2019 Indian Creek 55K – Fighting Rigor Mortis

Map of the course.

Well after 15 years of slogging up piles of rocks and the hundreds of summits beginning to all blend together, I decided to pick up a new hobby, inspired by good pal Ben Conners. He reminded me that I used to poo poo on running and that within a few years, I’ll probably be signing up for 100 milers. I don’t doubt that I viewed running as silly, but I do doubt I’ll ever run a 100’er.

Anyways, my first ultra was everything I thought it would be. Happy, sad, angry, exciting, terrifying, painful, rewarding. I’m not sure many other activities can elicit all those emotions in one. In retrospect, I’m also not sure why I chose the Indian Creek 55k. I guess it just sounded intriguing and I had never visited the area before. Now it’s a place I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Funny how that works. I spent the majority of the summer working up to the race via Half marathons, local races around Westminster and trail runs in the foothills. But none of it truly prepared me for Indian Creek, not even running 66% of the course the weekend prior to the race.

For those not familiar with Indian Creek, first off, its not the popular crack climbing area south of Moab. Unless your a South Littleton/Highlands Ranch resident, it’s a little known area wedged in between Waterton Canyon and Roxborough State Park. For the foothills, it’s surprisingly rugged with lots of elevation gain for a 55k course. I visited the course 2x before race day and was amazed how void of people it was. Not sure if that’s a fall thing or if it’s just a Front Range anomaly. Maybe it’s not as heady as Golden or Boulder – who knows. Nonetheless, I was naturally drawn to the area and glad I chose this as a maiden race.

The weekend prior to the race, I decided to head down there and do one last long training run on the big loop of the course, which was roughly 20 miles and 4,000 feet of gain. To make a long story short, it didn’t instill the confidence I was hoping for as I was pretty wasted afterwards. I realized that the last year of running around the flatlands of suburbia did jack shit for these trail runs requiring any kind of elevation gain.

Morning of race day I ate a Santiago’s breakfast burrito, pecan pie, as much coconut water as I could get before sign in and a couple Honey Stinger waffles. I bought a fanny pack for the race with a water bottle holder, which I filled with Nuun energy tablets throughout the day, with a small place to stash more waffles and a bag of energy chews. One of the cool things about this race was it looped back to the start so I could go to my car to refill halfway through and not have to haul everything with me.

“Sherpa” John giving the morning speech. It was in the high 30’s.

“Sherpa John” Lacroix is the Race Director for the Human Potential Race Series. He gave an inspirational and fiery speech right before the start. Something about “nobody giving a shit about your Strava or your Ultra Signup profile” (just as I was trying to obtain a GPS signal for my Strava, lol).

The start was right at the Indian Creek Campground and immediately starts a 1 mile climb up a forest road until it splits right towards “Thomas Hill”, and starts a 6 mile descent that provided a very false sense of confidence, as the day would end going up these 6 miles. I was flying down this section, averaging 7:00 minute miles, passing dozens of people. A bit of a log jam formed at the bottom of the hill, but quickly opened back up once we reached the Roxborough SP boundary and another forest service road (used by the folks who supplied and manned the aid stations).

A frosty trail in the morning.

Logjam forming at the bottom of Thomas Hill

There was a lot of steep ups and downs in this section and a nice intro to learning when to run and when to walk (fast). I guess you can view trail racing like a Kenny Rogers song! The first aid station was “Rampart” and served as an important junction as it’s where you turn to head back to complete the first loop, it serves as the 1st and 4th aid station and it marks the final 10 miles of the course on the last leg of the day. In an effort to not get behind in the hydration department, I drank the rest of the my Nuun bottle, refilled, slammed a bit of Mountain Dew, some M&M’s and Sour Patch Kids and was quickly on my way as to not lose any ground early on.

The final stretch back to the start was a long service road with a thin layer of snow and a slight incline. Not enough to suck, but enough to sap some energy out of the tank. There was a relatively steep downhill section before reaching the Start and 2nd aid station. It was somewhere around this section, roughly mile 13-14, where my legs started to turn to the early stages of shit.

But I did have a successful aid station session as my appetite was up and I could restock and regroup at my car, which was thankfully 20 yards away.

