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History of the Pikes Peak Ascent & Marathon with Mark Tatum, Re-Release
What makes a mountain race become legendary? In this deep dive into the historic Pikes Peak Marathon and Ascent, we're joined by Mark Tatum to uncover the remarkable journey of America's third-oldest and longest consecutively running marathon.
From its unlikely origins—when a Finnish doctor challenged smokers to race him up the mountain in 1958—to Arlene Piper becoming the first woman to complete a marathon in the United States in 1959 (in "dime store tennis shoes"), the race's heritage is as rich as the mountain is tall. We explore how the Jemez Pueblo runners dominated the early years and how Matt Carpenter's obsession with the mountain created records that stood untouchable for decades.
The mountain itself becomes a character in this story, humbling even the greatest athletes who've attempted to conquer it. We dissect the strategic challenges of racing at 14,000 feet, where oxygen drops by 40%, the infamous "W's" section can make or break your race, and unpredictable weather adds another layer of complexity. Through the years, Pikes Peak has witnessed the evolution of trail running itself—from local heroes to international superstars like Kilian Jornet, Rémi Bonnet, and Kim Dobson making their mark.
Whether you're a mountain running enthusiast or simply fascinated by endurance challenges that push human limits, this conversation reveals why Pikes Peak continues to captivate runners worldwide. As one racer put it: "It's just you're constantly wondering if you're going too hard and if you're going to die. It's the ultimate mental battle." And perhaps that's exactly why they keep coming back.
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Going up. It's just you're constantly wondering if you're going too hard and if you're going to die. So, like they say, it's the ultimate mental battle.
Speaker 2:Is that what keeps bringing you back, year after year, the ultimate?
Speaker 1:mental battle. Yeah, I don't care what racers show up, even if somebody shows up better than me. You know this is a test against yourself. Everybody that's out here is doing it and everybody's testing themselves, and it's great.
Speaker 2:It's called America's Ultimate Challenge. Each year, over 2,500 runners flock to Manitou Springs to challenge themselves against the mountain known as Pike's Peak. This year, runners from 46 different states and eight foreign countries have come. They all start here and make their way towards the clouds. It's time, thank you.
Speaker 3:Ladies and gentlemen, we are live. I'm joined by my very special co-host, none other than legend, Mr Mark Tatum. Mark, thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 4:Hey, thanks, James. It's an honor to be here and talk about this great race.
Speaker 3:You know, you were like the first. Literally you were the first person that came to mind when I'm sitting here and just kind of thinking about like all right, how can we make like something really special? Like normal interviews are fine before a race leading up to it, but Pike's Peak Marathon and Ascent just has so much history to it and there's so much more to the race that I just feel like we have to do it justice by making an episode about the history.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, it's one of the most prominent races in the world, and trail races especially, and even as far as marathons go, it's the third oldest marathon in the US and the longest consecutive running marathon in the US, because during COVID, of course, boston did not, was not run, so Bikes Peak Marathon now has the record of most consecutive continual events.
Speaker 3:That's crazy. So 58 was the first one, right, but technically there's history dating back to the 30s, right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so you know the Pikes Peak Highway, the paved road, it's now paved. The road that went up was originally a private road and then it was, and then the people who owned that road, they ended up buying the Cog Railroad. And then in the 30s and then there was some kind of some kind of agreement with the National Forest Service and the Forest Service took over the main road going up and so to kind of celebrate that, some people got together and had a in 1936, they had an ascent race up just up Bar Trail. Bar Trail of course had existed for a while then, and so they had a race up just up bar trail, bar trail. Of course what had existed just had existed for a while then, and so they had a race up bar trail. I think there were six or eight or 12 men who were who ran that race, and one of them, uh, almost broke three hours, it's pretty solid so it was like three hours and 50 seconds or something like that.
Speaker 3:So technically, the ascent then iscent then came before the marathon in a lot of ways in theory.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, and that was a shorter course that started at the bottom of Bar Trail. Okay. So that was a, and we can talk about how the course has changed over the years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4:But that was the first one. Wow. And it was a pretty good time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the first one, wow, and it was a pretty. It was a pretty good time. Yeah, for that time, 30s was a wild. I mean, it's kind of crazy to think about. Uh, just so much history, um, you know how it connects history to colorado too. You'd think in the 30s like what culturally is going on at the time? And it's like who would think about you know, in technology at the time, like in boots, but what were they wearing? I guess we didn't have sneakers, you, you know. So it's like we're running up this trail and in boots. So who's the fastest one to do it, you know?
Speaker 4:I don't know. I don't even know what they are running in in the thirties, that's. That's the good question. Probably probably leather shoes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know what else was available.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no cushion, definitely no hocus Well, I know in the 50s, in the late 50s, the runners weren't like dime store tennis shoes, I mean like Keds, yeah, that you would buy.
Speaker 3:Interesting In the 50s was.
Speaker 4:So 58 was technically the first full marathon, correct, right, so in 1958 was the sesquicentennial, the 150th anniversary of when Pike discovered quote discovered pike's peak and um. And so they, some people, wanted to do something for that. And this guy, this guy I guess he was born in finland, arnie, let me read his name arnie sumanen wrote a letter to the gazette, to the new local newspaper, and challenged. He was a doctor from Delray Beach, florida, and he wrote a letter to the editor challenging all the smokers to a race up Pikes Peak. And he said I will beat you up Pikes Peak if you're a smoker up and down, that was the key up and down. If you're a smoker up and down, that was the key up and down. And so some people got together and organized it and made it happen in. I think it was in August of 1956, exactly 20 years after that very first ascent.
Speaker 3:That's crazy the smokers versus the non-smokers. What a weird thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was very weird because the um, during those first few years of the race it was you were classified as a smoker or a non-smoker. It wasn't about age groups or anything elites versus non-elites smoker versus non-smoker.
Speaker 4:So in that very first race, um monty wolford won and he did not come close to the ascent of of three hours and they started it right in front of the cod railway, okay, yeah, and, and that's where it finished too, apparently. So up and down and, and there are ascent times and there's uh, and then there's finish times. But I guess what was one of the more interesting things about that was that the guy who won the 1936 race, he showed up as a smoker and he made it to the top but he got a ride down. He couldn't finish.
Speaker 4:I guess that there was only one or two smokers who finished, but they didn't beat this Arnie Sumanen guy. Interesting who was like fifth or sixth.
Speaker 3:Let me ask you a quick question. I wouldn't expect you to be able to know this or answer this, but like so. If it started the cog railway back in the day, would it take the like the traditional marathon route, or would it make that right to go up what is now the switchbacks on the W's, or would it take?
Speaker 4:that traditional marathon route, or would it make that right to go up what is now the switchbacks on the W's, or would it take that traditional? Marathon route and connect to the W's Up up up Bruxton? Yeah, I don't know. I've wondered that's that myself. It's interesting I suspect it went up Bruxton.
Speaker 3:That would make sense. I mean, how long has that road even been paved for? Who knows?
Speaker 4:It hasn't been paved that long, um, and you can see, like the later videos, it's paved about to where it is now, yeah, but in various interesting that's really cool.
Speaker 3:So the reason I had 58 fresh in my head was because I was thinking of arlene piper yep um, who was the first female, technically technically first female ascent finisher, correct?
Speaker 4:Right, right. So in 1958, arlene Piper was, she owned, with her husband, she owned a gym, a local gym here in Colorado Springs, and so she had this idea. Or she heard about the ascent or the Pikes Peak Marathon, and she just got this idea to try to run it and showed up in her dime store shoes, dime store tennis shoes or whatever they were, and ran up to the top. But she couldn't finish and so she got a ride down that first year in 1958.
Speaker 3:She did okay. But her time was recorded but it wasn't official 5.59, 18.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean honestly for 1958 in Dime Store shoes. That's pretty solid, yeah, with not a lot of training, yeah.
Speaker 4:But in the following year she did train a lot for it and she knew what she was getting into and she showed up with her daughter, who was, um, not very old, like eight or nine, and her daughter ran with her most of the way up and her daughter and her daughter stopped at the top and then arlene went ahead and ran all the way back down.
Speaker 4:She, she ran under and down in under two hours that day wow and became the first woman to ever finish a marathon in the united states that is so cool 1959. That's why so arlene piper, and there was another woman who started that day got to the ascent and didn't finish, didn't run down.
Speaker 3:There was also a horse in the race that day yeah, that's right min the horse finished. Uh, I think it was only the ascent.
Speaker 4:Eight hours, 46 minutes right, yeah, the well, actually that I think the eight hours and 46 minutes that was the round trip because men, the horse one was leading at the top and but then had some uh physical problems I forget what they were and got was passed oh man coming down but for a long time, men, the horse had the fastest ascent time I think that.
