Leadville Marathon 6/30/12

The moment we have been waiting for: the first race of the Leadville series!!!!

Sean and I both got off work a little early on Friday and headed up to Leadville.  We stayed at the Sugarloafin campground our resting place for the series.  Unfortunately, we couldn't get our camp stove to work, so we headed into town for some dinner at the Tennessee Pass cafe.  Sean likes white pasta with marinara sauce the night before a race, so we ordered spaghetti off of the kids menu.

We didn't even bother with the camp stove the morning of the race, but headed to town to buy some coffee at a gas station and to get some hot water for our oatmeal.

Downloaded from Race Website.

The Leadville marathon is a beautiful race, but a very challenging course. That central peak on the graph is Mosquito Pass with a total elevation gain of 6333 feet throughout the race.  The marathon course starts in downtown Leadville and heads east around Ball Mountain and up Mosquito Pass and back.  The course runs by fields of wildflowers, abandoned mines, and has amazing views of the surrounding mountains. It was definitely both of our slowest marathons ever, but it was also the most beautiful marathon we have ever run.  I spent most of the race wishing I had brought a camera. I would do that marathon over a road marathon any day.   I wasn't even bleeding when I finished the race.

http://www.leadvilleraceseries.com/page/show/311972-leadville-trail-marathon

Start and Finish

Photo by Milan Klanjsek

Photo by Courtney Crespin. 

Photo by Oza Klanjsek.

Finishing the race. Feeling good but my quads are glad the downhill is over. The worst part of the race was definitely the last 3 miles downhill into town on road.

Photo by Courtney Crespin. 

Sean ended up finishing in 5:05 as the 50th male and 19th in his age group.  I finished in 5:55 as the 27th female and 10th in my age group.

We stayed around for the awards ceremony and I was given an entry into the Leadville 100 from Kenneth Chlouber one of the original founders of the race. 

with Kenneth Chlouber a co-founder of the race in 1983.

Winning an entry into the LT100 is super awesome, but also super scary.  Hopefully, it goes well.  We will see how the 50 mile race goes on 7/15/12.

Later we joined some of our Runner's Roost friends for camping at Printer Boy campground.  We had an awesome time camping and hanging out with our friends.  Liz and her brother cooked an amazing post-race feast.

Photo by Oza Klanjsek

The next day we went for a little 10 mile run up hope pass from Twin Lakes.  I was dragging a little, but we felt ok.  The water crossing was great, I was definitely looking forward to the river on the way back. 

 

 

Sean thought it was freezing, my legs thought it was awesome. 

Brrrr!!!

Three of my favorite things: red barns, old trucks, and mountains. 

 It was a great weekend: fun camping, awesome friends, beautiful mountains, winning an entry into the Leadville 100, two good training runs, and icing in a river.