Revel Rockies Marathon: 

I went up to 11,000 feet and it was all downhill from there!

In September of 2013 I ran the Erie Marathon, which is flat, in 4:04:14 at the age of 68.  After that performance I started wondering whether I could run a time better than the existing Delaware state record for a 70 year-old man, which is 3:57:06, in a little more than a year when I turned 70.  Well, I didn’t really work on it in terms of training and my first attempt at the Mo’ Cowbell Marathon in October 2014 was miserable as half of it was on a rough gravel trail.

The next two marathons I did in the fall of 2014 were better – 4:14 and 4:15, easily Boston Qualifiers for man of 70, but nowhere near the necessary sub four hour time.  Over the winter I gained weight – maybe ten pounds.  In 2015 my times were slower between 4:31 and 4:45.

 But by spring I had found a marathon in Colorado – the Revel Rockies.  It was advertised as a totally downhill event, dropping 5,400 feet from a starting altitude of 11,200 feet.  The website talked about PRs and how the altitude would not be that much of a problem since the run was downhill (much easier aerobically than a level or uphill course).  So I resolved to do it as my Colorado marathon.  Carolyn would come with me, we’d take a week and see some sights.

The beginning of June after my slowest marathon of the year in 4:45 in Minneapolis, I resolved to again shed the excess fat.  I restricted my caloric intake to the essentials for several weeks and did a lot of walking in addition to my normal running.  As the date approached in mid-July, sure enough I had lost close to ten pounds.

The one thing the race website told me to do was to become inured to downhill running.  In April and May, I did some half-mile downhill repeats on New Linden Hill road.  But going back up the hill was taking to long.  I was saving my energy for the downhill running, so I was walking back up the hill.  It was taking me close to ten minutes on the uphill.  That wasn’t going to work.

By June I had decided on running down a portion of Duncan Road at Delcastle.  The section was a bit over a quarter mile. I was running them at a pace of 8:30 or better, and would do the last one each time under a 7:00 minute pace.  I started with ten repeats and did each subsequent workout three days later, each time adding two more repeats.  I did my last workout of 20 repeats two and a half weeks before the marathon in order to recover.  I figured that was the best I could do with a compressed training schedule.

We flew out to the Denver area just the Friday before the Sunday race.  No, there would be no acclimating to the altitude as I wanted to recover before going home, rather than get on a plane with sore legs.  In fact I realize now that acclimating to such attitude takes at least a couple weeks. Even getting used to being a mile high would not make me ready to deal with even less oxygen in the entire marathon, which is all higher than a mile.

On Saturday we drove to Golden, Colorado, site of the hugely massive Coors Brewery, which draws its water from the creek running through the middle of town.  The expo was at a pavilion at the Colorado School of Mines.  We were not there long.  One nice feature was that each registrant had the choice of taking a long-sleeve shirt, a short-sleeve shirt or a singlet.  I chose the singlet, because I already have dozens of both long and short sleeve shirts.

We got to bed early that night – by 8 pm – because we had to get up by 2:30 A.M.  I wanted to catch the bus from the finish area out up the mountains to the start early.  Eight pm still felt like close to our normal bedtime having just come from the East Coast where it would have been ten pm.  We had bought some good coffee before retiring and stuck it in our motel room refrigerator.  Getting up, we heated the coffee and I also ate a granola bar and a banana.  That helped me use the bathroom before leaving the room. 

Then I drove out to Banadmire Speedway, outside Morrison, where we were to park and I was to catch the bus.  Carolyn stayed in the car, for several hours, until it got lighter.  Eventually she went into Morrison, where the race would finish, and found a place to eat.  Later she watched the finishers while waiting for me.

Meanwhile I walked deeper into the Speedway parking lot where a number of runners were gathering for the first buses.  It was not a good sign when the buses showed a few minutes later that they had to circle around us once in order to pull up to where we were.  Once the buses pulled away, it was also not a good sign that many of the windows on the bus would not close all the way, letting in air that was cooling down to 45 degrees as we ascended the mountains. 

When we reached our destination, I headed for the porta-potties first. At that point there were plenty of them and not that many runners yet.  Then I grabbed a couple of mylar blankets and tried to keep warm, sitting on the gravel. I feel the race organization would do better by the marathoners to have an area with some tarps on the gravel so that people could wait with a bit more warmth and comfort.

