This past weekend I ran the Gaspin in the Aspen 15K Trail race in Flagstaff Arizona. We headed up to Flagstaff Friday morning with the family and made a stop at Bearzona, which is a Wildlife Park of sorts that you drive your car through the enclosures of the animals which range from different types of sheep, beers, wolves, and buffalo. If this sounds familiar to some it is because it is owned by the same people that created Bear Country USA in Rapid City South Dakota. Both are great places to stop at with kids of any age. We then continued to Flagstaff checked in & met up with friends for some dinner, I ate pancakes. We then went back to the hotel and the kids went swimming while I started getting my race gear together for the 8am start Saturday morning.
Saturday morning arrived we (my wife & I) packed up the kids and headed to the Nordic Ski Center where the race is held. The race information has 8,000' as the starting elevation for the course and maps show this race topping off around 8,300'. I would tell you actual elevations off of my Garmin but I forgot my Garmin in the hotel room. Not a big deal I just stole my wife's little cheap watch she had on. The plan though was to try and not go out to hard but still keep the average pace around 7:30/mi but without a watch I wouldn't know where or how far I was into the race through all the twists and turns. The plan changed to run by feel since I have only raced this course once before which is my only other altitude race 2 years ago. I went for a short warm-up with Doug and made the usual port-a-potty stop before heading to the line. Jacob and Nathan gave me hugs and last little bit of advice which only a 4 year old can do, Run FAST DAD!
For some reason the Flagstaff runners didn't want to get up to the line so I started right on it knowing I would get past but that would give me an opportunity to see who's in front of me and gage others in the race. Within a half mile of the start the long climb to mile 3 began, yes this course is uphill for the first 3 miles with a few little downhills and flat areas inbetween. I ran by feel and made sure that I was in sight of others so I did not have to depend on locating trail markers myself. This strategy worked well and I made sure that I stayed in touch with the runners ahead of me but made sure not to push the hills to hard at the bigging of the race. Right after mile 3 there was a very long downhill section that I passed 3 people on. From that point on I did not pass or get passed on the course but the two guys I was trailing kept me on course with a great pace even up the hills. I hung right onto these guys until approximately mile 7 and what felt like the steepest hill on the course. They opened a pretty good gap on me and it stayed at that for pretty much the rest of the race. I finished with a time of 1:05:10 on my watch. My bib did not register at the finish so the results show me at 21 place in 1:06:00 behind the two ladies that I passed which made me really 19 place. Those two ladies must have battled each other the entire race because it came down to the last 5 meters to determine who was going to win.
I have been debating if I should email the race director and get my time and place fixed but it truely doesn't matter because I know what I ran. What I ran was better than expected at 8,000' coming from Havasu at 500'. The goal was to break 70 minutes and I thought the absolute fastest I could run was maybe 65 minutes and I did that feeling pretty comfortable at 8,000+ feet of elevation. We rapped the day up with a trip to see cliff dewllings at Oak Creek Canyon with 250+ stairs to climb up an down and a great dinner with friends. On our way home we stopped at a Deer Farm and lunch in Williams that the kids loved!!
All in All it was a great Adventure!!
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