Second Annual 24 Hours of Towers

Saturday 08 September 2012  7:00 AM

North End of Horsetooth Campground (across the street from the Soderberg Lot)
Fort Collins, CO
More detailed schedule to follow

You can see them from almost anywhere in town, don't you want to go up and touch them?

Can it really only be  weeks until we get to spend a Saturday together?  An entire Saturday?  For those new to this, 24 Hours of Towers is a fun, low key, cooperative, 24 hour group run on our Hill.  The Hill that helps hone the edge of a group of very successful runners who call Fort Collins home. Everyone is invited, come run what you can, every lap counts towards our only goal, the big group totals.

Horsetooth Rock as viewed  from Towers Road

As runners we're always trying to best our current PRs.  Well, the 24 Hours of Towers PRs are:

• 78 different runners
• 210 laps completed
• 1502 miles
• 367,500 feet of ascent (69.6 miles)
• Average per runner:
• 2.69 laps
• 19.25 miles!
• 4712 ft. vert. 
• 25 runners with an "ultradistance" day, 4+ laps

What comes first, 100 runners or 100 miles of vert?  Come be part of it and find out.

Bring your (well behaved and leashed) dogs.  They love Towers too, and can be of help on the way up.

To help people set their own goals we've come up with some ideas to help you out.

• The Birthday - Run your age in miles, however many laps that is.
• The Starry Night- Run laps all night, starting Saturday night at dusk.  Slap on some glow bracelets and have fun.
• The Solo- Run one lap up and down.  7 miles and 1700 vertical feet. 
• The FCTR Twelve Pack - If a Baker's Dozen is 13 then a FCTR 12'er has 14 beers.  2 Laps is 14 miles and 3400 vertical feet.  That's a run worthy of a beer or two.
• The Cool Dude - One a lap Sat morning, another Saturday evening when it's cool, and a third Sunday morning, timed to finish at breakfast time (7 AM).  Three laps is 21 miles and 5100 feet of vert, nearly a mile, all in cool weather.  
• The Ultra - 4 laps will give you 28 miles (6800 feet of vert), that's an ultramarathon, and tougher than some 50Ks.  Bonus, we have a generous 24 hour cut off. 
• The Pikes Peak Plus - 5 laps 35 miles with 8500 feet of vertical gain.  Pike's Peak marathon is only (Oops, there is no Only) 26.2 miles and less than 8000 feet of vert.  
• The Meaning of Life - Run 6 laps and you'll have traveled 42 miles (and 10,200 feet of vertical gain).  If you don't find the meaning of life in your 42nd mile you're free to keep running.  
• The Nearly Jemez - 7 laps will leave your GPS reading 49 miles and 11,900 feet of vertical gain.  We know you couldn't sleep at night being so close to the 50 miles and 12,000 feet of vert at the Jemez 50 so we won't judge you when you run out a half mile and back to get the Garmin to turn over to 50.
• The Vermont - 9 laps is 15,300 feet of vertical gain, that's what you get in the Vermont 100.  
• The Leadville - 10 laps will give you 17,000 feet of vert (70 miles), roughly the vert in the Leadville Trail 100.  It saves you 30 miles though!
• The Western - 11 laps is 18700 feet of vert (77 miles), a touch more than the Western States 100 has.
• The Wasatch - 16 laps will give you a respectable 112 miles and 27,200 feet of vert which is just a bit over the 26,900 ft of vert found in the Wastach 100.  With 12 extra miles take solace in the overall grade being less here.
• Mr. October - Nick says he thinks 19 laps is possible.  That's 133 miles and over 32,000 vertical feet.
• The Hardrock - 20 laps would be 140 miles and 34000 feet of vert, basically the vert in the Hardrock 100.  
• The Honey Badger - New this year, running the Honey Badger's age in LAPS.  25 Laps to the towers and back.  If you undertake this one we'll wave the 24 hour time limit.

Even the flat boring parts are pretty

 24 Hours of Towers FAQ

Can I run as part of a team?

  Of course you can.  If you each do 4 laps you can even call it an Ultra Team.

Toughest hill on the hill, doesn't look that bad, eh?

Do I have to run for 24 hours straight?

  Of course not.  Run when you want.  Stop when you want.  Eat when you want.  Drink beer when you want.  You don't even need to start at 7:00 AM if you don't want to.  

Should I be done by 7:00 AM on Sunday?

  If you want to join us for a fun campstove breakfast you should.

Do I need to sign up or register?

  No.  This is not a race, just a bunch of trail runners getting together.  We'll have a log at the start/finish campsite, I53, where you can record what you ran.

Don't take in this view too deeply or you'll trip on that rebar sticking out of the trail just over there to the left!

Will there be other things to do besides run?
  Of course.  We anticipate a crowd at the campground during the day and hopefully into the night.  Last year there was even a boat or two being around for the day.  If the usual FCTR shenanigans aren't occuring at basecamp I'll be disappointed. 

The views get even better once you get up high

Where should I park?
  The best place to park will be the Soderberg Trailhead.  There's a $7 daily fee to park there if you don't have a Larimer county park pass.  The gate to the trailhead does close sometime in the late evening though the park remains open all night.  You can also park 1/2 mile down the trail at the Marina parking lot for the same $7 Larimer county fee.

