Horsetooth Half-Marathon
21 April, 2001
Fort Collins, Colorado
It was so nice of the Fort
Collins running club to organize a foot race in honor of my birthday – my
41st to be exact. I
traveled to Ft. Collins in the company of Kelly Schalk – friend, graduate
student, incredible endurance athlete, and “coach”. I rely on Kelly for all sorts of
training and racing advice.
I’m generally faster on a bicycle than she is, but that’s
about it. She offered to help pace
me through the race, “unless you’re too slow, then I’ll take
off”. I wasn’t in such
prime running shape, but I had been doing enough miles that I thought I should
be able to set a PR, as the only other half-marathon I have officially run is
Steamboat, several years ago (1:46:37).
The Horsetooth course was decidedly more difficult than Steamboat, with
the latter half of the race spent charging up and down the road that passed
along the reservoir of the same name located just west of Fort Collins. We started off with a bang and charged
along the road, which was flat to slightly downhill for a the first few miles.
We hit the first mile marker
with a guy reading off the times saying “6:50” – yikes! I don’t run that fast, even for a
single mile. Well, what the hell
– I just let it roll cause it wasn’t too bad. Kelly was loping along at my side,
chatting up everyone around us.
Most folks by that point were already trying to conserve their breath,
but Kelly didn’t seem to mind that she seldom got a response. After only a couple of miles we
encountered Derek Mitchum stretching beside the road. He had started off with the leaders, but apparently
hadn’t warmed up sufficiently for the 5:10 opening mile. His cramps got the better of them, and
after jogging the first couple of miles with us he packed it in. At what Kelly estimated to be the 4.1
mile mark, she serenaded me with a
chorus of “Happy Birthday”.
At this point, we encountered
the first hill and the real race seemed to begin. Up till this point, we had been knocking off pretty
consistent 7 min miles -- I was
pleased to even have done that for four miles. While I thought I was going fast, Kelly apparently thought
otherwise and gapped me on the hill.
I ran the downhill pretty hard and kept her in sight. We then began a progression of hills of
reasonably long and steep nature – it was tough. Historically, hills have been my
strength, but I was finding that many of those around me were pulling steadily
away as we headed up. I closed the
gap on many of those same runners going down the hills (cyclist legs!), but
they generally had my number. I
realized after the race that since I usually run a much slower pace on flat
sections, consequently I have more left for the hills and am surrounded by a
generally “slower” group of runners. This time, I’d put out a substantially greater effort
than normal and was running with a faster group than normal, consequently I
was/seemed slower on the hills.
All the time we were going up and down, I’d kept Kelly in
sight. In fact, I spent a good
portion of the race with four red-headed women immediately in front of me. At one point when I was running beside
two of them, I gasped out the comment “What’s with all the
red-headed women in this area”.
I realized it was kind of forward, so I pointed out that I was read-headed
too. They just smirked and ran off
and left me.
I made one tactical mistake
in my effort to reel-in Kelly – I made my move on the next to last
downhill, rather than on the last one.
I was running downhill significantly faster than Kelly, and came
pounding up behind her on the downhill.
She looked over at me and said “Holy Cow!” and then sprinted
up the next hill, putting sufficient distance on me that I couldn’t catch
entirely up to her on the next downhill, and I had to be content with coasting
in 11 seconds behind her at 1:37:15.
I was extremely pleased with
my effort and time. It’s a
tough course and I managed to hold what is for me a high pace (7min 25sec/mile)
for a long time. I don’t see
how I could have gone any faster on that day, on that course. I was 78th overall, 68th
out of 403 men, and 17th out of 62 men in the 40-44 age group. Kelly, despite not really racing it,
was 77th overall, 9th out of 444 women, and 2nd
out of 103 women in the 25-29 age group.
There were several other
Laramie residents in attendance.
Farhad Jafari, math prof, fast runner, and nice guy finished 15th
overall in 1:25:42, and 3rd in men aged 45-49. Yowser! – that’s fast. Perry Wechsler, despite having had
several back surgeries in the preceding year, managed a 1:43:06. I should only be so tough…
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