Speaker 3:I mean I looked back through the history. I couldn't find any of the horses running the race, so that might be the one and only horse to have for two bikes there must have been horses that went up bar trail though way before that was just kind of the mode to travel back then yeah, so, but as far as like official race, I don't know, it's interesting that they put like man versus horse or men.
Speaker 4:Well, that's how Western States started, right? Yeah, man versus horse.
Speaker 3:Gordy Ansley racing horses yeah.
Speaker 4:So yeah, those first few years they didn't have a lot of competitors. There were women in those first years 61, 62, 63, but they kind of changed it. So the women and the junior men would, and eventually the older men over 40, would just run the ascent and so if you were?
Speaker 4:19 to 34, or 19 to 39, depending on the year, 19 to 34, 19 to 39, depending on the year male, you had to run the whole marathon, you couldn't just run the ascent. So, um, the race became a little bit more official in 1966. And so one of the one of the guys who had been running it all those years, um, what was his name? Rudy fall, so he was kind of, he was one of the. I think he was the initial organizer of those first races, but then they kind of made it more, more organized by 1966 and some, and it had become more prominent by then, and so we started having people from out of state show up and and they were still only, like you know, a hundred or 150 runners showing up at the start line, I guess. But there were a lot of juniors and women who would run the ascent. So sometimes they don't get included in the, in those totals.
Speaker 4:Official results and in fact, like if you look at the Gazette results, sometimes they would print all these names that don't appear in the official results and so maybe they just entered and then the Gazette got the entry list and just printed them all. I don't know. Got the entry list and just printed them all, I don't know. So there was a lot of juniors and women who fell into that category of. They're on the in the Gazette but they're not in the official results.
Speaker 3:Interesting, yeah, I will say one thing. I mean like just like in the research for this episode, the the marathon and ascent website is like a great database of like just results and data, like there's good stuff in there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, let's talk about that, because that's that's one of the things in my mind that makes a great race oh, for sure it's having a database, a searchable database, of all your past results, because otherwise there is no history.
Speaker 4:If we don't, if we can't figure out, if we can't compare ourselves to another, to races in the past, to to great athletes in the past, and and measure ourselves that way, then then then you're not going to have a great race well, this is like one of the few like this is one of the few races where, like literally, multiple iterations of like the best in the world have actually shown up like you're talking carpenter, rem, Remy Killian, I mean on the women's side, Kim Dobson.
Speaker 3:With the dominance I mean just so many, just years and years and years. And then even, like I love that, they put the ascent split and the descent split, so we can get you know you really can get into the nitty gritty on some of the most historical you know, splits and whatever. It's cool.
Speaker 4:I love the splits and and you, you know you mentioned all those more recent guys and women, but there were just as many when, just as many great athletes who showed up in the seventies and eighties when there were no other trail races really in the U? S and and really in the world. So, and we have a and back to the database thing. We have a record of all that and it's searchable. That really the the Pike's peak.
Speaker 3:I love the Pike's peak, yeah, whoever put that together, or whose idea that was to like actually provide that, because you know there's a lot like. For instance, like we earlier, before we recorded this, we talked about like series and all we talked about marathon du mont blanc and a lot of these like more european historical races that maybe got started a little bit later. But if you want to go back in time like like, for instance, like a lot of people don't know that, like joe at one point in time erased killian and like there's a lot of like and that's that wasn't that long ago but like most people can't find those results it's interesting to be able to have that and be able to get back and search that history and see you know who stacked up against too. Like I said, even up until today, when I was doing research for like some of Matt Carp, like and forth and some of the battles that he had, people don't realize that, nor know it. So yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 4:Do you know who started the database? The results of the database Matt Carpenter.
Speaker 3:It was Matt Okay.
Speaker 4:So Matt was very obsessed with his race and he also learned. He taught himself how to make websites and things like that, and so he was a. He wrote a lot. He wrote articles for lots of local and national magazines and newspapers and so he's partly responsible for continuing the fame and building up the fame of the pikes, peak, marathon, ascent it's really so crazy he was a large part of that and so he hosted.
Speaker 4:He had this. He's still out there. Skyrunnercom. Yeah, yeah, and that's where all the results were I've been trying to get his book. He did it yeah yeah, the book is out of print. I know um there. I know there's some ways to get it. You've got to know a guy, but I think it's at the. You can check it out, maybe even at a library, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I'll have to look Manitou Library or something.
Speaker 4:Yeah, maybe, yeah, but, yeah. So, but even before Matt, there were, like the Jemez Pueblo, runners from down in New Mexico.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we got to talk about that. This is 60s era.
Speaker 4:Yeah, in the 60s. You know they have. I don't know that much about them, but you know they had a tradition of running down there. And Steve there's this guy from. There's several men from the Jemez Pueblo that made their way up here in 1966. And Steve Gouchipin I think that's how you say his name won the marathon six years in a row, starting in 1966. And he was really probably the first national class runner to show up, the first really good guy. I mean, he was unbeatable at that time and he was in his 20s and some years other people would come up with with him and they'd all run the race and finish on the top 10 or whatever, but he was.
Speaker 3:He helped put the race on the map because of his dominance interesting, and that's like an era, I mean six years, you know like I like to think of it in it, because this race just has so much history. I'd like to think of it as like in different eras, and I would call six years a solid, solid era that's dominance, you know well.
Speaker 4:There's only one other person who's won it six years in a row, and that was matt carpenter right but he matt didn't, was didn't do that until his uh late in his career yeah, 40s, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that was the bulk of the 60s. Where does Chuck Schmid come into it then? Is he 70s talked to?
Speaker 4:Chuck, and I forget what his reason was. He had heard about this race and he showed up. He was visiting here I think he was from California at the time. He lives in Colorado now but he showed up for the marathon. They were only running on the marathon in 1972 and he won at 19 years old and he set. He had a really fast time. He set the that was on the shorter course, so the course started at the Cog Rail and finished at the Cog Rail. Okay, I think at that time Just a couple miles, yeah.
Speaker 4:Or it might have finished at the bottom of I forget when they moved the finish down to the bottom of Ruxton.
Speaker 3:The 70s was, I mean even like, I'd say, mid to late 70s, into the 80s as well was just like a very influential time. I'll let you finish talking about Chuck.
Speaker 4:So Chuck Smead showed up in 72, and then in 73,. Rick Trujillo came and he won the following year. And Rick do you know the history of Rick Trujillo. I know the name.
Speaker 4:I'm a little full, but he was from Ouray and was a prominent high school runner and college runner. I think he was a prominent high school runner and college runner, I think, and he ran a lot of trails when he was a geologist. He has a really interesting story. He was a geologist, went all over Colorado and all over the US and then eventually all over the world running when he got to go do these mining geology trips. So he has a lot of stories to tell. But he was one of the founders of the hard rock 100 as well. Yeah, and he was a one of the founders, if not the founder, he's one of the early race directors of the imaging pass run oh, okay.
Speaker 4:Well, that's probably where he's actually known as much as anything is, is he still?
Speaker 3:I think I might have met him. Is he still alive, still around? Oh yeah, he's still alive.
Speaker 4:Maybe I don't know, and he's in his 70s.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I actually think I have met him on Imogene Pass. Yeah, probably, probably so Probably so.
Speaker 4:So he, rick, as I said, chuckmee didn't really like he did that marathon the first year. He said it killed him and so he didn't like running the marathon. So I think, like the next year he beat Rick to the top but Rick Trujillo beat him on the downhill and after that Chuck wasn't as interested in running that downhill or doing the full marathon. So when in I think it was 1976, they changed the course to what it is now, they started it down by Memorial Park and then both the ascent and the marathon go up to the top and then the marathon finishes at the bottom of Ruxton. So that course started in 1976. And that was a significant year for the records because—.
Speaker 3:It was Lynn's year.
Speaker 4:yeah, Chuck Smead set the ascent record that stood for 15 or 18 years. This is the one that Matt Carpenter ended up breaking in 92 at 205.22. It's still one of the very fastest ascent times. It was the very first year that the ascent was run on the new configuration or the longer configuration course that's got to be top.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's easily top 15, easily top 15, top 10. No, I think it's still top five. Is it really wow?
Speaker 4:and so five or six I was just looking at that today and so on that same day, lynn borkland showed up and she was, she was also, I think she was 19, yeah, and she showed up and she set a and then a scent record of two, 44.
Speaker 3:And she was the first woman to go under three hours which I don't know Out of all the records I looked at. I mean, obviously, listen, what Matt's been able to do with Remy, what a lot of these guys have been able to do, is incredible, but I think for the time period, like 76 to run 244, 47, like I know elite dudes that can't run 244, 47.
Speaker 4:That's crazy. And yeah, and she was. Yeah, she did that in 76 and then she came back in 81. She came back a few times, but in 81, she set it. She really set the record at 233, 31, which is still one of the top one of the top five times, I think.
Speaker 3:For sure yeah.
