Yesterday I had a morning bounding session with the Ski and Snowboard Club Vail (SSCV) team, but they were off in the afternoon. I was on my own for my strength session, and my girlfriend Emilia Wint needed to do a gym session as well. The two of us had the strength room to ourselves, and coach Eric Pepper opened the gym for us and stayed throughout the session to assist with anything we needed. The session was focused and productive.
Yesterday evening the entire SSCV team had a potluck/barbecue. It was a great opportunity for me to get to know the athletes and their parents. I am proud to be a member of the SSCV Nordic Team. My good friend and recently retired teammate Sylvan Ellefson was there. I had not seen Sylvan since he was on the World Cup last winter. We had to take a selfie together.
Emilia and I drove to Aspen after the barbecue. I had a late night and an early morning because I had to get started on a very long workout. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to have breakfast and ride my bike to the bus stop in time to catch the first bus headed down valley. The sun was creeping down the mountains.
The bus system in Aspen is extensive and easy to navigate.
I took the bus to Basalt where I met up with my good friend Zeke Tiernan. Zeke is a father of two beautiful daughters, a middle school history teacher and an ultra-marathon athlete. He has placed 2nd and 3rd at the Leadville 100-mile running race in the past four years. As soon as I learned I was coming to Aspen (several months ago) I contacted Zeke to see if we could coordinate a long run. He was scheduled to leave tomorrow on a family vacation, so it worked out perfectly that we overlapped for one day. (Also, we couldn’t have done the workout without Zeke’s wonderful wife Molly allowing Zeke to shirk his packing and fatherly duties.)
Zeke and I were joined for the first part of the run by Casey Weaver, who just won and set the course record on the Aspen Backcountry Marathon on Saturday. The three of us drove from Basalt up the Frying Pan valley to the base of the Ruedi Reservoir damn. It was gorgeous at the trail-head.
Zeke (left) and Casey were psyched for the adventure.
We started running up Rocky Fork Creek.
We lost the trail at times and had to cross the creek often. Here are Zeke and Casey trying to stay balanced as Casey’s dog Willie shows them how it’s done.
As we got up high we encountered a little bit of snow. I took this picture of the first patch we saw.
The trail was densely overgrown down low, but it opened up as we got near the top. Here’s Casey running through one of the alpine meadows.
The view from the top back into the Frying Pan was awesome.
Casey turned around at 10 miles. He is still recovering from the weekend’s race. He drove the car back down which helped us immensely with the car shuttle. At the top, the single track Rocky Fork Trail intersects some forest service roads. Zeke and I ran on them for a short period.
We made it to Magy’s Hut of the 10th Mountain Division which is undergoing a face lift.
We then ran an awesome single track to the top of Spruce Creek, where we turned right and headed downhill.
At the confluence of Spruce Creek and Woody Creek we turned left up the Woody Creek Trail.
Soon we had to cross Woody Creek. The runoff has been big this year, and the Woody Creek crossing made us nervous when we were planning the route. It ended up being easy. Here’s Zeke:
After crossing the creek the trail climbs towards the ridge between Woody Creek and Hunter Creek.
As we got higher we hit semi-problematic snow. Several years ago Zeke and I were up on the same trail and we hit big snow. It took us hours to make our way through it and find the trail. Today we had a better idea of where we were headed, and the snow was more easily passable.
As we neared the top, more than five hours into the run, Zeke started suffering. He just wasn’t having a good day and the effects of a sub-par day get multiplied on a long run.
He took some rest, ate and drank.
He worked his way through it, and was soon moving well again. The upper Hunter Creek Valley is gorgeous.
We were both hurting as we headed down the Hunter Creek Trail towards Aspen. We were still a long ways away when we got our first view of the Maroon Bells on the other side of the Roaring Fork Valley.
We refilled our bottles in streams and killed everything in them with chemical tablets.
We were both really hurting as we neared town and were psyched to make it to different landmarks like Van Horn Park.
And Four Corners:
And we were especially psyched to get our first view of town from the Sunnyside Traverse.
The descent into town was pure torture. We were out on the trail for eight hours and forty five minutes. I ran my Timex GPS from the start, and it lasted for an impressively long seven hours and thirty seven minutes. At that point we were just over 32 miles in. Because we knew mine would eventually die, Zeke started his GPS part way through the workout. When he started his, I pressed the “Lap” button on mine so we could add together the total length of the workout which came out to 38.7 miles. It’s the second longest run I’ve ever done. You can see the map and graph of where we went, plus my heart rate data, for the first seven and a half hours here.
I am exhausted this evening.
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