The Mickelson Trail Marathon was going to be a good trip for me. I would finally redeem myself for the previous South Dakota debacle and actually take my son to see Mt. Rushmore, I would get a trophy for finishing the 50 states and have a nice vacation with my family. We got up super early on Saturday morning (4am) to catch our 6am flight to Denver and then onto Rapid City. We picked up our car, at a Subaru dealership, and headed up to Deadwood.
We attended the 50 States Marathon Club reunion meeting, where we got to see Leanhorse Productions (race directors) hand out awards to Roger Biggs (500th Marathon), Darwin Weimer (100th marathon) and Denis McCarthy completing the 50 states. Since Denis wouldn’t officially complete the 50 states until Sunday he was unable to join Jack Brooks, Fifi Wright (sorry Fiona we didn’t get a picture of this), and myself in receiving our 50 States Club awards.
We again got up ridiculously early (to me) around 5:30 (this is for an 8am marathon start, what am I, Paul Williams?). Vance, Scott and I head in the car to catch the bus and as we approach we hit a lot of traffic. We thought for sure it would take an hour to get to the parking place, but it went fairly uneventfully. Vance boarded the bus for the mini and Scott and I head over to the Big Boy bus and settle in for a long drive to the start.I somehow luck into a single seat on the last row and Scott is sitting across the aisle from me in a two-seater. Then two ladies come to the very back and somehow wind up sharing the two-seater with Scott. Way to coach Al! Scott winds up riding on a single butt cheek for the drive up the mountain.We get to the starting line and it is pretty chilly and raining a little. We try to stay warm waiting for the start. About 5-6 minutes before the start my new hero shows up. Somehow he missed the other busses and was able to get his own bus to drop him off at the start within 5 minutes of the start. Well played sir, well played.
The gun goes off and I bolt out of the gates. For trail runs I like to run the first mile pretty fast to get into the trail before it backs up. I didn’t think this trail had any single track but I figured better not to risk it. The start is downhill which allows for some fast running. I am in the lead for about 1/4 mile when someone comes up to me and says “I don’t plan on winning I just wanted to be in the front for a little while”. He then drops to the back, about 1/2 mile in, two guys pass me and I give up any chance of trying to stay with them. I hit mile one in 5:59 and am about 30 seconds behind. Whoa. I don’t think I’ve ever done a first mile that fast before. Probably not a good idea, but hey, “Fly and Die”.
The next miles seems pretty short and I clock a 6:02 even though I wasn’t running that fast. Mile 3 seems about right, but mile four would be long to get us basically back on track. I think they put the mile markers near bridges so it would be easier to set them out versus where they actually went.
0-1: 5:59
1-2: 6:02
2-3: 7:06
3-4: 7:45
So far the race has had a fairly easy grade but over the next couple miles we’d pick up the climbing. It never really looked like you were going up, but my heart rate was 10-15 beat higher than normal for the same effort, and I wasn’t ever really able to get back into my preferred pace until we start going back down.
4-5: 7:27
5-6: 8:15
6-7: 7:44
7-8: 7:49
8-9: 7:42
The trail is really pretty and the weather was great. The light drizzle kept us cool and the course was very well maintained. I wondered how bad it would be once we caught up to the half marathoners, but so far so good. At one point we went through an old train tunnel and it was pitch black inside and you ran to the light. This was pretty cool.
9-10: 7:39
10-11: 7:26
11-12: 7:37
We are approaching the half and the climbing starts in earnest again.
12-13: 7:58
I hit the half in 1:37:28. So if I can come under a 3:15 I will pick up a rare negative split.
13-14: 7:55
We’ve crested the hill, this is great. Hello sub 7:00/M miles, where have you been, it is good to see you again.
14-15: 6:55
15-16: 6:54
I’m looking in vain for a porta potty, and the realize I am in the woods… I make it one more mile still on the lookout for a rest stop. Finally decide it isn’t worth it and dash into the woods.
16-17: 8:08
I feel great now and start to open it up a little bit.
17-18: 6:52
From 18 to 20 there is the biggest climb of the day and I’ve started catching the half marathoners, so the trail starts to grow crowded, and the footing is getting sloppy in a few places.
18-19: 7:24
19-20: 7:50
After getting my doors blown off in the first mile, I’ve decided that I wanted to finish in the top 10. At this point I figure that I am somewhere between 13-15 or so, and so I decide to start pushing the pace as I can see a guy about 2 minutes in front of me. I decide to do my best Sandy impersonation and just start reeling people in.
20-21: 6:52
21-22: 6:27
I’ve picked off 2 people and a spectator says that I am in 12th place now. Okay, so now I now, I’ve got to catch two more. I see the victims off in the distance and figure that I can nab them over the next four miles.
22-23: 7:09
23-24: 6:58
I’ve moved into 11th place and I start thinking about maybe go under 3:10, but some quick math says it would hurt too much and sub 3:15 still counts for Boston, so no heroics from me, but I am going to catch one more person.
I put on a nice sprint past my final victim quickly open a 30 second gap on him. I think he is demoralized as he would fade to finish 4 minutes behind me over the last 2 miles.
24-25: 7:05
25-26: 6:55
As I approach the finish line I see my family and pull my son out of the crowd and we finish together. We walk through the shoot and I put my medal on his head, he asks “Do you think everyone thinks that I ran the whole marathon since I’ve got the medal?”. I tell him that it’s quite possible.
26.2: 1:24
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3:11:32
I did get my 4th or 5th negative split ever, a nice sized 4 minute one. This goes against everything I believe in, I clearly didn’t try hard enough in the first half.
It turns out that a couple of the people in front of me were relay runners, and so I wound up in 7th place out of 371. In turns out I actually would be all but 2 of the 38 relay teams, which was good enough for 2nd place in my age group and I got this unique rail spike as the age group award. Vance would pick up 3rd place in his age group in the mini and Scott notched his 2nd sub four hour marathon in a row.
Later we would head up to Mt. Rushmore but were unable to see it do to the fog.
We gave it one more shot the next day and were rewarded with clear skies. A great trip had by all.
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