Today was the day we'd been looking forward to since April's Fool Day (when registration opened for the
Mt. Ashland Hill Climb). We spent our summer maintaining (me) / increasing (Jay) our mileage and squeezing in as many hill workouts as we could (in the form of hill reps, treadmill continuous hill climbs, and long runs through "The Hole" and up the steepest hill in the park near the Cairo). With
13.3 miles to run up 5633 feet in elevation (that's over a mile in elevation gain!), the Mt. Ashland Hill Climb boasts "the second most elevation gain of any continuous hill climb in the continental United States", right behind the
Pikes Peak Ascent in Colorado (which is also run at an overall higher elevation, as Pikes Peak is the easternmost 14,000-footer in Colorado - pretty sure we'll leave that one off our bucket list). Now tell me, who DOESN'T want to run a half marathon straight up a mountain, eh?
The bonus of doing this event is that we got to run it TOGETHER (thanks for babysitting the kiddos Grambot and PawPaw!), we got to run it with SOPHIE (and originally, we were suppose to get to run it with Karyn too, but her eldest son had a potential future career opportunity that she couldn't miss), and we got to run it in one of my most favorite towns ever (Ashland, Oregon - where I lived for 4 years while completing my undergraduate studies, and where I met my very best friends Robyn and Stephen). Those are pretty incredible reasons to subject ourselves to running up a mountain, in my opinion!
So here we are, in all our pre-hill-climb-induced-exhaustion glory:
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| The race started at the base of Lithia Park (1900ft elevation), right next to downtown and Ashland Creek |
Aren't we cute in our matching vests?
(I got Jay's in red because for some reason I couldn't picture him wearing purple)
We got there early (I always like to show up an hour before an event, much to Sophie's dismay, but she cut me some slack and showed up with a smile), and spent our time checking in (they wanted each runner actually starting the race to check their bib number with the volunteers so that they would know if anyone went missing out there...), double checking our gear, and goofing off. Next up? The start, of course. There was no gun or horn or whistle (at least not that I heard). There were 400 folks registered for the race (they have a low registration cap due to the backcountry nature of the course, making it difficult to support more than that), but not everyone showed up on race day. It was still a large crowd though, especially for a trail race (and especially compared to what I'm used to with our local Forge races). Many of these runners were there to compete too, as was evident by their physique, attitude, and the gear they carried (or lack thereof). But there were also a large group of folks planning to walk/hike the entire way, so we felt plenty comfortable with our middle ground.
The first 2 miles or so took us up and out of Lithia Park. Paved road became gravel road. It was all uphill, but the grade was low enough that we were able to run the entire time, as did pretty much everyone else. There seemed to be a lot of excitement around us as we went, but folks in our area also seemed to be holding back and running a smart race too. The start was only tricky because it took a while (as usual) to warm up. Lithia Park is beautiful, and it's surrounded by beautiful homes, so we started with a nice view. We even saw deer in some of the yards.
Around 2.5 miles in, we made the turn onto Mt. Ashland Loop Road, where we'd spend the next few miles going up, up, up!
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| More deer along the road! |
Eventually we got high enough that we could look back down into the valley in awe of how much elevation we'd already climbed in just 3 short miles...
After the first aid station (at the White Rabbit trailhead parking lot), the elevation gain got real and we immediately started trying to come up with a plan as far as running:hiking ratios. Since the terrain was pretty much consistently steep at this point though, we just kinda had to go with whatever we could manage before our heartrates skyrocketed (which seemed to be running just 1-2 minutes at a stretch, followed by 2-3 minutes of hiking, and repeat).
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| Just a little uphill jaunt... |
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| Not too steep... |
About halfway through the course we got a great view of Mt. Ashland in the distance:
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| After we took this photo (a non-racing runner coming DOWN the mountain paused to take it for us - Jay was ahead of us at this point, waiting for us at the next aid station) and started hiking again, Sophie asked me what I'd been pointing at. When I told her Mt. Ashland was the one with the distinctive white ball on top (you can see it better if you click the photo to zoom in) she said she couldn't believe that's where we were headed, since it seemed so far away still (though we technically only had 7 miles to go!) |
We soon caught up to Jay at the 4 Corner's aid station, at mile 6.5, where he was chatting up the rockstar volunteers (seriously, they were dressed in rockstar costume and blaring hair band music from their trucks) and learning all about
Coco Hydro Sport Drink (the pineapple flavor is really good and we're planning to swap out our Powerade powder for it). After Sophie and I grabbed some coconut water and snacks, we continued up the hill...
After a couple more miles of steep climbs and more hiking than running, the section between miles 8.5-10.5 was a very welcome site with the terrain being more or less flat (just small ups and downs) on a gorgeous section of trail/jeep road that is rarely if ever used by vehicles (so pretty at the start that Jay and I broke into chorus of "It's such a pretty day!", the bedtime song that we sing to the kids), and which I'd never been on before (I had hiked/biked a few of the lower trails and Mt. Ashland Loop Road while I lived there, but never this little National Forest road, which we'd turned onto back at the aid station). We ran a lot of this section, but not all of it, as the elevation at this point (about 5200ft) was starting to affect our flatlander lungs...
