Last weekend I decided to put together a long run from Boulder to my house in Superior that incorporated quite a bit of climbing. Now, I do a fair amount of hiking, and have certainly scaled some mountains, but my trail running has been on mostly rolling terrain, with a longer run (12+ miles) picking up under 1,000′ of elevation. The route I put together was a far departure from that–14.5 miles and ~1,600′ of climbing, with most of the climbing occuring within the first few miles.
The run started in Chautauqua and followed the Mesa Trail to the S. Mesa Trailhead, then hooked into Dowdy Draw, Community Ditch, and Marshall Mesa. From there, it followed Cowdry Draw / Homestead back to Superior. The day that I chose to run it was going to be hot, so I took a Lyft to Chautauqua before the sun was up, waited for it to get light enough to run, and got going around 6:15am. The first 2-3 miles were honestly pretty brutal. Tons of climbing without anything resembling a flat and, to make it more interesting, all done on legs that weren’t quite warmed up yet. By miles 4-5, I had done the majority of the climbing and got to enjoy a nice ~2 mile downhill to the S. Mesa trailhead. Then it was all familiar, undulating trails with only one semi-notable climb that felt like nothing after the other climbs I’d done that day.
Strava data / route from the run:
I finished back at home around 9:15am feeling great and hooked on the idea of getting more vertical in my training. I’m going to start trying to do at least 2 runs a week with over 1,000′ of climbing–a short run during the week and I’ll make sure my weekend long run is a bit more painful than it used to be. I don’t think I’ll be doing this run again for a while, but I’ve found a couple 5-8 mile options that climb 1,200-1,800′, so I can certainly get my vertical in. If I hit 3k’ a week of climbing, I’d be super happy.
So why the climbing? As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m planning to do the Quad Rock 50 (25 mile option) in May 2019, which is 25 miles of technical trail running in Fort Collins with 5,500′ of ascent. I’ve got a lot of work to do before then.
Happy Climbing!