Summit For Life

Well, my next (big) race is now under a month away. This one is a little different from my typical races. The Summit for Life, formerly the Storm the Stars, is a rather unique race, period. It takes place in December, in Aspen, CO, at 5 and 6PM (so yes, in the dark), and takes you 2.5 miles and 3500 feet up Aspen mountain. Which means, of course, that it's entirely on snow. Skis, snowshoes, and running shoes are all permitted (essentially, any non-motorized conveyance you can think of to propel yourself up the mountain is allowed). This year, they are introducing a competitive wave, for those who anticipate finishing in under two hours. The winner seems to finish in around 55 minutes.

Yes, that's for 2.5 miles. And for those of you who follow running in Colorado, Bernie Boettcher won it in around 54 minutes last year. Something tells me if he's running, I won't win.

In any case, I recently realized that this is the perfect race for me to be doing right now. My sights are set on a few races next summer (length TBD, mostly half-marathon type distances, I think), with a few possibilities beforehand in the spring. Naturally, for a race up a ski hill, I've been doing some serious strength training. Friday was 4 repeats up a section of the Royal Arch Trail here, coming in at about 8 minutes each, which gave me some serious strength training, and a tiny bit of endurance.

This is money in the bank for any runner, and especially for somebody who classifies himself as a trail runner. The first step in any training regime, save a base mileage program, is strength training, usually through hill repeats. This conditions your body to learn to accept the punishment you'll be laying down later in your training, and gives you a better base from which to work.

So here's to long hill workouts. If you don't feel a tiny bit sick to your stomach afterwards, you're just not doing it correctly.