2nd Annual Sage Burner 50k/5200ft Trail Race on May 23, 2009

Got a nice report from Jason Hodgson over the weekend who is still flying the flag for Horwich in his now adopted home in Colorado Springs. Jason has been back in serious training of late knocking out the miles at over 100 a week in preparation for the Sage Burner 50k. As you can see from the attached results he did exceptionally well finishing in 9th place overall in 4.52.09. The course was pretty tough, not just for the distance at 50k but also for the footage at over 5000ft. The location of the run, Hartman Rocks, located just south of Gunnison, starts at an elevation of 7700 feet and climbs to 8390, so there was also the added problem of running at altitude. Jason had set a target to run sub five hours so was very pleased to be well under.

I did find it very amusing to read the Blog reports from a couple of the competitors, this guy below was describing Jason, who must have had a laugh at it.

-At a little after two hours into the race I noticed air was coming intermixed with water through my drink tube, which means only one thing, I was running out of water. 70 ounces in just over two hours? It didn’t seem as though I was drinking that much, but so be it. At about the same point I noticed on one of the several winding switchbacks that there was a runner behind me. It was difficult to gauge how far back because the course was so twisty that sometimes he looked as though he was 2 mins back, then on long stretches it was more like 10 mins back (over a mile) and I couldn’t even see him. I recognized him as a guy I noted at the start, this very tall dude dressed like he was starting a road 5k, singlet and high split shorts with finely shaved thoroughbred race horse legs, veins popping out of tight skin covered muscles. At the start I pegged him as the winner of the 25k, so I was a bit alarmed to have this 1% body fat giant chasing me around in the desert terrain. After thinking about it, I nudged the pace up just a hair and focused on never walking unless running was impossible on a particularly steep climb. I would hit those climbs at a fast pace and scamper up as much as efficiently possible, then break into my best Karl Meltzer mountain speed hike -.

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If you want a little more light! – reading then have a look at this Blog account of one mans race, I must admit I did have a laugh, although I’m sure seeing the fun side was not intentional, definitely American – sorry Rosalie! The jargon reminds me more of a of Mickey Spillane’s novel than a runners Blog.

http://mountaindave72.blogspot.com/2008/06/sage-burner-50k-race-report.html

Race results: http://www.western.edu/sageburner/SageBurner2009_Final%20Results_5.23.09.htm