Speaker 4:And her marathon time was probably better. She ran a 4.15 in 1981.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's crazy. That was crazy. And 1981 is also the year that one of the other Jemez Pueblo men showed up, al Waki, and he had a reputation of being one of the best runners in the country, mountain runners in the world at the time, and he raced in a lot. I wish I knew more about him, but I know that he had a string. If you're familiar, if you ever heard of the La Luz run, I wish I knew more about him, but I know that he had a string If you're familiar, if you ever heard of the La Luz run trail run down near Albuquerque.
Speaker 4:That's another super old trail race that began in the 60s and he totally dominated that race and he came up here a few times and won.
Speaker 3:They're going to bring it back. I think they stopped it like a few years ago.
Speaker 4:Yeah, 2019 was the last year I ran that and then it got shut down when, when um one of the it went through the permitting process at the national forest or the national park service, I don't know. I don't know which, but the government realized that it didn't because it goes through a wilderness area there in La Luz, on the La Luz Trail. They didn't have a permit that was grandfathered in, like Western states does to run it through the wilderness area.
Speaker 4:That's a bummer, and so everyone thought that they had it grandfathered, but apparently it never got written up, written into the, and so the government officials decided that they couldn't permit it anymore. New mexico senators or congressmen who have run that event in the past and they're they've tried to revive it, try to get it rewritten, but it just hasn't been a priority in congress it's a bummer.
Speaker 4:Hope they can apparently it takes an act of congress to make it happen, and so it hasn't gotten written down interesting yeah, la luz would be one of my very favorite races and I was lucky to run it that literally I uh buddy.
Speaker 3:Jeff kuno just ran it today. Um, like like hard he ran. I don't know if you saw it on strava. He put up a pretty solid time on there.
Speaker 4:He ran that year. I did too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah he's coming to the ascent or the marathon. I think he said cool, cool yeah, so all right. So let's uh. So we got through the 70s. I one thing I do want to go back to was a little more history on your buddy, chuck Smead. You said he was also a series and all winner in the past.
Speaker 4:Yeah, chuck went on. He was one of the early pioneers and of international trail running and so he found out about the Sears and all and several other mountain races and went over there one summer and won Sears and all and several other mountain races and went over there one summer and one sierra zanali. I think he was the first american to win, and before pablo v hill yeah and and when he would go back for several summers there.
Speaker 4:I know he went back to europe and did a bunch of races and spent all summer there that's crazy, really cool.
Speaker 3:So we have had early americans that go over there and win he was one of the first. Chuck and pablo were the, I think, the very first ones yeah is on the american side pablo has a little bit of history with pikes as well. Right, like he's you said, he's shown up before he's run at once.
Speaker 4:Okay, okay I think he was in the top five. Okay, interesting.
Speaker 3:I don't know if he did the marathon or the ascent yeah, it's just crazy how many people have, like, crossed paths with this race.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know well if you're, have you ever heard of pat porter, the uh famous road racer in the 80s, no, 70s and 80s? He he was a cross-country champion, us champion, and he went to Alamosa for school and lived and trained there. He showed up in 1981 and won the ascent. I think Wow, but you know his times were it wasn't. You know he doesn't have one of the fastest times, but he did win. Yeah.
Speaker 3:All right. So we got through the 70s, got to the 80s. Let's talk about do we want to dive more through the 80s, during that era?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's all that I have. I mean, I'm sure I'm skipping over stuff.
Speaker 3:Well, you know what? How about this? Let's enter this. One of the big things I know we wanted to address and talk about was like why is this race a big deal? Why is this like not a normal trail race? You know, why is, uh who who pushed this forward and why is it continue to be, year after year, one of the biggest trail races on the planet? You know?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's. That's something I've thought about a lot is what? What made this? You know, there were a lot of maybe not a lot, but there were other trail races that could have been prominent and historical, but they've dropped, dropped off or never became famous. And I and ultimately I it comes down to Pike's Peak, which is such a Such a recognized name or recognized mountain in US history and also, I think, partly because of Colorado Springs, has done a good job, whether it's the city government or the newspapers or the businessmen or the residents here, people in Colorado Springs have always been great promoters.
Speaker 3:They're very prideful of it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they've been very purposeful about promoting things, whether it's the Pikes Peak Highway or the race up the Pikes Peak Highway or Garden of the Gods or one of the hundred tourist traps that were here in the 20s and 30s as the automobile allowed people to visit Colorado for the first time, and so it's just been kind of a tradition of Colorado Springs to promote things, and so you can go back in the gazette and see articles written in the 60s and 70s about this race, when there weren't that many people doing the race but articles would get written. And there was an article in the 1975 Sports Illustrated magazine about. It was about a fell runner from england who was coming over to do the pikes, peak, pikes, peak marathon because he had heard about it. Oh well, how did he hear about it?
Speaker 4:way over there and it's, you know, just word of mouth incessant promotion from colorado springs, I think, and plus just the the idea of a mountain race going up a 14er.
Speaker 3:That because there's not to capture people's imaginations other than hard rock. This is the only race that I think incorporates a 14er right.
Speaker 4:Well, mount evans does yeah, yeah, the mount evans, but that's a road race how does that work?
Speaker 3:so is it like? This is something I actually never asked ryan and jordan like how does it work with the permitting and stuff? Like that, like you, because it's not, obviously it's not a wilderness area right it's pike national forest, so I guess it's like grandfathered into the system with that or no, it just uh, you can apply for events on the in national forest.
Speaker 4:Okay, that's, that's easier to obtain those permits yeah and so they're probably they probably have a much tougher time with the manitou springs and any private property that's true across there at the bottom going up ruxton and everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, I'm sure that there's some private property lines there it's funny I always see houses, for like I'm starting to see more and more houses for sale on ruxton and like I was running the other day coming down bar and there was one and my buddy's like oh man, like I wonder where that's going.
Speaker 4:For I was like, dude, you couldn't pay me to live on that road like especially, it's just so heavily trafficked and so many people uh, but yeah, yeah, I've, I've wondered the same thing too and then think now that's too many people like during the summer at least, like october through january is great, you know, but I don't know. It's, yeah, it's, it's. It'd be an adventure living there and you'd have you'd always be close to the trail.
Speaker 3:You'd be super fit, that's for sure. Yeah, you can't, can't complain. There's no excuses to not go on the incline or whatever. Right. So back to what makes this race so great. One of the things that I thought was very interesting that we talked about before it was the race kind of made a pivot in the late 90s, early 2000s and even through present, where you're seeing this race constantly either world mountain running champs or you're seeing it in the Golden Trail Series races Like what. Do you think what was the pivot that the race really made to kind of rescue it from just being a normal event to something bigger?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know a lot of with the running boom in the late seventies and early eighties, like I think in 1980 was the first time it like really sold out. They had a hard limit with. I don't know when this hard limit was put in, but there is a hard limit from the national forest service permit of like 1800 runners for the ascent and 1800 for the marathon and so I think they reached that limit in 1980, or they reached some limit in 1980, and it started selling out. And when you have a race that starts to sell out you don't care so much maybe about attracting elites because you don't need to. Right.
Speaker 4:You don't have to pay for elites, you don't have to put them up in housing, you don't have to give them free entries, you don't have to do any of that stuff, stuff. You could just cater to the hobby jogger or you know who sees this mountain and sees it as as justifiably a great achievement just to just to go do it, and that's that's what the race is. For most people, it is a great day out on the mountain and it's the, it's the best way to go up pike's peak and back down. Obvious, honestly, it's. If you're to go do it just one day a year ago, sign up for the race because you get supported by all the people who are in the race. It is a fantastic day on the mountain.
Speaker 3:It is.
Speaker 4:So yeah, that's one of the things that makes the race so good. But in the so you see this with a lot of races where they just end up catering to the non-competitive racer, and there's always like with Pikes Peak or any race some locals will show up and set a fast time, but not a lot of competition. But we know now that Pikes Peak is one of the most competitive races and there have been some years recently where it is the most competitive mountain or trail race in the USA. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I could make that case for several different years. But it didn't just become that way and there were times in the 90s, after Carpenter, and we're going to talk about the 92, 93 years yeah, yeah with carpenter.
Speaker 4:But after that there was a mindset that we don't have to invite elites, we don't have to allow them, we don't have to give them, you know, we don't have to set aside spots for them, and they're just going to plan, to plan ahead like everybody else. Well, elites can't always plan ahead because they don't know if they're going to be injured, they don't know what other opportunities come up, they don't know there's so many more things that they have to worry about championships or whatever. And the board in the late 90s had kind of decided we don't, we're not going to. They stopped paying prize money and this is something they had always done was pay prize money.
Speaker 4:Maybe not always, I don't know when that started, but they were paying prize money and they stopped, and then they did not do any set asides for elite runners anymore, and so, even if you know, they had the triple crown event, which was the garden of the gods race. I don't know what the thing is is it bt?
