Imogene Pass Trail Run

My father has been talking about the Imogene Pass Run for a couple years, asking me if I would come out to run the race in 2010 when he turns 70. He wanted to break the 70+ age group record, and as he held the age group record for 65-69 year olds for a few years, he definitely had his chances. I signed up, as did Wayne, Kathy and Karen. It would be a family outing.

Kathy and I flew out from Seattle to Ouray, CO on Friday, the afternoon before the race. I've heard that if you do a race immediately after going to altitude, that it does not affect you that much. Don't believe a word of it. We were feeling winded in Ouray at only 7800 feet in elevation, and the trail run crested out at 13,1oo feet high.

Kathy and I had been to Ouray before a couple of years ago in the winter time to go ice climbing. Ouray is the ice climbing capitol of the world, at least according to us Seattle folks. There is no really good ice climbing in Washington state unless you like climbing up glaciers. In Ouray, we can climb one of dozens of frozen waterfalls within ten minutes of our hotel, and then come back and enjoy a warm soak in the hotel hottub.

The trail race turned out very nice. Threats of rain were not realized, although during the awards ceremony afterwards, marble-sized chunks of hail rained down on us. I squeaked a few times when I was conked on the head by a particularly pointy hailstone. I was glad that the mountains spared us this weather earlier in the day when we were hiking our way over the pass.

I did a lot of hiking during the race. The course is 17 miles long and has 5500 feet of elevation gain from Ouray up to Imogene Pass over the cours of 10 miles, then drops 7 miles and 4500 feet into Telluride. I tried to run as much as I could, but is hard with one lung tied behind your back. Even so, I felt pretty good and finished the race in just over three hours time.

Wayne tried a different training tactic in which he ran 7 miles a couple months ago and then never ran again. He relied exclusively on his good running genes that he got from our dad. he finished in four hours, then promptly passed out before he even made it out of the finishers gate. This unofficial study of twins suggests that months of hard training will only decrease your finishing time by 33% compared to sitting on the couch and listening to Chinese language tapes.

My dad had a good race too, but not quite good enough to beat the course record. I think he was three minutes too slow, but he did win his age group (like he usually does). Karen and Kathy had more relaxing runs. Everyone in the family made it safely to the finish line in Telluride. Looking at the medic tent, I could see that many people did not; many were having their hands and knees patched up after having suffered falls on the steep, rocky run down.

I've told my friends that often the drive home is harder than the race. I was refering to doing 24 hour races (e.g. adventure races, rogaining) in which it is very easy to fall asleep at the wheel after having stayed up for so long, but it was true in this case as well. Our friend's dog tried to lick my face, and I playfully pretended to lick his as well. Then he bit me in the face. Now I have teeth marks on my eyebrow. Lesson learned: don't lick a gift dog in the face, or something like that.