Collegiate Peaks Trail Race - 2 weeks late

Another race that ended in pain. Doesn't make me want to rush right home and tell the world about it. I was originally planning on waiting just a few days to mellow out from the race, but that somehow extended a full 2 weeks. It's not that the past 2 weeks have been that bad, but I just never found the motivation to write anything.

This one was another early Saturday morrning race like SDU so we had to go up the night before. I rode with John Rice, a fellow DTR runner and we got a cheap hotel room since the weather was calling for some frigid overnight lows. We decided to stop for pizza on the way down, that was mistake number one. The pizza was great, but the cheese did a number on my stomach even more than usual. Race morning we were up before dawn. The race registration was inside the community center in Buena Vista. That was a welcome change from most other races given the cool air outside. By the time the race started at 6:30 am it was warm enough to start in shorts and short sleeves. I think that in the back of my mind I had high hopes for this race and I started further up in the pack that I probably should have. The first part of the course is pretty flat and the leaders started fairly fast, at least compared to SDU where I lead without really trying. Bernie Boetcher was up front with a couple of other guys and I knew enough to not try and stay with him. I felt pretty safe running with Erik Solof, the defending 50 Mile champion here. I knew Erik from a couple of years ago when he ran with DTR. I did feel that the pace was a little faster than I would have chosen on my own. I pulled away from Erik when we turned on to the trail and started the first climb. I think that he walked a bit since he had to conserve energy for the second lap. The rest of the race is a little fuzzy for me now that I've let it slip away for two weeks. I do remember that the course seemed tougher than I had expected. The times show that it is faster than SDU so I expected this to be a cake walk. The course did some rolling that I just wasn't expecting and the long climbs seemed longer than they should have been. I was running fairly well through about 15-20 miles, but then I think that I just bonked and even though the last part was all downhill and mostly on railroad grade and dirt road I had to walk some of it. I think that I finished in around 3:45, but the results aren't up yet and I forgot to stop my watch at the finish so that isn't even accurate. According to the results board at the race I finished less then a minute out of third in my age group and only a few minutes out of second. I'm pretty sure that if I had run a smarter first half and had something other than pizza the night before I could have beaten both of those guys and finished with a smile on my face. Oh well, another lesson learned the hard way. Let just hope that I've learned for good this time.