Speaker 3:was it bt?
Speaker 4:well it wasn't btmr until like 2002, so I think it was the um the race that's been discontinued now I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker 3:Oh, and even though there was a third yeah, there were there.
Speaker 4:There was another race in july, and so a trail race. It was a great race and and and it was put on by the pikes peak red runners. But um, it was part of the gold, the. Uh, what was the triple crown? Yeah, so the triple crown was a big deal, and so there were a couple years, apparently, where the top two men in the triple crown standings after the first two races weren't entered into pikes peak, into the pikes peak ascent, and the organizers of Pikes Peak wouldn't let them in. That's dumb.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is dumb.
Speaker 4:What's the point of that? So, and they had big arguments about it and Matt Carpenter boycotted the race in 98, 99?.
Speaker 4:Okay 99, 2000, something like that, and he wrote and he wrote some editorials on it, campaigned, talked a lot to the race organizers about this and they just didn't budge. But in 2002, they had a change on the board and I think that was about the time that Ron Elgin took over as well and they started. They started to loosen up and I think was it 2000. Yeah, so there was. There was one race where that would have been early 2000s, like somewhere between 2000 and 2002 maybe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there was one race where that would have been early 2000s, like somewhere between 2000 and 2002 maybe.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so they start. Yeah, it was the Skyrunner year. It was that first Skyrunner year in 2003. Okay, that was a turning point, because before that they didn't care about all that stuff. And then I think, through matt's influence yeah it became a sky runner race in 2003, and and so they had a lot more competitive runners show up that year let me ask you this what is the history behind that?
Speaker 3:because I know, and there's just like not a lot of the internet about this and as someone that kind of lived through it, I'm sure you got to see that firsthand. Like, what was that era? Like? With matt, he had already achieved the course record. At that point the sky runner series comes in and they want to make it a like a world or us sky runner race. But like what was the? Was that like the only race in america that was doing that? Or like, was it unique? And like what was matt doing at the Cause? I know he used to be like sponsored by Fila there was this like?
Speaker 3:team running all over the world doing stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was a weird time. I don't, I don't. You really should ask Matt about it yeah, I'm curious, and there are some other people in town that you could talk to as well. It was a. It was a time where the sport was growing a lot, so I. There was tremendous growth in the in trail running and number of events and the popularity of those events and trail running and matt was off doing doing all those other races because pike's peak didn't pay anything yeah and and he had other other responsibilities, or with the sponsors, or whatever yeah, he was a full professional athlete at that point.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and one of the one of the very first American pro trail runners. Yeah. Right, so I would like to know more about that too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, it's listen, it's on the list. We're good, that's that's the winner?
Speaker 4:Oh, because that was a year that? And the Skyrunners? It was a Spaniard. I forget his name, but there were a couple Spaniards in the top three and they apparently were like they do in Europe. They were cutting the course on the way down. I don't know, it's not clear, if they cut the course on the way up, but they did cut the course on the way down, because that's cut the course on the way down, because that's just the way they did it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they didn't under, they did not speak English very well, and so there was, and I think that probably um the race administration, the race promoters didn't know enough to even know that that was a thing. Yeah, we didn't know In America we don't play that game.
Speaker 3:To even know that that was a thing. Yeah, we didn't know. In America we don't play that game.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we just follow the trail. But so these guys and Galen Burrell is the one who won that year and Galen said that, yeah, I was running down and I really couldn't see them once we got below tree line, but before that it felt like they were making some time on me in some places and it just felt weird yeah and so they got let, they got disqualified and left out of the official results.
Speaker 4:that's interesting, and um and so galen galen is. He finished in four hours flat and I think the first Spaniard finished in like 355 or something like that 357. It wasn't too far, yeah, so it wasn't that much. But there's no, I can't find any record of these guys. But apparently they separated out the Skyrunner results. They like had a different compilation out the sky runner results. They like had a different compilation for sky runner results and the official results.
Speaker 4:So that the sky runner series could continue to good score their points. These guys came from Spain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, they want their point.
Speaker 4:Just disqualify I'm just because they didn't understand so that's interesting.
Speaker 3:So they they got to keep their official rank if anything, and a dub is a dub for them, but just not in America. Right, apparently, yeah, apparently.
Speaker 4:But if you look on the Skyrunners Wikipedia page, it does not list them as winners there now. But I think they probably were, according to the stories I saw.
Speaker 3:Well, so that's such a pivot then. So in 2003, we pivot from there to. I mean, what was the next? Was it 2012? We get to, and that's where it's also sky running, like how many sky running championships do we have here, or sky running races?
Speaker 4:well, the sky runner years were 2003, 2004, and then 7, 8, 9, and 10. Okay, and I think it's—I'm not sure if they were all marathon, or some were marathon and some were just ascent, I don't know which is which. And then in 2012, that was kind of a watershed year, because the great Killian Jornet shows up with Emily Forsberg and that was the year that he first came to America and he did you know, he, before the race, and after the race, he did all these, all these FKT attempts, or there's videos of him like.
Speaker 4:He went and ran all over the US.
Speaker 3:Climbing the Grands. Yeah, he did.
Speaker 4:Western States before Pikes Peak. So that was the year of that he did that. So, um, yeah, that was a. That was like. That was the last sky runner year for pike's peak interesting, yeah, and that's I mean.
Speaker 3:I feel like that changed the game for pike's peak once killian came over, made it, because that that's when you see Solomon start to sink their teeth into the race and wanting to get you know their athletes in. You see them sponsoring it and obviously we'll get to that point. But like it's just interesting that that's when you say watershed moment, like that was probable, even though, like I don't know, we talked about this a little bit too. Like I don't know, in my opinion, I don't think Killian ran a great time in 2012.
Speaker 4:Like it was solid, but it wasn't considering Matt runs 216, you know Right, yeah, I think maybe he had some other ideas, but I think also he was not pressed. Yeah. And then when you go back and read I realize, think about all the other stuff he was doing that summer I was like, okay, I wonder why you didn't have your best race.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true, it's interesting, Very interesting.
Speaker 4:He had. You know he set a good time, but he did not. You know everyone thought, oh, this is the chance for Matt's record to go down. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that elevated Matt's record to a higher level, because, because killian tried it and he didn't make it, didn't do it and so I think it just gained even more prominence then twice.
Speaker 3:So the year I think it was 2012 and he ran. He ran 340, 26, which is wild too, because alex nichols, local, local son of colorado, springs only seven minutes behind him, right second place. You know, that's.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and Alex came. He beat that time in 15 and 16, I think he did yeah.
Speaker 3:So that was early Alex Nichols. Yeah, that's like Anton Alex Nichols, because they went to Colorado.
Speaker 4:College together. Yeah, that's interesting yeah.
Speaker 3:You know it's an interesting segue too, not to go too far off in a tangent, but it's very interesting to me that, like in that time frame of like 2010 through like 2013, um, like anton, before he got into the leadville 100 applied for the pikes peak marathon to get a free race entry and was accepted, but never checked the email. Um, and it's just wild to me because then I think it was carpenter and buzz that were able to get him into leadville, got him?
Speaker 1:a pair of sportiva shoes and did that whole thing, yeah that kind of started the whole leadville thing.
Speaker 3:He goes on and wins leadville and like his entire world changes like right, how wild would it have been if he, instead of leadville, he goes and wins the pikes peak marathon that year, or or challenges did they have?
Speaker 4:what did that happen in 2006?
Speaker 3:it was somewhere in that range, like somewhere in that time period, um it was whatever year he won. The first year he won ledville. That was the year so yeah just interesting how like history would have been different yeah, it could have been totally different.
Speaker 4:yeah, totally different, but he's. But Anton has always said that he doesn't do well on pikes for some reason, I don't know. I don't know, but yeah, so in addition to the Skyrunner years, there were the WMRA also, and the WMRA also it was part of the. It was, I think, the Pikes Peak Marathon, or even in some years I think it was just the Pikes Peak Ascent was the WMRA Long Distance Championship.
Speaker 3:Yep World.
Speaker 4:Long Distance. Yep, yeah. So that also helped with the international prominence of the race and and I think we probably have Nancy Hobbs to think for some of that as well, because she, um, has been a long time she's been on the board of WMRA and I don't know when that started have you talked to Nancy yet? She, you really should talk to her. She knows all this stuff but, um, and she's been so essential to promoting the sport here in the us she's american charting association right?
Speaker 3:is that what she?
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah, and she's here in town. Yeah, yeah, it's local um.
Speaker 3:So I've got what is it 2006, 2010 and 2014 for the world long distance mountain running champ? Somewhere in that range, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so in 2014, sage Canaday won, and that was the year that Allie Mack jumped into the race and really had never done a trail race before, but she had been training a lot on the incline yeah and was kind of at post-college career and decided to try out the her local pikes, peak ascent and won the world championship so crazy legend yeah, that was.
