K9Runner

It’s been a while since I’ve made time to post here. I’ve been busy – out in Leadville pacing Mike, crewing for Eric on his Nolan’s attempt, pacing and crewing Eric at the Bear, and then spending most of my free time in between organizing the Blue Sky Marathon.

For the past few years, I’ve wanted to get out and explore more of our national parks and wilderness areas and the Grand Canyon R2R2R run has been on my list for a long time. But I’ve kept getting myself tied up with race events putting all of my time and effort into training, tapering, traveling to and from races, and then recovering to do it all over again. This year I decided that Hardrock would be enough for one season but it took a lot longer to recover than I expected. Physically I recovered quickly and felt fine. But for the past couple months I’ve been struggling to really get back to running well again. Other than pacing, I really haven’t been able to get a really good long run in on my own since Hardrock. And of course I couldn’t leave my race schedule completely empty so I went and signed up for the Antelope Island 100k in November and the HURT 100 in January. Up until this last week I wasn’t really sure I’d be in any shape to run either of these events.  Since Hardrock I’ve only averaged about 60 miles per week without any real training focus. So I decided to make this Grand Canyon trip a test to see if I could get myself back on track.

8 of us from Fort Collins ended up going down for the run on Saturday the 8th. I carpooled with Cat and Shaun and we caravanned down with Alex, Ean, and Mike in a second carpool. We all decided to leave Ft Collins at 3am Thursday (or I guess that’s technically Friday) to get down to the Grand Canyon in time to set up camp in the afternoon. Ron and Lisa drove down on a more sane schedule splitting the drive into two days down and two days back. We made it down just in time Friday afternoon to set up camp, check in at the Backcountry office for more info about the route and water access, and caught the sunset at the South Rim.

Since none of us had any plans to break the FKT for the route, we all decided that it would be best to start on the South Kaibab trail and finish back up Bright Angel. Ean, Ron, and Lisa planned to run down to Phantom Ranch and back and this would give them a more interesting route that just going down and back on Kaibab. Bright Angel added a few extra miles to the standard out and back but the climb back to the South Rim was a bit more gradual and there were several water stops along the way.

We all took off from Yaki Point at the start of the South Kaibab trail just before 6am Saturday morning. I ended up running all the way to the North Rim turn around with Mike. I got ahead of Mike a bit on the downhill but he was a lot stronger on the uphill and pulled me most of the way up the long grind to the North Rim. I was surprised that about half of the distance to the North Rim from Phantom Ranch was a really gradual incline with a lot of flat sections through the bottom of the canyon. The majority of the climb up to the North Rim wasn’t until after Roaring Springs so most of the 6,000ft from the river was packed into a few miles of super steep switchbacks. And unfortunately we didn’t time our run very well and got stuck int he middle of endless mule trains coming down the hill. At almost every other switchback, we’d need to step off the trail to let a dozen mules go by.

After Mike and I refilled water and took a couple pictures at the North Rim trail head, I took off at my own pace down the long decent back to Phantom Ranch. Alex wasn’t much more than a mile or so behind at this point and Cat was only about a mile behind Alex. I felt pretty good running down as a fairly good cruising pace until I made it past Cottonwood campground. After 30 miles, this section leveled out to the gradual decline back to Phantom Ranch and my legs just didn’t have much kick left. Just before Phantom Ranch, I ran into Shaun. He had turned around early after cramping up on the way to the North Rim but was feeling much better so I pressed on to grind my way up Bright Angel. I was pretty tired but not really hurting at the point so I pushed the pace a bit to try to get back to the South Rim as quickly and efficiently as possible. The grade was actually pretty gradual with a lot of long switchbacks and shallow steps so I was able to keep up a jogging rhythm most of the way up. With about 2 miles to go, I was just tired both mentally and physically and just settled into a fast hiking pace. When I finally started seeing tourists hiking down the trail in jeans and dress shoes, I figured the end was very near and managed to run the last quarter mile to finish in 10 hours and 20 minutes.

My time was no where near what I would expect to run at a full race effort but I was pretty happy to finish a solid day of running without any major bonk or pain. The R2R2R run also finished off my first 100 mile training week since before Hardrock which felt pretty good. Since the R2R2R week, I’ve finished out another 100 mile week and am working on knocking out a third. I’m starting to feel the effects this week so I’m not sure if the Antelope Island 100k will be a real race effort or just another long training run. But I’m definitely feeling confident that I can be in full race shape for the HURT 100 in January.

Aside from getting in a decent training run, running the the Grand Canyon was just an awesome experience. I had only been through the Grand Canyon once on a college road trip and merely pulled over briefly to look over the South Rim. But completing the full crossing from one rim down to the river and back up to the other rim was really amazing. The drastic change in environment as we dropped down and climbed back up was incredible. The South Rim was a crisp and chilly fall morning when we started. By the time we reached the bottom, it was summer in a lush, green environment with cottonwood trees and willows lining the river. On the climb to the north rim, the terrain opened up to a dry desert landscape with cactus and huge yucca plants. Further up the North Rim we entered fall again with a layer of oak and aspen trees just starting to turn red and yellow. The top of the North Rim ended in a pine forest with patches of snow.

I’ll definitely go back to run this again. Early October seems like the ideal timing to run just before the water pumps shut off. Maybe we got lucky this time but the weather was absolutely perfect for us. Most of the day was perfectly cool running weather and I don’t think I spent more than 2 hours in any real heat. But event he hottest part of the day was a tolerable 80 degrees – pretty tame compared to running around the Fort Collins foothills in July.

 Here are a few photos from the run:

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