“…and you can do more than you think you can.”- Ken Chlouber, Leadville 100 Race Director A once-a-year scene, at 4am the headlamps from 509 starters head down 6th street. 46% didn’t make it back within the 30 hour cutoff. [Christy here] That was just one of the many over-used motivational quotes that Chlouber repeated during the somewhat evangelistic pre-race meeting the morning before the 2009 Leadville 100 trail run....
**Update- She’s finished, around 25:40 smiling, 7th woman overall. **Update- Christy’s doing great, left Twin Lakes Aid station at 6:10 pm, 40 miles to go–ahead of schedule!! On a late August morning back in 2002, Christy and I trudged up the road towards Leadville. After tagging along with my friend and his crew for much of the day, my friend dropped from the race, leaving me without support. Christy was...
Originally planned as a birthday outing that was tabled when work interfered, Christy, Dirk and I rescheduled the day jaunt up Capitol Peak one week later. A blessing in disguise, the delay put us on the route with just one other party as opposed to the relative mob-scene that reportedly overran the peak the weekend prior. After a 5AM departure from the trailhead we were up at Capitol Lake in...
Two Christy’s? Can the world handle that? Actually she was caught in two shots that made up this panorama, approaching the top of Willow Pass. On Sunday, my 37th birthday, Christy and I ran a trail linkup that started at Maroon Lake and finished with a beer and pizza at the Snowmass Mall. Rather than find ourselves in yet another grand birthday outing that’s both physically strenuous and technically elaborate,...
Dennis Scholl and I made it to the top of the 14,018 foot peak, the first time for the Miami based art collector, winemaker, philanthropist and Colorado peak bagger
Around mile 12, Christy heads down the road to the Printer Boy Aid station. This was the clearest view of Mount Elbert as weather moved in later and hung around all day. Despite the worst weather in weeks, Sunday’s 2nd Annual Leadville Silver Rush 50 miler will go in the books as another “good day” for Christy and Kathy Fry. Rain at the start thankfully passed as the gun went...
The race was awesome. Reflecting on it briefly here, a few things stick out– I improved on my prior 2007 time, cutting off 1:16, with a good amount of credit due to meeting my goal of getting through aids stops faster. A crash in the early parts slowed me down for a bit, a simplified strategy for food and fluids worked better than my mixed menu last time and the...
You’re only considered to have finished when you kiss the rock. The Hardrock 100 starts tomorrow at 6am, and with any luck could be over sometime Saturday. How will it go? Well, there’s so much to this race, so many variables and unknowns that it’s impossible to say for sure, until it’s over. So I have to fall back on the cliche for my answer– it’s hard telling, not knowing....
Summit #93 for Christy, looking out towards Mount Champion A couple of weekends ago Christy and I climbed Casco Peak and French Mountain, 13,904 feet and 13,940 feet respectively, and in doing so put Christy just five peaks shy of reaching the summit of the 100 tallest peaks in Colorado. LaPlata Peak, 14,336 feet, the North Face couloirs still holding plenty of snow and the long Ellingwood Ridge climbs to...
Neal Beidleman traversing snow to the entrance of the Grassy Gullies This is a quickie, both in the day and the write-up. Here’s the debrief: Neal had the morning free and wanted to go do something fun. I’ll be at Hardrock next week and was looking for more than a routine trail run. Very direct and in parts runable, we both agreed a fast lap on North Maroon’s Grassy Gully...
We met in Aspen in 2000 and have been happily stuck in the rockies ever since, getting out in the mountains every day we can, in every season and by all means possible. Read More
