Imogene Pass Run 2014

It was about a year from last July I had the idea to do some things during my 60th year before I get too old to do them. One of the first things I thought of was to run a marathon with my sister Tana. I’ve never done a marathon, but my sister is a veteran of many including the New York Marathon. When I told Tana I wanted to run a marathon during my 60th orbit the first words out of her mouth were “Oh shit!” 

She apparently knew I was going to ask her to run with me and thought she’d had done enough of that for a while.

In the end, I couldn’t get enthused about pounding the pavement for 26 miles so I hit upon the idea of running the Imogen Pass Run. It’s not a marathon, but a 17.1 mile run between the towns of Ouray (7810 ft.) and Telluride (8750 ft.) by way of 13,114 foot Imogene Pass.

Profile of Imogene Pass Run.

It climbs over 5000 ft from Ouray to the top of the pass in about 10 miles then descends about 4000 ft to Telluride.

Pikes Peak Training Run
Needless to say, we needed to do some training. Tana lives in Fort Collins and I live in the Springs so we trained separately, but we thought would should do one realistic trail run so on July 26 we decided to run/climb Pikes Peak. We had planned on going up Barr Trail and having Stormy pick us up at the top, but there was no parking near the trailhead so we went via the Crags instead. We got on the trail about 6:30 AM. We jogged occasionally. We made it to the top by about 11:00 AM. The weather was great on the way up. Cool to start, but never too warm with a few high scattered clouds.

Tana defying lighting to strike!

We stayed on top about 20 minutes. We took pictures, ate some guck bars, and took in the view to the east.

On the summit.

As we headed down it started to sprinkle just as we got below tree line, but it wasn’t too cool and the rain didn’t last long. We got back to the car about 2:00 PM. Not a great pace. We probably wouldn’t have made the cutoff times for Imogene Pass Run.

Imogene Pass Run
The run was on Saturday September 6th. The plan was to meet Tana and Ted on September 5th and spend the night in Ridgeway. Justin came with me to be my support crew and drive the car from Ouray to Telluride. Getting out of the Springs turned out to be a chore. The Volvo went in for service on Thursday and it wasn’t ready when I needed to leave so I rented a car. Justin and I drove to Ridgway in a Toyota Camery with paddle shifters. We met Tana and picked up our packets. Rick Trujillo gave a course overview on Friday night. It was very entertaining! He is a character.

The next morning Justin drove Tana and I to Ouray, dropped us off, and went back to Ridgway to meet Ted. They drove to Telluride and went for a hike. Tana and I ran to Telluride.

I surprised myself and did it in 5:06:34.3. Tana wasn’t far behind. I might be a little deranged, but I think I might want to do it next year. Maybe I can break five hours.