Brandon Fuller

Leadville Night Run: Fish Hatchery to Finish (22.20 mi)

Well, it ended like this for me…

The call went out a few weeks ago. There would be an unofficial group night run on the LT100 course 2 weeks from the race night. Seemed like an appropriate finishing workout to cap off this season’s preparation for the race. I have run nearly every step of the course of this summer but I had not covered the first 6 miles. This would put that to rest…every step covered.

I arrived in Leadville around 6 PM in the midst of Boom Days. This is the summer festival in Leadville. Never been to it. Definitely more people out than I have ever seen in town. But didn’t seem like we had missed a whole lot.

Found Brownie drowning his sorrows in the Provin’ Grounds. He had raced that morning and put down a pretty solid time on a 10 miler. However, we had a long distance to cover this evening so he knew he had more to go. This is a dude that is running four 100 milers this summer so I had no worries. But of course, he had to go burn himself out so that he wouldn’t have to compete tonight. That was cool though. I was not in the mood. The showdown is in 2 weeks!

We left my truck in town near the finish at 6th and Harrison and piled into to Brownie’s truck and headed for the Fish Hatchery. Think its about 8 miles or so on the road out there. Arrived to find it pretty empty. We tailgated and chatted and prepared the gear. Found a 24 hour bathroom with potable water and a flush toilet. These don’t come easy in these parts. Then took a tour of the place.

About a dozen other runners showed up prior to our 8:30 PM start. Guess the forecast of rain scared off most of the rest. Met Chris Boyack for the first time. We follow each other via blogs. He HTFU and ran down from town after leaving his truck there. That’s the spirit. Another car pulled up and runner’s got out ala a clown car from every door. Leila DeGrave was among them. She has been a blog follower of mine for quite a while and I have enjoyed seeing her progress in her running as well. Never had met her in person even though we have crossed paths a few times.

Everyone was chatting it up so I hit my watch and started jogging out of the parking lot and up 300 to Powerline. My lungs were hurting right off. I hadn’t been here in a couple weeks and I felt it. But by the time we hit Powerline, it was all good. I was running hot so I stopped to strip down layers. The small amount of duskish sunlight was now gone and you could just see runners heading up the Powerline by their own lights. Figured since I was fresh, I could run the whole thing to the top but once I regained the pack after my gear change, I gave in. I will be walking this in the race so might as well today.

We hit the top of Sugarloaf Pass and the rains came. It wasn’t a downpour but it was pretty steady. The whole group stopped and put on various rain gear to help with the wetness. We had hours to go and it was only getting colder. It would reach about 39 degrees by the time we finished for the night. On the way up Powerline, all my systems were unstable. Normal stuff. Pretty much needed to shake things out. My dinner was sitting heavy in my gut. I purposely ate to make myself uncomfortable on the run. Must deal. Finally, as we crested Sugarloaf, things smoothed out and I felt like running solidly. Moved myself up through the group and led down to Hagerman Pass Road and then down onto the Colorado Trail and all the way to the Timerberline Campground. That singletrack through there was a bit treacherous in the dark while raining. The rocks were soaking wet. But with a train of lights coming behind me, I kept on my game and watched every foot placement. I didn’t want to hit an ankle. Ouch! OK, focus more. Caught my left ankle once but it wasn’t the usual deal. Just slipped a bit. Felt great through this section. Ended up being a 2 hour spilt from Fish Hatchery. That’s probably about right for outbound. Inbound will probably be slower. Average HR was 144. Nice.

We stopped near May Queen for folks to refill water and just to soak in the night for a few minutes. Got to the Turquoise Lake Trail and started in again. I fell back to allow myself to run my pace instead of being pushed. Brownie and Chris followed in behind me. We made a focused effort and never spoke as we pushed non-stop through the singletrack along the lake in the rain. We ran a pretty good pace until I thought I saw a big snake on the trail and stopped dead in my tracks and caused a pile-up. Oops! Sorry. “He is seeing things”, Brownie says. Yep. Got back in the groove and finally hit the Tabor Boat ramp in about 48 minute from May Queen. Average HR was 142. Really nice given we felt that was solid work through there.

We stopped at the boat ramp and dimmed our lights and chatted a bit more before the final push to the finish. Got moving again along the lake, to the Matchless Boat Ramp, and then up onto Turquoise Lake Road. It was all new to me from here. Although I have been in the area many times. That cut down to the next road was definitely sketchy. Then we arrived at Sugarloaf’n Campground. Then cut right and the pack wasn’t exactly sure where to go but we finally turned onto the Boulevard. This is a 3 mile stretch of dirt road with no lights. You can’t see town because you are ascending up to it. It was long. It never ended. Brownie and I were content with our workout at that point. We moved to walking pace and started chatting. There was flickering desire to try and run again but we had came and saw and were going to finish in time for last call at the Sliver Dollar Saloon. So we just walked it in. Covering that last 7.5 miles in about 1:45. Not a record but hell if we can move that fast after covering 92.5 miles beforehand, we would be golden!

Brownie made us cut sharp right before we hit Harrison. Apparently, it was bad karma to cross the finish line proper on a training run. We save that for the big night. Lots of people were out and about with Boom Days. Busier then I have ever seen Leadville after dark. As we were walking to the bar, a random dude called me out for my short shorts in the middle of the street. “Look at that dudes short shorts!”, he said. Weird having dudes checking out your legs. We hit a pretty full Silver Dollar 10 minutes before last call. Had some PBR, of course, and reflected on the run. Brownie gave me some sage advice on how bad its really going to hurt and suck on race night. Then he drowned his sorrows.

We fetched my truck and drove back to Fish Hatchery. Both of us were pretty beat so we just opted to car camp right there in the parking lot. No signs saying you couldn’t so what the hell. If you car camp within city limits, they ticket or tow you. Plus, this had that nice bathroom nearby. So we crashed sometime after 2:30. I woke up at daybreak and found it to be cold and rainy. After only 4-ish hours of bad sleep, Brownie and I decided to bail on our plans of a Sunday morning run and parted ways. The next time we see each other, the war will be on!

Driving home, I wasn’t sure what to think of this run. It didn’t quite turn out like I wanted but there were some solid parts that I can bank on. But coming from a fresh perspective, I just put down a 1/4(ish) of the course in the night in the rain on no taper with no crew and no support with no problems at 10,000 feet. That’s sick. 4 years ago I used to think a run from home around the neighborhood was a big damn deal. I have come a long way.

So the race is in less than 2 weeks. Life is all about taking it easy now for the taper. Will continue to run…but it should be more like jogging. Staying loose but getting repaired. Fixing this butt thing. Healing up all the nagging pains. Putting gas in the tank for the longest day of my life. The real question at this point for me:

Am I about to break down or am I about to break out?

Onward to Leadville! Let’s find out!

I went 22.20 miles with an elevation gain of 2,657 feet in 04:35:07, which is an average pace of 12:23. Heart rate average was 139. View my GPS data on Garmin Connect.