Speaker 3:That was an awesome day I wanted to put in there because one of the things I did when I like kind of for the research, I broke this up into eras and we'll get into the eras and different people and stuff like that, but I didn't finish the Allie Mac era. I'm hoping Allie will listen to this, cause we do plan to have her on the pod, um, but I didn't finish the Allie Mac era because I feel like that that story is not stories.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We'll get her back out here to this race for sure, yeah, she's done.
Speaker 4:She's done the race several times, and both the marathon and the ascent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. I think the one that sticks out to me that's crazy Is Kim Dobson's record. Like Kim's Dobson's uh, just like her just dominance, absolute and utter dominance of the sport is absolutely crazy. I mean 2009 to 2022, 10 ascent finishes, two marathon finishes, she wins the marathon in 16 and then eight of her 10 ascents are wins and then sets the course record in 224.58, which is wild.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that was. I don't think anyone recognized how difficult the Lynn Borkland record of 233 was.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And Dobson had a really good go of it the year before, in 2011. And then she ran a 234 or something like that. Yeah. And then the next year she came back really prepared and ran that 224 it's wild and it's crazy to think like only I think only um.
Speaker 4:Nikki brinkman has gone under 230 like and that's it well, mod mathis also went under 230 okay, yeah, for her marathon yep, yep and um, and maybe, yeah, maybe the year that she did the marathon as well yeah, I think it was the year 2019, yep because ninka ninka won in 22 yep, that's correct and I think, yeah, mod was right behind her, or not too far behind her to the top, yeah, so okay, so we haven't talked about the two big years.
Speaker 4:So what all those years did, I think, leading up to the Golden Trail Series, is it made people aware of just how special the Matt Carpenter record was. I think people here in Colorado understood that. But Killian had a go at it. There were a fair amount of Europeans who came over, and even Kenyans who would periodically show up at Pikes Peak and try either the marathon or the ascent, and they would never come close, never come close. And so men like Chuck Smead, in 1976, when he set the 205, he was the first one to set it in 205. And so that was a great time as well. And so that was a great time as well. And then there were a lot of years where 215 would have won the race. Yeah, and Matt's time was so far out there that it was just incomprehensible. Um, and so I think, number one, people started to think it was not possible, unbelievable and it's called the impossible record.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they've and they started to say some people say, well, it wasn't even real and because we can't even come close to it. But I think no one else, no one else was as serious about Pikes Peak as Matt Carpenter before or since. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And so you can't really compare yourself to Matt Carpenter, until you and his races on Pikes Peak or even Leadville or the Imogene Pass, until you try to copy what he did and which was he was obsessed with that race that's right and and he says himself that in the 92 he, I think his first race is in 98 or 88 or something like that 87 87, 88 and.
Speaker 4:But in 92 he was getting starting to get really serious about mountain running and ricardo mejia and he ran up that mountain in 19 in 92 in the marathon and and Matt was determined to break the Chuck Smead 205.22 record and he did. He was like just over 205. But there's a video where he collapsed at the top. He got up to the top, stumbled, I mean you could see that he was running really really hard and kind of stumbles across the line and what, and apparently back then you they had to tear off, tear off part of the number to prove that he was at the top.
Speaker 4:And while they were tearing the number off, trying to get the number off him, he collapsed and um for about. If you look at the at the time clock, it was like 40 or 50 seconds. He was down and he said that he was that what got him up was when they said when, when they called for the stretcher, because he knew that his time would not count unless he ran back down. And so that's one of the rules is you can set the ascent record during the marathon, but you have to finish the race, whereas with the ascent you can just stop. But he didn't do that. So the video shows him he's just stumbling, he is totally not there. And then, a couple minutes later, ricardo Mejia shows up and it's still a really fast time. It was like 2.06 or something to the top, yeah, or 2.00. I don't know what it was. And then turns around and Mejia looks great and he crushes Matt on the descent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think he runs 3.24 on the descent. Yeah, I think he runs 324 on the day.
Speaker 4:Yeah, 324, which is one of the fastest times ever. And what was his descent time that day?
Speaker 3:I don't know. Had it been I don't know somewhere under 120?
Speaker 4:Yeah so I don't know what he ran to the top he did not set the descent record that day, but it was close and anything under three 20 year on the top six or seven all time. But and Ricardo has a couple of those, that's how good he was. So Matt, I think, was embarrassed about that race, and he was. It was in his own backyardardo mejia was, if you don't know, is one of the top internationals mountain runners and had run, had won and would continue to to run and win races for another decade, I think after 1992, and so he was one of the top guys and he beat Matt in their big head-to-head. So Matt lived on Pikes Peak that following spring and summer and spent lots of time in bar camp and got to know the trail like no one else and he had the advantage of living here and the time to be able to do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's just interesting. So he ran in 92 when he got beat at 343, 45. So he must have been laying down. He must have been hurting at the top.
Speaker 4:He was literally laying down. He been laying down. He must've been hurting at the top.
Speaker 3:He was literally laying down he was laying down, so it's. It's interesting to me like what Ricardo did to light this fire, because I don't know, you and I both the interview you had sent me that Matt had posted on YouTube. You can hear him say cause they ask him like, oh, what happened? He goes I, or when he actually was the following year when he set the record they asked him like what happened in 92? He's like I'd rather not talk about it Right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was embarrassing to him, yeah.
Speaker 3:And the fire that was lit for him to come back in 93 and absolutely demolished Like and Ricardo didn't have a terrible year but I mean Matt runs 316 for the record, 201 for the ascent, 115 for the descent and Ricardo that year ran 343.14. So that demolished him. He even said in the interview he's like I wanted to put him in the ground.
Speaker 4:Well, I so I um, I've talked to a few people who are in that race that day, and one of them was Dan Nielsen, who used to live in the same apartment in Vail when Matt lived in Vail for a while. And so Dan Nielsen says and Dan Nielsen is a really good runner too, and I think he finished in the top five that day and he says Matt was the most competitive person I have ever met. He would not ever let you, let you win, if just he. He would always.
Speaker 4:He always had to win yeah and he was just the most competitive person and so and they would go out on training runs and he would just crush Dan and um and, like I said, dan, dan was a was a world-class runner as well.
Speaker 4:So, Matt took things personally and I really hope you can you can talk to Matt here on the podcast because it Pikes Peak owes everything to Matt, and not only his incredible talent and focusing on this race, but also his. You know he's responsible for like we already discussed, the database and the website. I think he did the entire website for the Pikes Peak race for a decade or more and literally wrote the history of some of it, so that's how much he cared about this race.
Speaker 3:It's interesting and it's just like, like you said, like such an, the Matt Carpenter. He's one of the few athletes, in my opinion, that transcended the sports for the time period from 87 to even 2011.
Speaker 3:I mean, mean, he ran, he went his last marathon at 47 years old yeah, just bananas right, um, but, like, just transcended the period of time that he was in, so much to the point where very few people from that area, if anybody, is still talked about. I mean, you'll hear, with series and all. Pablo was talked about a little bit. You heard jonathan wyatt, even though he's a little bit later on, but Matt Carpenter, from the eighties to the two thousands, like was the guy, is the guy, um, you know, even up until this year he finally another record finally went down two years in a row, um, or for the second, like Pikes last year, and now there's a lot of bill record goes down and it's just crazy the legacy that he left and the impact that he had on the sport, which is wild.
Speaker 4:And he still has the record for the marathon, the Pikes Peak marathon. That's actually true yeah.
Speaker 3:That's not going anywhere anytime soon.
Speaker 4:That's not going anywhere soon. But who knows, you never know. There are a lot of things like at Leadville that have changed. And training you know if you listen to David Roach's all the podcasts and posts that he's done where he's been very explicit about sharing. Yeah, it's an open book.
Speaker 4:The details of what he's been doing and, frankly, matt Carpenter would have been doing the exact same thing been doing. And and, frankly, matt carpenter would have been doing the exact same thing. He was obsessed with getting every second out of himself and figuring out the best way, whether that was the best uh path up bar trail and down bar trail, or the way to hold his arms while he was running or hold the water bottle while he was running. I think he would have been just as obsessed as as David. I think it's.
Speaker 3:I think it's what it takes. I think it's a, it's a special in order. So I've interviewed a lot of people now on the podcast and I just had an interview that was very interesting to me. So, you, I meet a lot of people. I meet a lot of people with different personalities, right. So, like, I've hung out with John Aziz, joe Gray, I've talked to you, know all these different people that are like when Christina winning at the highest level of sport, and I just had an interview with, like, michelino Sinceri. He runs for the North face and he's famous now because he just set the record for the grand, but I had the pleasure of speaking to him like a week before he set the record, before anybody even knew he was going to go for it, and it was so interesting to me because it reminded me of Matt Carpenter, like we were talking about obsession. He's like dude, I have a name for every rock on my way up to the top of that of the grant. Wow.
