Pounding the trail, eating the pain
By Scott Willoughby

When runners open the registration packet for the Leadville Trail 100-mile foot race, the list of local massage therapists and bodyworkers is among the first items they notice. Its prominent display is no accident.

Even the fittest among the anticipated field of 350 ultramarathoners will be hurting by the end of this Saturday's race, the 14th running of the ultra event. After some 20 hours of running, walking, and stumbling through the woods above Leadville, Colorado, and occasionally above tree line, they will be lucky to have enough strength to climb onto a massage table.

Rising to a height of 12,600 feet above sea level, the 100-mile course that begins and ends in the highest incorporated city in North America is considered among the most grueling running routes ever created. While the course itself is somewhat tame, the rarefied mountain air surrounding the trail cranks it up a few notches on the difficulty scale.

"You really only have two climbs out and two climbs back," says Chuck Frame, a five-time participant. "Everything else, if it was at sea level, is very runnable."

But, as Frame is painfully aware, the course is not at sea level. In fact, the 53-year-old Nevada resident has failed to finish what he started in the Colorado Rockies on three occasions. It wasn't that he didn't want to continue running. He simply couldn't.

"I just ran until I was too exhausted to continue," Frame says. "I went to the bottom of the Sugarloaf climb and there was no way I could get up it, so I just got in the car and left."

Frame and his wife, Margaret, who plans to run her second Leadville 100 this weekend, joke that the push behind attempting such a task is a combination of blunt stupidity and the need to be challenged.

"You wonder if your body and your mind will come through and do it," Margaret says.

The question remains, however, after you've proved it once, why would you feel the need to do it again?

"When I finished, I swore it was enough. I swore I'd never do it again, ever. Now I want to do it better. I want to finish in better shape," Margaret says. "It's sort of like childbirth. You don't end up with a baby, but you do sort of forget the pain and the agony."

The pain and agony begins at 4 a.m. on August 24 at the top of Leadville's Harrison Avenue, with temperatures hovering around 32 degrees. The route soon turns to dirt as runners grope through a cloak of darkness. By the time they round Turquoise Lake and start toward the summit of 11,000-foot Sugarloaf Pass, the sun will have crept over the Continental Divide.

Temperatures will rise into the 70s as the course drops to nearly 9,000 feet, then climbs steadily up Hope Pass and tops out at the 12,600-foot Columbine Mine. From there, it's just a matter of backtracking 50 miles, the sun now setting and the 30-hour cutoff looming on the horizon. Slogging through the night, athletes are expected to cross the finish line sometime after midnight, later if the weather turns sour.

Marred by strong rains, last summer's event was drawn out to nearly 21 hours before Kirk Apt of Crested Butte, Colorado, found his way back to Harrison Avenue. Apt's winning time of 20 hours, 33 minutes, and five seconds, was a full three hours behind the course record set by Mexican Tarahumara tribesman Juan Herrara in 1994. Fewer runners completed the race than ever before, with only 130 of 325 starters finishing before the cutoff at noon on Sunday.

The foul weather that plagued last year's event has been hovering around Colorado's high country for the past week, threatening to dampen runners' spirits and hamper their efforts again this year. Snow has been reported along the Divide.

But for folks like the Frames, who first met at Leadville, 100 miles of anguish, exhaustion, and massage-begging muscle fatigue stir an enthusiasm not even summer snow can diminish.

"This is vacation for us," Chuck says. "It's hot in Nevada."

Scott Willoughby is a writer from Minturn, Colorado