17 miles to the Keyhole
Yesterday, I returned to Rocky Mountain National Park for a week of training and good mountain living. I decided that with exactly 2 weeks to go to the Leadville Marathon, it would be as good as time as any to try a more aggressive run up to 13K feet. So I decided to run up to the Keyhole, an opening on the way up to Long’s Peak. I drove into RMNP and decided to jump right in with all the other visitors and take the shuttle up to Glacier Gorge. Most locals really detest all the tourists in RMNP and would rarely join in with them on a Sunday, one of the busiest times. I love meeting all the people from all over the world here to visit RMNP and I try to talk to just about everybody I can, finding out where they are from and what hike they are doing. It’s much better for me to fraternize with my fellow Americans in a place I feel comfortable, the wilderness, instead of in a Target in a suburb. So on the ride up there I talked to several people heading out for hikes and left with a good dose of cheer and energy that I get from meeting people.
I also wanted to run the North Long’s Peak trail via the Boulder Brook trail, a route to Long’s I have heard is really nice and I have never taken. All the trails at RMNP are very technical but also a runnable grade. I was averaging under 15 min/mille and felt very smooth and solid while climbing. Soon I had views like this:
I have been taking breaks on these long runs every 5 miles but I felt so good I almost felt like I could run all the way up without a break. But I forced myself to stop at the 5 mile mark which was right before exiting tree line. I then took off and hit the harder 20min/mile work above treeline. The hardest section was a long climb up a ridge but then things flattened out as I approached the famous Boulder Field before the Keyhole. I decided to try to make it to the Keyhole before 2 hours 30 minutes of running time and after some careful bounding and navigation around some snowfields I made it exactly at 2:30. I recorded this video:
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It still feels amazing to me that I can get to such beautiful places with such little effort. I don’t mean that I am fit enough to run up there quick, that is really cool too, but just that I can decide while driving up from Boulder to go run up to the Keyhole and then a few hours later be sitting there. It really made me giddy and I took off down for what I knew would be a very fast downhill. RMNP is well, very rocky, so it was an extremely technical descent but I flew and at times had fantastic rhythm, aided on by the melancholy tunes of Bright Eyes on my iPod. I stopped at Alberta Falls and to the onlooking amazement of all the other hikers quickly ran right down to the water and dumped my tired legs in the rushing water for several minutes. ”Is it cold?” one tourist lady asked, rather dumbly since obviously the water is very cold. I told her of the magic of mountain cold water for tired legs and she looked at me a bit blankly. I took off running down the hill. Usually the other hikers are amazed that anybody runs these trails and it’s really fun to fly past them, of course politely and giving them plenty of time to move.
Finishing my run I suddenly had some trauma and distinct pain in my forefoot and it looks like I developed a stone bruise from the aggressive downhill running. I have been running in my LaSportiva Fireblades without my custom insoles since I haven’t had any forefoot trouble in a while, and jamming my forefoot with high impact into the sharp rocks for 8 miles of descent without much protection caused the problem. There also might be something about the way I run or my feet anatomy which is putting all the weight right under the head of my second toe on my left foot and perhaps I need to get an EVA plate or some other additional protection for my forefeet. I am going to make an appointment with a trusted doctor in Boulder and see if I can get some additional protection. I am taking off today and hope that I will be fine for another long run tomorrow morning.
Happy First Day of Summer from RMNP!