Speaker 3:And he's like I've, they're all counted, I have a name for everything. And he, I'm like like who, you're a psycho Like, who thinks like about that and it, and it's just like that obsession mixed with a very competitive personality. That's how you get someone like that. And Matt, I think, was just the first of first of his kind.
Speaker 4:Right, right To be able to for our, for for the sport of mountain running for sure have you been to have you spent much time on Skyrunnercom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a little bit, because I was looking for the book and you can get little pieces of the book but not the whole thing.
Speaker 4:So he has a long course description of every section of Bar Trail and the road going up. He has a really what's still a very accurate timetable where it's a time calculator. So he says well, if you get this time to the top of the Ws, then you can expect this time at the top. And you should check out the calculator.
Speaker 4:It's actually eerily accurate, accurate it's kind of it's um, and he was always one of the biggest proponents of saying the way you can't. You can't win the race on the w's, but you can sure lose it oh, 100 percent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's, it's. The w's are tricky, in my opinion. I think, outside of the switchbacks above bar camp going to a frame, the trickiest part and the reason I'll say it is because, like, for instance, like last year, eli, a lot of these dudes went out. They're going like eight minute pace on on the W's.
Speaker 3:And I'm like how is that sustainable? It's not. It's absolutely not. Unless you're like a genetic freak, it's a I don't know like. I feel like you have to. I would be more. Not that I've raced the race, but like be more strategic, almost like take it a bit lighter on the w's and you can exploit that whole middle section of bar camp yeah you know and make up time there right and that that was.
Speaker 4:That's what matt always said is that you save time. You, you know, you just take it easy up the w's and if, if there's one one quote, I read where he said yeah, you can check the time at the top of the w's and see how much, how much you ruined it either ruined your race or how, whether or not you're going to have a good race, it's true so if it's too fast, you've ruined your race and good luck yeah, yeah, for a long day after that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, uh, so, yeah, I, I think the matt era is just like, like, like we said, just something very unique and and probably something I don't know if it's something we'll ever even see again in the sport. Um, you know, a mountain runner from, especially on the sub ultra scene, whether it be a pike's peak or something. One of the things I thought was interesting, not to deviate too much, but like, you'll see this era of matt, you'll see this era of a kim dobson and you'll see this era of joe even joe gray's got four wins yeah yeah, you know, I wonder if an athlete now as competitive as a sport is getting, can come back and continue to win like that.
Speaker 3:john aziz and christina I mean I know I don't think christina, I think christina might be out this year with an injury, but John Aziz has an opportunity to continue to make history if he wins again. That's three in a row. That's dominance in my opinion, especially with as fast as the race has gotten.
Speaker 4:Right and Aziz has concentrated on the marathon, when the last couple years with the Golden Trail Series, a lot of the elites ran the ascent. Yeah, so, it'll be interesting to see yeah, he had. He had a really good race last year, so big time, big time.
Speaker 3:Interesting to see how, with more competition coming in with the golden trail series having moved on this year, how, how he does there yeah, I wonder if they'll ever come back, if we'll get, I mean, because I know from just inside baseball that it's like kind of a very random thing. It depends on the calendar and how that lines up, and it'd be interesting, it'd be nice to see them, you know.
Speaker 4:I don't know if it's that random. You know I overheard what's the name of the promoter for golden trail series, which?
Speaker 3:is greg greg volet yeah, greg volet.
Speaker 4:I heard greg volet say once that when, when they first came to pike's peak, he said you know what other, what other major race, what other famous race is there in the us? Yeah and that was his and pike's peak was the answer yeah for him and that was an obvious answer.
Speaker 4:But I and I think that they've had to like make go out and make they try to race at Flagstaff, and they've got their race in Mammoth and now they're doing the race in Marin at the Headlands. So, yeah, pikes Peak is where it's at, I think. Still, I think they'll come back.
Speaker 3:I would hope so.
Speaker 4:I mean, it would make the most sense and it's part of the national series too yeah, it would make the most sense for it to be what would make them come back every year is if we could get the TV situation figured out yeah, oh, I agree, we need Starlink man.
Speaker 3:I don't know why we haven't like I.
Speaker 4:I don't think, I don't know if starlink is fast enough.
Speaker 3:I don't know yeah, listen, I mean, hopefully this is the start of something cool.
Speaker 3:Being at the, you know, like having this partnership with them, being able to like have something at the start line and you know and having live commentary on the race, but yeah it would be my hope to like maybe this is too much inside baseball, but like in the future, you know, have like a live stream from the summit and do it that way, um, or have two people have one person at the summit, one person at the start and you have your runners in between and you can live stream the whole damn thing.
Speaker 4:And well, they have had live streams the last few years at the summit. But no, I'm talking like no real commentary yeah, yeah, like real like.
Speaker 3:Oh, like joe gray just passed the you know a-frame and this was a split in 2016 when he won, and I like stuff like that that I feel like, oh yeah, we're missing, overlooked it's missed, totally missing out.
Speaker 4:It's hard though. Yeah, it's really hard. They tried very in 2018. They tried really hard to make it happen. I know they laid they laid a line from the summit down to bar camp did they? Really, or they didn't lay a line, they laid, they tried to get a microwave dish working and and they couldn't get a good connection, or down to bar camp and so they've always been hobbled.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we need elon man. He's gotta he's gonna hook it up. Yeah, get him somebody. It's solvable, it's just gonna take some money yes, it is yeah, some serious investment, but I don't know. I mean, I think like one of the things that Somebody.
Speaker 4:It's solvable, it's just going to take some money.
Speaker 3:It is. It is, yeah, some serious investment, but I don't know. I mean, I think one of the things that is promising to me is you're seeing companies like Mountain Outpost now and they're setting it up and doing stuff like that.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:I only hope that we can get something like that going.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, I think it's possibleand because it's such a long climb, it's a race that—a lot of things happen in this race. There's a lot, you know—there's a lot of times where they'll get to the Ws and people will blow up, or people will get to the top and they get past on the downhill, and so much of those stories had not really been told very well. Uh, because they were unseen. They were in the woods, somewhere on the side of a mountain and and just a few people got to see it.
Speaker 3:It was. It's like, for instance, like I've um, brian Whitfield has come on before and Kieran Ney, who have a lot of history with the race, you know, and they're just young guns, but like the stories they with the race, you know, and they're just young guns, but like the stories they've told me from like 22 and 23, or specifically 23 was like francesco poopy, like on the side of the, like the trail, like just let me die.
Speaker 3:And then he resurrects from the dead and because, or like seth, uh, septimore last year, yeah, coming back from the dead to pass a bunch of guys above tree line, you know like, and nobody really knows those stories right, it's something that um, or you know what man, even um, what was it last year with judith and sofia battling? You know like they touched on it a little bit in that live or in the um, like their aftermath video. But like sofia no offense to sofia, I think she's one of the best in the world but like judith did all the work in that race. You know like it was kind of tough on on judith, but just interesting yeah, there's.
Speaker 4:There's been some great races on that mountain, and 92 was one of one of the great ones it was yeah, yeah, 92, I think.
Speaker 3:To me in the research that I did, going back to it was, I just think it was the catalyst for matt to just kind of become who, who he really became in this part how do you know how? This is obviously a question for him. I don't know if you've heard for the grape Ryan. How did he find this race Like? How did the dude even get in the mountain running?
Speaker 4:Like Ricardo here or Matt. Carpenter. Yeah. Well, he lived in Vail for a while. And so there you know, there's been trail races in Vail.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I don't really know. Yeah, I'd be interested. I'm just curious to see. I know that he did try to. He, he did try, try his hand at road racing and he, he did enter you know, he was a. I remember seeing him running around and in the early 90s here in town and he was a force, but he, where he found a home, was on the trails and on the mountains. That's where he's really good yeah and so he, just someone as competitive as that.
Speaker 4:You want to go where you're going to win and so I think that's what he just naturally ended up doing because he was so good at it.
Speaker 3:What other era? Like, do you think, from a dominance perspective? Like we talked about kim dobson a little bit, what about? Like scott elliott? Do you know much about dominance perspective? Like we talked about kim dobson a little bit, what about? Like scott elliott? Do you know much about him?
Speaker 4:like, yeah, scott, you know he's overlooked because he was kind of in that the early 90s period, but he was maybe as equally obsessed with pikes as matt was during that time. You know, scott was one of the first people, if not the first, to go up and down the incline, or to go up the incline Interesting. He was the one who really popularized that and he would spend weeks sleeping at bar camp Interesting. And I raced him one year and on mountain bikes they they had a mountain. They used to have a mountain bike race on the highway up pikes, up the pikes, peak. So uh, in 1992 he did that race and and won that on a on a borrowed road bike. I remember.
