Yesterday I ran about 15 miles around Rampart Reservoir in Woodland Park, Colorado for fun. This was the 42nd Annual Pony Express Trail Run, minus one year for the Waldo Canyon fire. A little background, taken from the website:
“The Pony Express Trail Run originated quite a few years ago, as far back as 1977. The initial PPRR newsletter of April of 1977 shows the Pony Express scheduled for October 15th. At that time, the race was run from Woodland Park to Monument. At one time, it was run on the Section 16 trails in SW Colorado Springs. It has been at the Rampart Reservoir location for at least 10 years, if not more.
The event has always made an effort to celebrate all of the runners. Thus overall and age-group awards are not given. Instead, every finisher is given a unique award each year.
This is a 15 mile trail run around Rampart Reservoir with the trees starting to show their fall colors. The scenery alone on this race will blow you away. By design, this race is small and is a best kept secret, as there is not enough parking or other infrastructure to make this a large race.
There are 3 water stops on the trail. You are encouraged to carry additional fluids. The race normally gets about 100+ participants. If you get lost easily, then this is not the course for you, as there are places where you can make wrong turns. The rule of thumb is to keep the reservoir on your right shoulder. If you are straying far away from the reservoir, then you've made a wrong turn.”
(I know the 42nd Annual doesn’t line up with 1977, so there must be other evidence that it was run before that.)
I first heard about this race a year or two ago and thought it sounded fun, and it happened to work out this year that I was able to run it. There is no pre-registering, you have to show up race morning and sign up then. It’s five dollars cheaper if you are a Pikes Peak Road Runners member, but even if you aren’t a member the race was only $15 (I’m no math whiz, but I’m pretty sure that’s only $1 per mile!).
The closer I got to this race, the more nervous I was. I’m not really a trail runner so I wasn’t sure how long it would take me. Also, there would be actual trail runners there and since this was a small race, I was worried I would look out of place. Sometimes I suffer from imposter syndrome, and this was definitely one of those times. I thought about sleeping in and bailing on this, but I talked myself into getting it done. Oh well, you gotta start somewhere, right?
Anyway, I left the house about 4:45 a.m. to drive south and hopefully arrive by the time registration started, which was 7:00. It didn’t take as long as my GPS said it would, probably because I-25 South at 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday is a beauty. I got there, parked, waited in line behind a couple others, signed up and was back in my car by 7:05. It was a little chilly up at 9,000+ feet, so I sat in my car for a little while. I word long sleeves and gloves, but pushed up the sleeves pretty much right away and took off the gloves about five miles in. It was windy and chilly in the shade, but it felt great.
The race info says they get 100+ runners, but according to the results, they haven’t had over 100 since 2010. It seemed like a pretty good crowd, and the race this year looks like it had 67 finishers. We lined up and they warned us once again about keeping the water to our right shoulder. If you spend too much time not seeing the water, you’re probably lost. They also said if we got to the second or third water station and decided today was not our day, we could get a ride back to the start. There were EMTs on mountain bikes to lead and follow the race, but also in the middle of the pack, so the runners were well taken care of. We all started out together headed down Rainbow Gulch Trail toward Rampart Reservoir Trail. During that first mile, there were two guys behind me and one asks the other how his foot feels. He replied something like, “It hurts. But, there’s nothing I can do about it, so might as well keep going.” Based on my own foot issues, it almost seemed like a conversation in my own head. Both feet feel fine today, by the way, but at times one or both of them were not happy to be there yesterday. Hearing that though, along with a couple other things that happened helped calm me down and get me through.
When I got to the water I was just amazed at how beautiful it looked with the sun. I wanted to take a picture there, but I kept running with the pack. We got to the single-track trail and everyone was just cruising along. I still ended up going out a bit too fast, but we were all going downhill, so what are you gonna do? Anyway, I tried to stay with this one group of two or three runners, and I managed to keep up with them for most of the race. We’d walk on some of the uphills and then run from the top and walk some more. There weren’t too many places to actually climb, but there were a couple of small, awkward spots. Somewhere around Mile 4 I found myself alone. I could hear the two or three in front of me, but couldn’t always see them. The one guy was pretty good at snot-rockets, and he must have liked to do them since it seemed like every time I’d get within earshot he’d fire ‘em off from both barrels. Maybe it keeps the mountain lions away. I spent several of the miles with no one else in view, and the peace was awesome.
The course had three water stations and the first one was kind of funny. Somewhere around mile 4.5, because it was on the trail and not at an accessible area, there was a guy who had rode a bike up the course and there were cups of water set all around on whatever flat rock surface was available. It was also right around a corner/huge boulder, so you come running up hill, turn left and holy crap there’s someone and bunch of cups right there. Kind of scared me. The first five miles went pretty well. I slowed down, but still figured out I was on pace to finish when I wanted to.
I hiked a short portion of this trail from the other direction a few months ago with Julie and a friend of ours, and I kept trying to figure out if I had made it the point where we turned around, but I couldn’t really figure it out. Eventually I did come off the trail near the parking area and the dam, where there was another water station (Mile 9.1) and they also had pretzels and M&Ms, so that was cool. From there it was nearly a mile across the dam and they had one last water station right before you get back on the trail. I was now done with two-thirds of the race.
At the trail head, there was a warning sign that said something about snagging tree roots. I thought I figured out the gist of it, but it probably would have been better to read the whole sign. Let me say that one of the reasons I don’t often run trails is because I am clumsy enough to fall on flat pavement, I really don’t need to add obstacles. I am somewhat proud to say that during the first two-thirds of the race I only actually kicked one tree root, and my foot glanced off it so I didn’t really trip or anything. It was mile 10.86 when I fell the first time (I looked at my watch to make a mental note of it). It wasn’t totally a running trip, I was climbing some steps next to a boulder and my foot caught and my palms hit some gravel. OK, no big deal. It was a little later that I was actually running and my left foot caught one of those snagging tree roots and I pinwheeled my arms forward and caught myself before falling. My Orange Mud double barrel nearly flew over my head. That was somewhere around mile 12.36. When it happened again at 12.68 miles, I was swearing. Eff you, tree roots! Eff you, trees!! Eff Arbor Day!! I ended up cracking myself up, but I kept going and I was still smiling.
Some of those miles were through the burn scar from the Waldo Canyon fire, which was eerie to run through, but as beautiful as anything I saw during the run. Eventually I finally made it back to Rainbow Gulch Trail and I was very happy to see the bridge and know that I was almost finished. Home stretch, I thought. When I started and was running downhill, it felt like it was a short, straight stretch of trail. As I was headed back toward the finish so many miles later, I realized how long, curvy and uphill it actually was. I walked most of this part, my legs and my lungs were kind of tapped out.
As I came around the last curve and saw the finish area, I summoned what I could and jogged the last bit to cross the finish line. Someone handed me a horseshoe with a tag on it noted the race info. A very cool memento of a great race.
Based on past race results, and knowing that trail running is typically a slower pace than road running, I tried to figure out about when I would finish. I decided that I would hope for three hours (about 12:00 pace), but would expect about three and a half hours. I was pretty pleased when I came in at 03:10:22. I was 10th out of 10 in the M45-49 age group, but I did manage to finish in front of eight other runners. None of that matters, though, because this race was about me running on trails and I proved to myself I could do it.
I never once thought about quitting. A few times I wondered why I started in the first place, but I never thought about quitting. I definitely plan to run this one again, and perhaps even add another trail race or two into my future plans.
One thing to note is that this was run entirely on the trails around the reservoir, so you could run it any day you wanted to, just to enjoy the beauty or even as training for next year.
