Leadville Trail Marathon

I am researching the Leadville Trail Marathon today.  I am genuinely embarrassed I know as little about as I do with it coming up so quickly.  Here are some things I have learned.

  • 3rd place was taken by Duncan Callahan last year, one of my favorite trail runners, in 3:55.  Ouch!  According to these results, sub 5 hours still puts you in the top 35 or 40!  This is going to be a much bigger race effort than my previous longest race, 3:55 at the Collegiate Peaks marathon last year.
  • The course (map here) is primarily on old mining roads around Leadville and tops out at 13,185 feet on Mosquito Pass.   The course is an out and back!  I like this a lot personally.  A lot of people hate loops but in my mind it makes the course a lot more manageable mentally as you know the course on the way back.  Plus it mimics how I do most of my training runs.
  • Looking at the course profile below it is obvious that the central/crux/challenge is Mosquito Pass, a steep climb to 13K that will be a lung buster.  This is what I have to train for.  I watched videos of the climb over Mosquito Pass it looks a bit like the Niwot Trail, which is a great runnable place for me to train. The climb at mile 20 will be a killer too, because I will be so tired.  I will need to have a really good refuel at mile 16 or so.
  • The race has 6,333 feet of gain.  That is about the same as Imogene but spread out over more miles.  
  • Race starts at 8am (an hour too late with summer heat considerations IMO) with an 8 1/2 hour time cutoff.  The fact that some people take that much time is a bit scary but makes sense.  People take 6 hours for road marathons.
  • There are 7 aid stations.  I might carry some of my own nutrition anyway, I will have to think about this.

Here is the course profile (it doesn’t look good scrunched inside my narrow blog layout so you can view it here also)

My plan is to get as many 20 miler runs in the mountains as possible this month and lose weight.  Long alpine climbs on runnable roads or trails (like at Niwot or Grays and Torres) are especially in order.