Speaker 4:He was just an aerobic monster. He was one of those guys that you look at and his chest was gigantic just because of his lung development Interesting Compared to the rest of his body. It was obvious that, okay, this guy is gifted in a certain way, that I'm not, and that's why he can do that. But he was also obsessed with it.
Speaker 3:He was young too I think it was like 83 when he won his first ascent or started the ascents.
Speaker 4:Yeah, was it that early? I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what I've got in the research was 83, 2006. He ran 17 ascents in that time and had eight wins. It's pretty solid.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he was. He specialized in the ascent. I think partly because because of Matt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would too.
Speaker 4:And maybe he just didn't like running downhill. He would be a good guy to talk to as well. You know he lives in Boulder. Okay. And he does. I know he still coaches athletes.
Speaker 3:Really, really.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:It's crazy, all these names that kind of get lost to history until you start digging and you're like, oh, man all these people are still hanging around and just living normal lives.
Speaker 4:Yeah, a lot of those people from the all the people from the 90s are still around.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Rick, well, the video you had sent. That was really interesting and I would challenge anybody to find this on YouTube and check it out. It's on Carpenter's page, right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, carpenter just created that page recently, so you should put that like in the show notes or something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure, for sure, and it's got. I think it was Rick Trujillo versus Scott Elliott. I believe that's what it was. Yeah, and I think it was an ascent and they were just just battle them back and forth and Scott got the better of them and yeah. But like even Rick was a boss back in the day.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, Dude's calves were gigantic. We did not really talk much about Scott Trujillo, but he was. He was a dominant force as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, just like just an era like these and I've Steve Goucherin as well as who I had written down for the 60s I'm trying to think of like era. One of the things I feel like we probably definitely need to address is Joseph Gray, I think for this time period now I have it as an era, but I think Joe's, you know, even though he's 40 years old now, I think Joe is not finished. I mean, I would imagine this year his battle between Seth James and Moore is going to be interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're both kind of older, but I don't. I have come to the belief that trail running, because it's such a physical sport, rewards time spent training. And you know, we've seenid roach at 36 break. Break that record. Matt carpenter continued to win the marathon until he was 47.
Speaker 4:Yeah I just think the trail running running you know, max king has had some great races in his 40s yeah, um, I think trail running rewards that can the year after year after year of training and working at it in a way that maybe like track running or road running, does not? It's kind of breaks you down, yeah.
Speaker 3:I would agree with that. I think it's. It's interesting. Different athletes are so different too, like with me, one of the things I found last season that I made of, like I think my training was great, but I think very specific and too specific for the time period, uh, like for an extended period of time, whereas, like I'm like, oh, maybe I should have done more speed work and more, just gotten more fitness before I entered a period of like specificity in the training, some more steep stuff and stuff like that right so this is very interesting, whereas, like I also know people that just run on the trails and they're fast as shit and I'm like how do you do it?
Speaker 3:You know so it's. It's just interesting, like the different, different types of athletes in different times. Like Joe, I know the way Joe does a lot of his training is um is a lot of speed work.
Speaker 4:There is a lot of fitness. Yeah, yeah, he trains with with the top distance group, one of the top distance groups in in the country.
Speaker 3:He does insane and to do that at four years old is wild. His stats are crazy too. He started in 2014, so from 14 to 20 to the 23 four cent wins in 16, 17, 19 and 21 he was fifth and 23 last year and third and 22. But when you break down his fifth place and his third last year he had a broken wrist or broken hand Right. And he ran without a cast. He was probably in excruciating pain.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to give him a handicap for that one, and then third in 2022, the dude had COVID, you know.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:So it's like I, you, you, you know, you take away those things, and it's like that's an entirely different race.
Speaker 4:So yeah, he could. He could win any year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, A hundred percent, and I feel like if he gets himself to five ascent wins, I think that's that's. He's up there on Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:The. Pikes ascent for sure.
Speaker 4:He already is, yeah for sure.
Speaker 3:Great races on bikes. Oh yeah, no, without a doubt. It's crazy. Just the history itself, and I think the only other thing we didn't hit was 2019. Um was with maude and killian in that like golden trail series era um yeah, so my yeah.
Speaker 4:In 2019, that was the the second year of the golden trail series. They came here for the first time in 2018.
Speaker 4:Let's talk a little bit about the descent record for the marathon, yeah, Because so there was a guy and I did not write his name down. There was a guy in the early 80s, from Idaho, I think, or Utah, who had like the five fastest descent times by quite a ways, and he you know 216s, 117s, he had several of these like 120 or below descent times and he had the fastest time until Matt Carpenter broke that on his descent in 1993. Interesting, well, yeah, because I think that Ricardo Mejia did not even break it when he did a 116 in 92. Yep. So this other guy I forget his name, I apologize so Matt came along and his descent was 114 or something.
Speaker 3:Carpenter? Yeah, carpenter was In 93, his was 115.
Speaker 4:115,. Yeah so, and that record also. You know all three of those records have stood for so long. But then in 2018, you may remember, 2018 was the year that they canceled the full ascent and they made us finish at Bar Camp because of weather. That week there had been giant hailstorms in Manitou that, frankly, all summer that year we had had so many hailstorms in Colorado Springs. I think that freaked out the race management and the forecast was not a good forecast at the top on Saturday for the race day ascent. So they had us. Even though it turned out to be okay, they stopped us at bar camp. Even though it turned out to be okay. They stopped us at bar camp.
Speaker 4:But what happened was is that it rained and snowed that night up on the peak. It didn't snow very much. I was up there at dawn or shortly after dawn and there was a little bit of snow, but there had been quite a bit of rain and the the trail. If you've ever run bar trail, you know it's all gravel, there's no mud, and so when it gets wet it is super fast. You just feel so confident. It's like you have, like you're running on on rubber because everything is so grippy, and so that's the way it was on the morning of um of the marathon in 2018.
Speaker 4:That's interesting and Dakota, dakota was he. Was he in the lead at the top? I don't remember.
Speaker 3:But that was here. I mean Stian was in that race. There was a lot of big names in that race.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there were a lot of big names in that race. Yeah, there were a lot of big names in that race and I think Dakota was able to concentrate more on Pikes Peak than maybe the others who weren't used to, as used to the altitude. Yeah. But he just totally bombed the downhill and set and reset or, yeah, set the record.
Speaker 3:That's crazy 113.53. That is so fast.
Speaker 4:He really crushed it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is wow, that is bonkers fast. That's the year he rode his bike to the race from wherever he was living. Yeah, I think it was Durango or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 4:He was living in Durango. That was great, yeah. And then in 2019, well, while we're on the descent, I want to talk about my favorite women's race, which was probably 2017. Because, again, that was the year I was up at the top for the marathon spectating. And in 2017, this woman from St Louis, missouri not at altitude, she just went off the front.
Speaker 4:This is one of those stories of great races that we never hear about. She totally went off the front and was at the top of the mountain at like 250 or something like that, 252. Okay, and had a big lead, couldn't see anyone. And then, I think 10 minutes later, courtney DeWalter comes up. And she comes up and turns around and then, a couple minutes after that is when or it was quite a few minutes after that that Christina Mascarenhas comes up, and I remember thinking they don't have enough time on Christina Because she crushed it and ran. That's when she ran faster, she ran a 129 downhill. She caught, first of all, courtney, caught the woman from St Louis I can't remember her name Before treeline and Courtney's going along. And then, not very long after, is when Christina caught Courtney and Courtney tried, stayed, was able to stay with her, I think, until the top of the W's and then oh, wow, that's a long way.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was a long way. And then she was Christina was not out of sight and, um, it was a race for a long time until, really until the very bottom. That's crazy.
Speaker 3:I had no idea. Courtney even ran.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know that was before she was uh had some of her breakthroughs, so but wow that's a good one.
Speaker 3:I didn't know Christina ran. I know Christina is smoking fast downhill, but I didn't know she's around a one 29.
Speaker 4:That's that's, that's great. Yeah, she, she has like all the fastest times for women.
Speaker 3:Wow yeah, christina, she's another one. I mean, I feel like another win one or two. She's on right up there on mount rushmore already, one of the best in the world, like easily, yeah, so and, and she has gotten much better at climbing.
Speaker 4:I think she ran like a three I don't remember what her year, what her time, that first year that she won was going up. But she's gotten a lot better on her climbing and so she's a real. It's going to be tough to beat her, no matter who it is.
Speaker 3:Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, it's a bummer. I don't like I said, I don't think she's. To the best of my knowledge, I know she's not racing this year but next year. So yeah.
Speaker 3:Give you a little break for her. Her, you know? Um, yeah, so 2009, let's go to 2019, I guess, and we'll talk, because that was a big year. I'd say that was like the biggest year for the marathon with the golden trail road series. That's when killian comes to town. You know pretty much his goal is to break carpenter's course record and that's also the year the women's course record goes down in the marathon as well that's right, so I.
