Team CRUD had a pretty good day at the Xterra Cheyenne
Mountain Marathon and Half Marathon Saturday. Three entries, three podiums! Dan
Vega won the overall men’s half marathon, Shannon Meredith won the overall
women’s full marathon, and I rounded it out by winning the old farts category
in the marathon. And for icing on the cake, Jeff Mulder, a good friend,
running his first marathon, ran the perfect race by running the second half one
minute faster than the first half. All in all, a fantastic day!
I decided to do the Xterra marathon about a month ago while
out running the course with Jeff. Cheyenne Mountain State Park has beautiful
trails with a nice flow of rolling hills that that were so fun I signed up as
soon as I got home. This would be Jeff’s first marathon and he was running
strong, and in training seemed to be doing everything right. With over 3,000 ft
of climbing it’s a pretty tough marathon for a first timer.
So Jeff and I arrived at the start to a nice freezing
drizzle with every indication that the weather was going to hang around for a
while. No worries, just adds to the adventure. Besides I had bandages on my
nipples!
Video of the start
After the first half mile or so I settled into what felt
like a comfortable and semi fast pace. Shannon pulled up beside me and we ran
together the entire first (of two) lap. The first hill seemed a lot longer than
I remembered from the elevation profile, so I thought we must have already went
over it and we were on the first of four big climbs. That was not the case; we
descended a bit then started the first real climb in earnest; eight hundred
feet in three miles. The descent never really felt like a descent because it
was rolling with lots of short climbs on the way down. Shannon and I talked
quite a bit during our time together and we were just cruising along. We ran a
couple technical sections and I felt pretty good hopping through the rock
gardens. Eventually we came upon the second big climb, about 500 feet in two
miles. The descent again was rolling with a couple of semi technical sections
which brought us near the start/finish area before heading off for another lap.
As we started the climb on the second lap Shannon must have
got bored with me because she took off. Actually, it only appeared that way.
Our splits show that I slowed down significantly, as my second lap was almost
15 minutes slower than the first. Shannon just maintained the same
speed. At about 17 miles I was struggling a bit and just kept telling myself,
only 9 miles, piece of cake. Then just 8 miles, stay loose, no worries, relax,
keep going. At 22 miles the final big climb and I got a bit of a second wind.
Although I wasn’t sprinting up the mountain, I did run it fairly strong. Coming
down though, I was in survival mode and not anywhere near as dainty going
through the technical sections as on the first lap. The entire last two miles I was
looking back almost as much as I was looking forward. No one caught me so I was
able to cruise to the finish in 9th place overall, and 1st
in the 50+. Shannon placed 6th overall and 1st woman. Jeff came in shortly after placing 11th
overall, running a very very strong first marathon on a tough course in cold
& wet conditions. A great CRUD day
indeed!
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