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| Apparently elevation and reduced oxygen also lead to silly antics on the trail... |
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| Here they were calling out for Bigfoot. We never did see one though... |
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| Only 4 more miles to the Mt. Ashland summit! Why does it still look so far away?... |
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| This is where Sophie started flying for a while, yelling that it was the best day ever... Trail lover! |
At the 3rd aid station, Bull Gap, we made the turn onto single-track trail and started climbing Mt. Ashland proper. The views became more expansive, the oxygen got thinner (the increase in grade was significant here), and leg fatigue really started to set in (as we'd been out there for over 2.5 hours at that point). We hiked the entire last 3 miles, as fast as our legs could carry us. And while it was difficult/exhausting, it was beautful and fun too!
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| When we got to the lodge, we had an amazing cheering section waiting for us! |
We had just half a mile left to climb at this point, straight up the ski slopes. The lodge sits at 6338ft elevation while the summit is at 7532ft, so that's an elevation gain of almost 2000ft in the final half mile of this event!
There was a path that crossed a couple of the intermediate runs that we thought was extremely steep. That is, until we turned the corner and looked up at the final ascent... (I'm glad I didn't calculate that final elevation gain before the race, otherwise I might have bailed at the lodge. OK, I wouldn't have done that. But it would have been tempting...)
That's
Pilot Rock there in the background, another exciting climb for anyone looking to do a bit of rock climbing (harnesses not required, but maybe they should be!) rather than ski slope scree climbing in southern Oregon. Jay was perfecting his "smile through the exhaustion" look here. At this point we paused in a tiny speck of shade (we'd been under tree cover for the entire first 12.8 miles, so the exposed slopes at the end here were a bit much) and watched as Sophie the mountain goat hopped up the trail at an impressive clip.
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| This was Sophie's view, looking back at us and Pilot Rock (and the lodge off to the left there) |
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| This was after I told Jay "Just a quarter mile to go!" |
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| Looky-there, now you can see the lodge, WAY down there and yet just a quarter mile away... |
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| Climbing higher... and steeper... and steeper... are we there yet? |
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| And then we turned the corner and saw THIS... (If you zoom in, you can see all the tiny specks of people stepping slowly up the black diamond Tempest ski run.) So close, yet so very far... At this point, I looked at my Garmin, which said 3:52 elapsed time, and I knew that even though we had only 0.2 of a mile to go, there was no way in hell we'd make it in under 4 hours. |
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| The final push up the ski slope scree was basically a "take 4-8 steps, then stop and breathe" rythym, since we were now over 7000ft elevation and the footing was difficult. |
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| Can you see the city of Ashland down there? It's on the left, just above the chair lift. That's where we started this morning, 12.25 miles and 4 hours ago. |
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| Sophie finished in 4:04, myself in 4:10, and Jay in 4:11. You can see Jay here just under the timing clock (on the left) as he scrambled over the lip to the summit. 230 people completed the race at the summit, but many more made it to the lodge and bailed there for beer and massages rather than making the final ascent up the slopes (probably most of whom do this race yearly and have nothing to prove, and who know exactly what to expect out of the final half mile...) |
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We did it! 13.3 miles long and over 1 mile up in elevation - time to celebrate! |
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| Jay demonstrates the severity of the Upper Tempest slope... |
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| Sophie does inappropriate things with what locals call, for better or for worse, "God's left nut". As we hiked earlier she told me she wanted to touch it and was very disappointed when I told her it sat atop a building and she wouldn't be able to reach it. (For those interested, it's actually a weather station. Obviously.) |
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| The view southwest of Mt. Ashland, where a nearby fire was burning. We lucked out with wind direction today and barely smelled any smoke during our race, and we were very thankful to have such good air quality, especially considering that potential cancellation of the race was forewarned last week if conditions didn't improve. We heard fire planes coming and going over our heads with water and retardant throughout our run, so we certainly hope the fire gets under control soon! |
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| The glamorous shuttle down to the lodge from the summit. We lucked out and secured a safer and comfier ride with Alex and the boys in their car though, since they missed hearing the rule that spectators were suppose to stay down at the lodge. When we didn't see them at the lodge with my parents, I hoped they'd be up top to greet us! |
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| By the time we got back to the lodge, over an hour after we set out to climb that last half mile, the kids (and my parents) were DONE (too much sun, nowhere to sit) and we were all starving, so we grabbed our free beers to go and piled into Dad's Suburban, heading back downtown to Standing Stone Brewery - they sponsored the event and gave each participant a $10 coupon to use throughout the weekend, so of course we had to make use of ours! |
This event was certainly one of the best I've ever participated in. I'd even go so far as to say it was my favorite trail run ever, despite the difficulty. It was well organized, the route/views and volunteers were amazing, and I've never felt a stronger sense of physical accomplishment than I did when I reached the summit of Mt. Ashland (other than my
first marathon, perhaps, or maybe winning some of those races I did back in high school when I was fast). When I lived here in 1996-2000, snowboarding the slopes on a regular basis in the winter and hiking the mountain trails in the summer, I never in a million years thought I would ever run/hike from town to the summit (I never heard of this event when I lived here, not that I likely would have given it a second thought even if I'd known about it), but it was totally worth it! It was so wonderful to get to run/race/hike with Jay and Sophie, and we owe a huge thank you to my parents for
watching our kids so we could do this together, and more thanks to the rest of my family and Jenny and Sophie's family
for coming up to cheer us on. The event was everything I'd hoped it would be - THANK YOU ALL!