Speaker 4:there was a lot of hype that year about Killian coming to be serious about this second attempt at the record and he seemed really serious about it. He did the incline hard and I'm thinking, well, how serious are you? But um, he didn't really have any competition, is what he? Would say, he got up, you know, up above tree line and he could see that he was way, far ahead of anyone else and he also he was way off of Matt Carpenter's record. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So, um, he had a really what was it? 207 or something going up, which was a really good time, but it was hot that day and so I don't think anyone was going to break the record.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 4:That's something else we haven't talked about. It is, temperature it is temperature and air pressure, barometric pressure, which is really hard to track on that mountain and makes a gigantic difference in performance. Yep, yep.
Speaker 4:So one of the things about that 93 race is that it was like below freezing at the top things about that 93 race is that it was like below freezing at the top. So, um, it was a kind of a normal day down in manitou, but it was very cold and in fact, that's that's. The reason that ricardo mejia gave for not doing well in the race was that he got cold. Well, matt didn't. Matt had a jacket that he wore around his waist and then had it on at the top at the turnaround, so I think he definitely benefited from really great weather, whereas in 2018, and especially 2019, was a very hot year. It was like almost 90 degrees at the bottom when the elites finished Oof, that's rough, and so there was no way that anyone was going to break the record then. No.
Speaker 4:So when it's like when it's really warm at the, when it's a warm day and the barometric pressure is lower, then that 14,000-foot mountain can feel like a 17,000-foot mountain as far as your body is concerned, as far as the amount of air that you have to breathe or the amount of oxygen that you have to take in have to breathe, or the amount of oxygen that that you have to to take in. So I think there's a lot of years where there's no one who's going to break any record because the barometric pressure is wrong.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and little things that are.
Speaker 4:yeah, there's just but those things don't ever get recorded and it's hard to track down when you're looking back at them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well it's. That's. The weird thing about trails is you might have a climb that looks like another climb. You could look at two different climbs. One could be two miles and 2,000 feet, the other one could be two miles and 2,000 feet. One could be very technical and one could be a road.
Speaker 4:Right. You know Right.
Speaker 3:And one's going to run a lot faster than the other but you don't know that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like that's uh, and and even on pikes peak even from year to year with the weather changes.
Speaker 3:It's hard to yeah it's hard to compare well, like we were talking about too, when we're talking a little bit earlier about the uh, the course itself, like the trail, now there's a boulder which you're gonna you might lose a second on the boulder. Now what happened to? Like, reposition yourself on the w's? And then there's those um, you had a name for them. What were you calling them? The logs that they placed on the trail, that like? The water bars. Water bars yeah, I don't know. I I struggled with the water bars, so I don't know those big step ups.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so 19 was a big year. Maude um from switzerland breaks the course record, lowers megan kimball's course record, uh, and takes it from 415, 06 down to 402, 41 um and I so far that record stood that's.
Speaker 4:Nobody's touched it since yeah, and that that hot year makes mods record even more impressive yeah I think that was. Yeah, that's certainly one the one of the great performances on the mountain. Yeah, no, no doubt Right up there with and she was not pressed on the downhill. She's not a great downhill or but she's obviously very capable. She ran a very fast time going down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, was even the men's. I mean, like killian had sage on his tail and, uh, mark lonsdine, but like he wasn't, like you said, he wasn't really challenged. Challenged maybe a little bit more on the descent than he was on the ascent, but I don't know yeah, he was way far ahead on the on the descent.
Speaker 4:That's when he passed me. I was going up oh really and um that's crazy. So I could see that he was. He was running hard, though.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah, it's interesting, I've never seen him in real life.
Speaker 4:So he's somebody I want to get on the podcast For a few seconds.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's crazy. All right, so let's, I mean I think we're pretty. I mean we're already an hour and a half in, so I think we can probably move into like 2022, 2023. Yeah, and then tied into a bow from there. Yeah, if you're good with that, yeah, 20, and that's like the last. The ascent was, you know, the gold trail world series race.
Speaker 4:The ascent remy took the dub two years in a row and mac carpenter's legendary ascent record went down last year well, I think remy had several tries at the ascent so he knew what it took and had spent some time here. So he came back here last year in 23. In 22, I think he tried pretty hard but he was unable to really get close enough and I think then so in 23 he came out kind of like with Matt. He came back with renewed urgency to try to get the record that year, yeah, and spent more time. He came out here a week earlier than the other Golden Trail athletes did to Colorado, spent some time in Leadville and then set the incline record that week which is significant, and then had that incredible climb.
Speaker 3:I think his not to discount what he did, which I think was incredible, but I think that the conditions last year definitely it was cool. Cool at the start it was, I thought it was a cool year and then there was snow at the top.
Speaker 4:Well, there was snow all the way from the, from the A-frame up. Yeah. And I was. I ran that race and it was. It was like fluffy snow. It wasn't slick, maybe you know, but he had to be breaking trail. I mean there wasn't that much traffic on the trail before. I mean, even when I came through, there wasn't. It wasn't like it was totally packed down. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh, that is interesting.
Speaker 4:So I'm. He had an incredible day. I think he could have gone under two without the snow. Yeah, wow there was nobody else who had who set prs that day right patrick. Patrick was right behind patrick, yeah, patrick, kip and jano uh, who's also due the fact that? Well, he had one of the fastest, the five fastest times that day.
Speaker 3:He's an animal, he's amazing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we know he's the word. He's the world champion on the uphill.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, patrick was there. Woodfield had a great run um chad I can't remember it might have been chad hall. Christian allen fell off just before tree line um no, guys went out too fast uh eli, oh yeah, eli uh fourth place.
Speaker 3:I think he died third or fourth, something like that, I think. No, I think eli got third that year last year. So yeah, just incredible, absolutely incredible year. I think it's going to be. I think that one like we talked Eli got third that year last year. So, yeah, just incredible, absolutely incredible year I think it's going to be. I think that one like we talked about earlier that was the most competitive race assembled on American soil that I think we've had.
Speaker 4:Yes, maybe ever yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was wild to kind of witness that and see what we were able to accomplish.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that was a great year. Yeah, yeah, that was a great a great year. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that's it, I think we got through it.
Speaker 4:I'm sure there's that we could talk a lot more about um, about the race, but I agree, I agree.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the different areas. I feel like we touched on Um, I Probably for another one we can get into more of the women's races and stuff like that. Yeah, but no, I think this is a good start and I think this does pay very good homage to the race itself and just the history there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's really because of the history. That's part of what makes the race great. And not only is it a challenge, that it's obvious just seeing the mountain up there every day and how it changes with the weather and the clouds either there or not there and it's it's. It's like it's challenging you to go up there and to see how fast you can go up. It's just a natural thing.
Speaker 3:It is. It's like, and it's this weird in between of the the I don't know. For me it's this uh, the athlete in me wants to compete and run hard at it, but also the adventure in me, I don't know. There's like this weird mountaineering aspect to it too. That's like this unknown of above tree line and it's this 14,000 foot peak and you don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, people, people falling, people falling apart up above tree line. That's a very common story. So if you can figure that out, you've accomplished something. Whether you're winning the race or just finishing the ascent in five hours, I think it's an accomplishment, no matter how you do it.
Speaker 3:It's true, it's three, two ones, man.
Speaker 4:I need to get up and do some because, uh, I was injured in August and trying to get back in.
Speaker 3:Are you racing this year?
Speaker 4:I'm planning to race. I'm entered in the ascent.
Speaker 3:Good, good, good, it'll be fun. Uh, I'll be calling your name. I hope so It'll be. Uh, it'll be fun to uh. Yeah, it's a little weird. I to uh. Yeah, it's a little weird. I, part of me, I'm excited. Well, I'm super excited to do like the commentary also part of me like wants to be. I'll next day I'll probably get up super early, go run up on, uh, at least a barge camp to have some cowbells and like cheer, cheer people on. It could be kind of fun. I just love being on course, you know yeah, it's a.
Speaker 3:It's a great day, yeah yeah, it's special, special day for the community. It'll be uh. Yeah, I can't believe we've done so many of these like this is gonna be. Uh, it's gonna be a hundred years at some point soon you know, yeah, it's gonna 36 if you count 36. Yeah, we're counting 36, yeah coming up I wonder if they. If they will, I bet you they'll probably do 56, I would imagine for the 100-year. But you never know, maybe they'll.
Speaker 4:Well, they have like the addition yeah, the 65th year or the 70th year. Wow. That's crazy.
Speaker 3:Well, Mark, thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 4:I appreciate it, man. Thanks so much, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, it's always fun to talk about. It is.
Speaker 3:We love these races. Yeah Well, hey, good luck at the Pikes Peak Ascent, all right.
Speaker 4:Thank you All, right man, Thanks James. Yeah. Thank you.
