around in the mountains is a pretty good start, I think.  I also credit Baboo for exposing me to a lot of things I might have been afraid of in another life. 

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