Scott’s Blog

On June 14th of June I arrived in CO for a month of altitude training for the Hardrock Hundred, one of the toughest 100 mile trail races in the world. I’ve been basing my training out of Silverton, CO, where the race starts and finishes, camping at 11,000′ near Little Molas Lake to boost my red blood cell count while sleeping. My sea level lungs needed all the help they could get!

A nice surprise was discovering that Kyle Skaggs was spending the summer in Silverton working as a research assistant for Mountain Studies Institute. Kyle is an up and coming ultrarunner who went to Evergreen College and started getting into ultrarunning over the last couple of years in WA. He wasn’t going to be starting work for a couple of weeks and wanted to put some miles in on the Hardrock course. Nothing like having a young speedster (who had a two week jump on me with altitude training) ready to kick my butt around the San Juans for a few weeks!

The first couple days found my sea level lungs talking to me, asking me where all the oxygen went, although it didn’t seem too bad. I ended up running the first 4 miles of the Hardrock course with Kyle within the first hour of arriving. The following day we explored the Bear Creek Trail out of Ouray, getting stopped at 11,600′ due to snow. Late May and early June brought cool temps and and even more snow to the San Juans, so the snow pack was higher than normal for this time of year. Definitely made training on the course interesting!

Kyle was headed over to the San Juan Solstice 50 Mile on Friday so we decided to carpool over to Lake City, CO. I figured I could get some training on the east side of the San Juans and visit some friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. And one night sleeping at 9,000′ wouldn’t hurt me! It was great seeing all the runners the night before the race and I got some high miles in on the San Juan Solstice course with Blake Wood. Blake and I saw most of the racers as we ran backwards on the course up Grassy Mountain and later climbed back up to 13,000′ to the Continental Divide. We made a quick descent after thunderstorms started rocking and rolling on the Divide. The organizers of the event did a great job with this difficult and amazing course– I definitely will be back to run it at some point!

The following day Kyle, his brother Eric, and I explored the Hardrock course for four hours out of Cuningham Gulch. The climb out of Cuningham is literally straight up a game path and has no mercy on sea level lungs. We went over Green Mountain and down to Stony Pass, with lots of snow and great glissading, and then up to Buffalo Boy Ridge. Sitting on the Continental Divide Trail, we took in amazing amazing 360 degree views of the San Juans. This is truly an amazing place.

Since I arrived the weather has warmed with sunny skies and 75-80 degree temps, although at night we’ve been down in the high to mid 30’s while camping at 11,000′. After only four days my eyes have been struck with the beauty and ruggedness of the San Juans. My lungs sure have been feeling more of the latter.

On Monday June 18, I took a hike on the Colorado Trail near Molas Pass, deciding to take an easier day after the weekend. This week my friend Sam came into
town from WA to spend some time in the mountains and explore the course. On Tuesday Kyle and I did a little exploring to see what the snow conditions were like on the latter part of the course. We made it up U.S. Grant Swamp Pass from Kam’s Traverse and then also went up towards Putnam Basin. Some thick stretches of snow, but things looked doable to put in some big days when Sam came into town. So on Wednesday we ran from Silverton to Maggie’s Gulch and down to Animas Forks Rd. Had a
treacherous crossing of Little Giant Pass–definoitely did not want to slip with several hundred foot drop over a cliff! We were the first over the pass besides a couple of mountain goats. Thursday Kyle and I ran over Engineer Pass down to Ouray where Sam met us on the Bear Creek Trail. We had some lunch at Governor Basin while waiting out some thunderstorms, then made our way towards Virginius Pass. Lots of snow on the way up, and more thunder, made us call it a day at 12,400′. Ran into
Liz and Rick Hodges who planned on getting to the pass. Took us no time to glissade down below 11,000′–definitely a fun ride down! Friday we took it easier and took Sam up to Grant-Swamp Pass where we ran into John Anderson who did an out and back to Ophir Pass.

After these three days on the course, I had a new respect for how tough this course is and how tough the miners were who traversed these amazing mountains. I was blown away with how long it takes to cover just a few miles of this beautiful course. My lungs were also being hit harder by the altitude and I was feeling like I am out of
shape, gasping for air up the slightest of inclines!

Saturday I did a short little cruise with Kyle in Silverton and stopped by Emily Baer’s house to get the scoop on Sunday’s run. Emily invited us on a 30+ mile point to point sojourn from Engineer Mountain to Silverton. Kyle and I were ready to get some faster running miles in after all the power walking on the Hardrock course. We had fantastic weather on Sunday as we summitted Engineer Mountain to 13,000′. We then made our way to the CO Trail, rolling up and down between 12,000′ and 11,000′. The run finished with the last 5 miles of the Hardrock course to Silverton. Definitely was worn out after that seven hour day on the trail!

Monday June 25 was a rest day and lots of work. I have been doing phone consults with some of coaching clients, making for some busy days during the week! Tuesday Kyle and I did a tempo run up Kendall Peak to 13,000′, 4,000′ climb up a mining road over 6 miles, from downtown Silverton. It felt like my lungs were going to burst, but I finally felt like I was getting acclimated as Kyle didn’t leave me in the dust! Later that afternoon Kyle and I explored a mining road on a recovery run to find a new camping spot as my camping site at Little Molas Lake would be closing due to campground repairs for the rest of the season. I will say, though, it’s hard to do recovery runs at 9,000′ with little flat terraine!

Wednesday was an easy day in town to rest up for the big back-to-back we had planned for the following two days. Thursday was the first 42 miles of the Hardrock course from Silverton to Grouse Gulch, close to 14,000′ of climb. Friday was Governor Basin to Kam’s Traverse in 30+ miles. Over two days we did most of the climbing on the Hardrock course with fantastic weather. As I’ve alluded to, Hardrock miles are tough and slow miles! These two days were definitely tough, but also gave me confidence in my training. Seeing most of the course in this fashion gave me an understanding of why they call the Hardrock Hundred “Wild andTough”! Although the sheer beauty of the Hardrock course can ease the discomfort of the climbs and altitude, it didn’t seem to comfort me as much as I made my way up the 5,000′ climb out of Telluride on Friday afternoon. I tried to imagine that I would be doing this climb at midnight during the race with a body and mind that would already be pushed close to thelimits.

After a couple of easy runs and a shorter long run up to Crater Lake on the weekend, I am finally ready to taper for the next two weeks. The Hardrock course has allowed me to explore my abilities as a trail runner and even before the actual race has challenged me like no other course. Definitely will be more internal exploring come July 13th!

Follow my progress on the Hardrock Hundred website: Hardrock Live.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 9:03 pm and is filed under Racing, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.