Sunday, August 21, 2011

Leadville Trail 100 Finished: 25hrs 36mins


I have again moved through the Sawatch Mountains outside Leaville Colorado for 100 continuous miles.   On foot.  Earlier this morning I crossed the finish line at the Leadville Trail 100, for a second time.  I missed the sub-25 hour buckle by 36 minutes, but still beat my previous time by almost 4 hours, so I am thrilled.  I have not really slept much, so this will be my first priority before any sort of race report.  

I will say, one of the most exciting aspects to my experience this year was actually finishing in the dark.  More than finishing sub-25, I have always wanted to break the tape at Leadville...in the dark.  Crossing the finish line at 5:36 am this morning, I was able to complete this goal.  10 minutes later, the sky began to light up.  Also, I finished completely alone.  I ran down 6th street with no one in front of me and no one behind me as far as I could see.  I managed a full-on sprint down the street towards the finish line while everyone was cheering for me.  It was incredible.   Lastly, my pacer was incredible.  I will go into more detail in the race report, but the short story is that Sophia ran all 50 miles with me, and I wouldn't have done as well as I did without her.  So thank you Sophia.

More to come later.

2 comments:

Aaron Nolan said...

Congrats, bro! I can't wait for the race report; I think I checked about 5 times today.

Sara Montgomery said...

HUGE congrats!!! So excited for you to be having such a great season of racing. Sorry we missed you in Leadville. One of these days we'll meet up at a race again. Recover well! I'm going to read your full report now.