24 Hours of Towers: Save the Date

Mark the date: 8-9 September 2012

24 Hours of Towers

24 Hours of Towers is less than 5 months away, just 11 once a fortnight time trial hill climbs left to brush up (including one tonight up Horsetooth).  If you want to camp you should reserve a Horsetooth campsite.  The north end of the campground is starting to fill up, with I49-I54 all reserved, hopefully all by FCTRs, but there are still some spots open down that way.

Happy hill climbing.

Streak no more

I didn't run last Monday.  The streak is dead.  But that's OK, I needed a day off and I took one.  My streak was never about checking off each day on the calendar at the cost of everything else.   So how did I come to miss a day?


I came down with the flu a couple weeks ago, the evening after the last Tortoise and Hare race to be exact.  At least the timing was good.  My wife and kids were all struck down on Thursday but I was able to have a fun Greyrock run on that Friday, run Pete's final 15 miles of March with him and Cat, and then run the Tortoise and Hare race on Sunday before becoming sick myself.  I've never had the "real flu" that I remember, turns out it wipes you out. 


The week I had the flu I was only able to manage a meager 1 mile walk with Sandis and Tonks on Monday but was able to run the rest of the week with Thursday even being an easy effort run most of the way up Towers.  On Friday I was back to work and was a little surprised that I made it through the flu with The Streak in tact. 


It also turns out that laying on the couch all day (with a short run in the middle of the day) while sick is much easier on the body than going to work when you're first "recovered".  I ran but was tired Friday, kept it short on Saturday and Sunday my 20 miles turned in the toughest 10 I've run in a long time.  When I was again dead tired on Monday I decided that running was not in the best interest of my recovery and took the day off.


The decision wasn't nearly as difficult as I once thought it might be.  When I thought about it logically I knew rest was the smart thing.  My streak wasn't a compulsive check it off kind of streak, it was about getting my head back in the running game and I had accomplished that.  There were a few days during the past month that I ran only because of the streak and I didn't like that, I knew it went against the reason I was streaking and I didn't want to become a slave to the number.  Mentally I needed a day off, but was slow to accept this.


I went to bed Monday content with a good run of 167 days of running.  167 days, 1017.4 miles, tons of confidence, and all the speed I had lost, to be exact.  And Tuesday I had one of the best track workouts I've had all spring.  Seems rest can be a good thing, mental and physical rest.


Yesterday I ran for the 6th consecutive day.  I think I'm mostly recovered from the flu, though I'd like to blame my slower than desired late miles of Saturday's run on not being 100% yet.  :-)  I don't think I'm going to call this one a streak though.  I'll get up every morning planning on going for a run, a but if it's not convenient or if I'm too tired or my head's not in it I'll be OK skipping it.  Though that's the first step to being lazy and falling into a rut I think I've learned enough to head that off if it starts setting in.


Long live the non-Streak.

Running is not a solitary sport

With the passing of Micah True I have been browsing back through Born To Run a bit.  Last night I came across this passage describing Scott Jurek.

"The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other, he understood, but to be with each other. Scott learned that before he had a choice, back when he was trailing Dusty and the boys through the Minnesota woods.   He was no good and had no reason to believe he ever would be, but the joy he got from running was the joy of adding his power to the pack."

I've mentioned a similar sentiment a few times before here but I really like how McDougal framed this in terms of experiencing joy by adding power to the pack.  I get that when out running with our FCTR pack.  It is what drives me to do this.  Running is not a solitary sport.

Prize Money!

The Tortoise and Hare race series is put on by the Fort Collins Running Club.  It is a once a month race series (Oct-Apr) with a staggered start system where all the runners will finish at the same time, if they run their predicted time.  Each race points are handed out to those who cross the finish line the fastest, essentially to those who beat their predicted time by the largest margin.  The top 5 five in the series standings receive gift certificates to a local running store.  To be in the running for the money racers need to continue to run faster than predicted each race, to continue to improve speed-wise each month as the predictions are re-calculated with every result.  Racers also need to be stubborn enough to show up each month, or at least for 5 of the 7 races.

Though I didn't plan it this way, my slump in fitness and speed happened at the perfect time as I was running as slow as I remember in 3-4 years when I entered my first race of the series last November.  On top of running my slowest 5K in recent memory that day I suffered the embarrassment of coming in DFL and of having taken a wrong turn on the course, adding 0.1 mile or so to my race.  Since that day I've been working hard to get my fitness back though and with every successive race of the season I have beat my predicted time, and for the past 4 races I have finished "in the points".  This was enough to earn me 2nd place overall in the standings and $75 to spend at the Runners Roost.  Woo Hoo, new shoes!

I've never won anything racing before, so I'm pretty excited.  It feels a tiny bit strange to win something this year while never scoring more than the minimum 5 points per race last year as I'm running essentially at the same level now as I was a year ago, with my last 3 race times close to identical, comparing 2011 with 2012.  Still it was fun, and actually took some racing in the end to secure second place.  I passed one of the girls who tied for 3rd place overall with about 1/2 mile to go in the race and had to edge out another runner at the finish line to secure my place in the standings. 

My race wasn't the PB I set out for that morning but the 2nd place finish will make up for it for now. I finished the race in 24:45, running 7:45, 7:54, and 7:58 splits the first 3 miles after aiming for 7:45 on all of them and around 24:00 for the race. I guess that's what the next race is for. Maybe Tonks can pull me in to a PB at the Fast and the Furriest.