At some point there were announcements that the race would start ten minutes late because the last bus was late in leaving the staging area (more on buses later).  I wandered off down a closed off gravel road to find a tree after pounding down a quart of Gatorade and not wanting to deal with the now long porta-potty lines.

Finally we were told to line up and everyone walked about a hundred yards down the road to the start.  Being either ambitious or delusional, I lined up near the 3:45 pacer, figuring I could back off to the 3:55 pace if necessary..  Remember that in training, I was running downhill faster than this and not breathing hard at all.  Well, about 30 seconds after the start, I knew that my calculations and the assurances of the race website were wrong.  Running at what I considered a reasonable downhill marathon pace had me breathing is if I were in an all-out 5K effort.  I was sucking air.  For a few minutes my arms felt weak.  I thought maybe my breathing would catch up in a mile, well two miles, maybe four miles.  It didn’t.

  

Meanwhile, we passed the one-mile mark.  Already I had let the 3:45 group slip away, but not by much yet.  That would be an average pace of around 8:30, yet my watch read 9:48 at one mile.  After I finished, another pacer confirmed the first mile was long.  For the first eight miles I averaged a 9:10 pace, including the extra distance in the first mile.  But my quads were accumulating a couple thousand feet of downhill pounding.

Just after eight miles came the first uphill, something which the race website and course map did not prepare me.  As soon as I started uphill, I could not run.  I could not get enough oxygen to my muscles.  I simply started to walk and immediately scrapped any illusion about running a fast marathon.  That was a good thing as there were eventually four hills. 

I passed the half marathon point in 2:08 something, under a ten minute pace.  But then the course became problematic for me. For the entire second half we ran along a creek on the right side of the road.  For some reason that makes no sense to me, the course was in the right lane with the left lane open to traffic.  The right lane naturally cantered fairly severely towards the creek to run off any water (whereas the left lane appeared much closer to level).  That played right into my leg length discrepancy (right leg is shorter) and the fact that I was already dealing with soreness from going downhill.  So I basically walked the entire second half, doing it in 3:15.  Truth be told, back where I was, most people were walking from 15 miles on. There was very little distance in the second half that was even close to level where I could have attempted a bit of jogging.

Near the end as we approached the town of Morrison the road got closer to level and I covered mile 26 in 13 minutes, as opposed to the 16 and 17 minutes miles I had been walking.  But again, as with the first miles, what should have been the last two tenths of a mile was long.  It took me over five minutes to cover it.  I heard someone yell that the course was more like 26.6 miles.

 

 Once I finished, Carolyn was there waiting.  She had figured I was walking and was not worried, even though I was around an hour slower than I might have reasonably figured I was have run.  Last year’s results (the first time for the event) had no male runner over 70, but this year I couldn’t luck into an age group with a 5:23.  I ended up fifth.  Two of the other men were from Colorado and two from California.  I wondered how much more used to altitude were the two from CA.

Carolyn caught me up on the bus mess.  Recall that the last bus for the marathon was late.  It turns out that a few dozen were not able to catch a bus to the start.  When the women’s winner of the half marathon came in, she was angry and fuming.  Apparently she had actually signed up to do the marathon and dropped down to the half when she couldn’t get on a bus for the marathon.  But that was just the beginning of the mess.  While 800 plus people were registered for the marathon and only a few dozen missed out, there were over 1,600 registered for the half-marathon.  But less than 400 caught a bus and finished the race.  NOT ENOUGH BUSES showed up.  Carolyn had seen hundreds of runners, who were ready to run the half, take off and go for a group run in a park near to the parking lot.

In the next couple of days the information came out that the bus company had been under a cease and desist order from the state of Colorado as it owed thousands of dollars in fines.  Apparently the race organization took a low bidding bus contractor. A day later it sent out an apologetic email offering all those affected (not me), either the entry fee back or free entry in another event.

Recommendation:  The scenery is beautiful.  If you are taking a summer vacation in Colorado, this could fit into your plans.  But do not be under any illusions of having a fast time at attitude that starts at 11,200 feet and is still over a mile at the finish.  The race organization needs to figure out some issues – measuring the correct distance to start since it wants the race to finish at the town park in Morrison; putting the race in the second half in the left lane, instead of the right; hiring a legitimate bus company.  It did own up to its mistake, but created a lot of ill will in that area among runners.