Nearing the top of the first climb. The San Juan Solstice 50 miler took place last weekend in the quiet mountain town of Lake City. We’ve always loved this hilly course in the northeast San Juan Mountains. One or both of us have run this race for most of the past ten years. It’s become an annual summer kickoff event for us. This year was as nice as ever, it...
When you look at the chart it’s probably not surprising that things started to change around Mile 23, near the top of the second big climb. You might think after a half a dozen times at the same race that things would get easier. Sure, it helps to have some familiarity with the course and to be clued in to what lies ahead, but even with that and years of...
The course profile. Put another San Juan Solstice 50 in the books. It was Christy’s 4th finish here, and my 5th, and despite us both having a good amount of experience at this race, we’ve found that it is always a tough, unpredictable day. (more…)
Nice work, Christy. If you do this stuff long enough, at some point you’re going to make a wrong turn. That said, I’m sure some watching thought it was cute that Christy and I finished together at the San Juan Solstice 50 miler last Saturday. If they only knew what different days we had out there. Due to excessive snow, an alternate course had to be put together for the...
Runners somewhere around mile 8, on the ridge between Alpine Gulch and Williams. At the end of this ridge are the 14ers Redcloud and Sunshine. Astronomically speaking, Monday the 21st was the longest day of the year, but for about 200 runners, Saturday’s annual San Juan Solstice 50 Miler in Lake City marked the real beginning of summer. Blue skies, dry trails and resulting dry feet contributed to a record...
Twenty eight minutes. That’s the time it took for the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse to fill up on the morning of December 1st this year. While it may not be quite as hard as the race itself, getting a slot in some of the more popular races can be pretty challenging in itself. As testament to this, a congratulatory email was sent out to all those who got one of...
So it was a record breaking ski season and snow year in most of Colorado. That’s good, right? Well it was way back in January that Christy, Richard Betts and I made plans to run this race. The mountainous course touches 13,300 ft., has more than 12,000 feet of elevation gain and spends the majority of miles well above 10K(with a huge stretch above 12K). Last June Christy had ideal conditions and a...