Alright, 1 week after the Bolder Boulder we're back with another chance to pace my girlfriend Andie to a goal time. I'm really starting to like pacing, I take great pride in it.
The race is the Steamboat Half-Marathon. The course is a net downhill, but with rolling hills the entire way and a significant hill between miles 8 and 9.
We leave our hotel Sunday morning and go out into the 40°F crisp air and catch a bus to the race start. Luckily there's a bag drop and we can keep on some warmer clothes until about 20 minutes from the start. As we're milling around at the start we see some friends and chat and then Andie sees her arch-rival. Her name is Val, she always gives Andie a run for her money and in 2006 and 2007 they finished 1,2 at the Belleview Chiropractic 5K (this year Andie didn't race), Andie won the first year and Val won the second year, this was the tie-breaker. Upon Andie seeing Val I could tell her nerves went up and she said "Oh, I really wish I didn't see her." I don't know what tone I've set, but Val is great, very nice and really it is just a good little rivalry, kind of like my rivalry with the Ballerina, but that's another story and besides I always crush him.
Some quick math in my head and I figure we need to be running around 8:23 miles to make it under Andie's 1:50 goal, not completely trusting myself I earmark 8:20 as a good pace.
The temps are nice and we cruise through the first several miles, we're faster than we need to be, but I'm not worried because of the downhill trend. There were no crowds as we ran down with the Yampa River, but we saw great scenery and watched the cows and horses running through pastures (horses are fast!). We also saw some not so great wildlife, 1 dead skunk, 1 dead deer and several other small dead animals. We keep bouncing around between 8:05 and 8:27 miles until the 8th mile.
The 8th mile has the big hill, 150-200 feet, pretty constant and gradually gets steeper; to make it a little more fun we pop out into the sun for this mile and it's the warmest part of the course yet. We keep the effort pretty even, maybe up it a little, arms are swinging a little harder. People are dropping like flies all around us, we're now passing a lot of people. halfway through the climb who do we see but Val! Ooooh baby we're reeling her in pretty quickly. We pass her quickly and quietly and notice that she has her significant other supporting her from his bike on the side of the road, this would make it easy to keep track of Val.
We get to the top of the hill and it is followed by a big descent. Being a good descender I have to hold back a little to prevent an Andie blow up on the downhill, but we're still passing a lot of people. The course flattens out and gets hot the rest of the way into town. We cruise down the street to the finish and Andie threw in quite the kick at the end, I had no idea she had that much left. We cruised in at 1:48:32, about 1.5 minutes faster than goal pace and roughly 4 minutes faster than Val.
I finished 137th (of 961 total finishers) overall, 93rd male and 13th in my age group. Andie was 136th, 44th and 12th respectively.
Gearing up to get on the trail
Typical section of the 3 mile road up to the other trailhead.
Still enjoying myself.
There's a couple of interesting old structures still left over from the mining days.
Getting close to the Gray's Peak TH and almost to treeline.
The bridge at the gray's Peak TH, only about 4 miles and 3000' elevation to the top.
It's almost July and there's still snow around, I crossed 4 snow fields. Gray's Peak (14,270') on the left and Torrey's Peak (14,267') on the right.
My favorite part of the trail, the water is crystal clear.
The trail gets rougher as you ascend. This was the last shot before the battery died.
