San Juan Solstice 50: A Beautiful Sufferfest

Finally heading above treeline in the morning

This weekend I travelled to Colorado with my super awesome friends Brad and Emily for the San Juan Solstice 50, which is a 50 mile race beginning in Lake City, Colorado through the San Juans.  The course sports around 13,000 feet of elevation gain and is entirely between 8500 and 13,000+ feet.  I knew this race would be challenging, but I feel like I basically trained for it. I mean, I got in some decent mileage and felt about as prepared as I get for races. I have done a race with comparable gain (Mt. Diablo 50) and finished under 16 hours in worse shape than I am now, so that was encouraging. I cannot, however, recall a time where I have ever tried to exert myself above 12,000 feet so that was the primary unknown.




Elevation profile

The race begins and ends in the park in downtown Lake City. The first few miles are on a gentle dirt road before jumping onto single track and heading up up and up to the top. The views that morning were nothing short of spectacular.  (Almost all these pictures are from the morning and don't necessarily correspond to most of this report.)  Anyhow, after about ten miles the course begins a long downhill descent that drops almost as low as the race began. I felt pretty good for the first 17 or so miles and ran downhill hard to make up for my poor climbing.  After the first major aid station that had drop-bags, however, the course heads up this interminable jeep road all the way back up to the top of the Continental Divide. Near the top of the Divide, there is a "townsite" (pic a ways down below) called Carson. After combatting heat and thin air to amble my way up there I couldn't imagine wanting to put anything up there much less mining and toiling and working up there. Nutty people.

 

Back to this never ending climb to Carson. It never ends. And it was hot. Eventually I rolled into the Carson aid station with 40 minutes before the cut-off (I think anyhow, unless my math was fuzzy) and collapsed into a chair and sat for probably too long (10 minutes) before continuing up to the tippy top of the Divide at 13,000+ feet. 

 

It was sort of shocking to me to get up there and see a maze of jeep roads, most of which appear to be open to motorized use.  It makes sense given the fact that people were mining up here not that long ago, but it was an odd sight. 

We made our way onto the Colorado Trail which, in that particular area, is largely driveable if you were so-inclined and it were legal (which I don't think it is on the actual Colorado Trail).

The terrain was perfectly runnable but I could do no better than probably 2 mph that high up. I felt pretty nauseous to be quite frank.

Adding insult to injury, the smoke from all the many Colorado fires rolled in, obscuring what I am sure were marvelous views. The only good thing was it was HOT and the smoke also obscured the sun and cooled things down a bit.

 

On the Divide I started getting passed by what seemed to be a lot of people. This lovely woman from Crested Butte tried to make conversation with me but with each exhaled word I felt a wave of nausea roll over me and my entire chest/sternum ached in protest. I loosened my pack completely to ease the restrictive feeling but there was only so much I was capable of doing up there.

 

Eventually the trail started winding down to the next aid station, I believe called "Divide" or some such. I felt absolutely spent. There were several people hanging out in the aid station and at that point my calories were entirely Mountain Dew calories. I think I was a little dehydrated because I couldn't chew/swallow food. Mountain Dew, which is gross, was my saviour.

 

 I took note of the sign telling me how far the next aid station was and the cut-off time. It was then 4:00 p.m. and I had 2 hours, until 6:00 p.m. to get to the next aid station 9 miles away.

Carson Townsite

I quickly headed out doing the math but unable to figure out what that pace would be. I am never very good at math anyhow, but math at 12,000 feet and 31 miles is even harder. I did know that when I do a run through my neighborhood, feeling fresh and on road, 9 miles takes me around an hour and a half. I decided to stop with trying to figure it out and just go.  Either I could do it or I would get pulled at the Slumgullion aid station at mile 40.

Up on the Continental Divide

  

 This segment was (thankfully) largely downhill so once we dropped below 12,000 feet and the air felt comparatively rich with oxygen I started running as hard as I could. I started passing some people who had long ago passed me, such as the Crested Butte chica. I approached this guy who seemed to be in a bad way and he told me he had given up. "There's no way we are going to make the cutoff" he said. I looked at my watch and saw we had about 5 miles to go and an hour to do so. "Don't give up!" I said and sprinted onward, miffed that this dude told me I couldn't do it. I sort of knew he was right but also viewed this as my meager opportunity to really race (in my own head that is). I was going to make the cut-off or collapse trying.

Smoke and Jeep Trails on the Continental Divide

I passed another guy who had earlier passed me and made an enthusiastic comment about how much better I looked. Feeling totally amped I sprinted down the super rocky steep road, practicing the downhill technique Emily told me about which involves just not worrying about falling and running fast (fast being relative of course).

Smoky on the Divide

I made it to the aid station with 3 minutes to spare. They filled my water and I took off, confident that I could cover the remaining 10 miles in 3 hours.  I knew roughly 6 of those miles were downhill or at least not uphill.  Or at least I thought I remembered that, I wasn't too sure.  My Garmin died by that point so I would just have to keep moving and hope for the best.  The next six miles was on a private ranch (Vickers' Ranch) and involved a climb through a beautiful huge Aspen grove.  It was super hard though and it was hot and I basically wanted to lay down and give up.  I would take a few steps, stop, whine to myself, feel nauseous and repeat.  It was pretty horrible, and in hindsight I wish I had a Garmin to remind me to keep a move on.  This is where I really probably messed up my race but I really felt incredibly bad.  This went on for what felt like forever and to make it worse, the course sweeps caught me and were on my heels with the clanking of the trail markers reminding me that I was the pathetic slow person the sweeps have to stay behind and probably wish they could pass.  They seemed really nice though.  I wish I felt better because I essentially looked at them in disgust and turned up my music to pretend they weren't there.  I finally began the descent and rolled into the last aid station where I was told I had an hour to go 4 miles.  No problem.


Yeah I was slow.  And 13,311 feet is high for me.  This is basically the last picture I take during the race, which given how snap happy I typically am should tell you something...

I felt like I sprinted all the downhill to the finish and either it wasn't quite an hour, was more like 5 miles or I was just slower than I thought (most likely) but I finished 12-15 minutes after the 16 hour cutoff.  Thus, I am an unofficial finisher, which is basically meaningless to me at this point.  I finished.  They kept the finish open, the timeclock going and Brad and Emily were there smiling and waiting for me with cold IPA.  

Brad and Emily at Royal Gorge en route back to Colorado Springs, trying to steal of view without
paying $25 each (ripoff)

On the whole, it was a fantastic weekend.  Hanging out with good friends on vacation is pretty awesome.  I ate a lot of junk food, drank some beer and had a great time.  Not an impressive finish time but I'm pleased with myself for making it across the finish line, even if it was practically hand-in-hand with the sweeps and I was the last racer to cross the finish line.  It was a tough race, and I am not a fast person.  That combination makes it ok to me that I barely eeked out an unofficial finish.  
 
P.S.  Emily did awesome finishing in 11 hours something, 4th woman overall and Brad finished in 13 hours, which was good considering he was not at all rested.  Also, I should note that this race is incredibly well organized with top notch volunteers.  I highly recommend it, especially if you like to suffer.