The beginning of the bigger loop starts benign enough as it weaves through single track forest and doesn’t gain very much elevation. I gained a lot of ground setting a nice pace through this section. Somewhere about halfway to the Waterton Canyon aid station is where things really started to go downhill. There’s a long switchback section right before you descend on to the 3rd aid station of the day, and before that is a steep descent which I’m convinced annihilated my quads and calves and laid the groundwork for my bonk after arriving at Rampart later in the day. I’ve obviously never died, so I don’t know from experience, but from the definition and description of the condition of rigor mortis, that’s kind of what it felt like. It basically felt like my muscles were going to completely seize up to stone at any minute and/or begin to spasm, which they started to do here and there a little towards the very end of the race.

It was scenic at least….

Looking towards Waterton around mile 17-18

Joins the CO Trail right before the switchbacks as you descend in to Waterton Canyon aid station

The section after Waterton Canyon aid station actually sucked the worst. It contained the steepest, most sustained uphill sections of the day and just further exacerbated the misery and pain. If there was any section of the day that was a blur, this was probably it. All I know is I followed a power line, saw a bunch of signs for Roxborough SP park, made sure not to take a wrong turn and add bonus miles and rapidly lost the ability to run anymore.

I reached the Rampart aid station wobbly and exhausted. I actually had a short thought to just call it a day and hang a right back to the car, but shook that as fast as it formulated. I slammed as many fluids as I could cause I knew I’d probably run out at some point on the 6 mile, 2000 foot ascent up Thomas Hill.

I tried running after Rampart, but at times, my legs simply refused. I couldn’t even bring myself to run the downhill sections, but felt marginally better when I saw a few other people couldn’t either.

The “Shlong Monument” marked the beginning of the 6-mile uphill finish. It was fitting that a phallic shaped rock signified the last challenge of the race. I got to stare at it for a mile or 2 as well, before it disappeared. It almost looked like it was waving at me. I was engaged in a dick waving contest with a phallic shaped rock on mile 28 of an ultra marathon before a 6-mile 2000 foot climb back to the car, and I was losing the contest. It was demoralizing.

The “Shlong Rock”. Designated a National Monument on 10.12.2019 by me

Once all the runners who still had some gas left in the tank passed me, all who remained were those in the same level of misery as myself. At some point, there was a drone flying overhead and I thought this was gonna make for some pretty lame footage of my dumbass slowly limping up this god damn hill. I had this vision of blasting it out of the sky with a rocket launcher.

Looking North towards Roxborough SP

I leap frogged 2 or 3 folks towards the very end and it got to the point where every slight uphill section had each one of us keeling over, labored breathing, wincing in pain. I was averaging over 17 minute miles at this point, which was more than double my pace going downhill in the morning. There was no way at this point I was going to meet my goal of at least 7 hours, but I just kept telling myself to move, cause leaning over while stopped just increased the pain exponentially.

I thought the final mile descent to the finish would be a breeze, but I couldn’t run. Walking also hurt, so I settled for an awkward half jog, half fast walk method and the finish line never seemed to come fast enough. I was yelling obsenities loudly at this point, finally succumbing to nerd rage. I was able to save face and jog out the final 100 yards to the finish line and collapsed.

I wish I could’ve stuck around longer to cherish it all, but I was simply too exhausted. All I could muster was slugging some electrolyte fluids at the finish and then I needed somewhere to lay down, so I limped slowly over to my car and laid down in the back for 45 minutes before I could sit up, then just slugged 3 protein shakes, half a bag of chips n salsa and at least 100oz of water. It wasn’t until a hour and a half after finishing where I could realistically drive myself home. I was finally able to stomach a beer when I got home, which is when I was finally able to appreciate all that had just transpired.

This stuff is a post-race life saver

I’d call this a successful first ultra. I finished, I didn’t defecate myself, I didn’t seem to inflict any serious injuries, I didn’t vomit, I didn’t get lost and I’m still interested in future ultras. My final time was 7:24, coming in at 22nd place out of 83 total racers. Better than I had thought and a good base to improve upon in the future. I don’t think I trained smart enough. I only did 1 run of 20 miles or more, most of my foothill loops were around 10 miles and maybe 1000 vert and everything else was just mindless 5-10 mile flat runs around my house. The up and down (ironically mostly the down) is what ultimately decimated my joints. The lactic acid buildup was too much to overcome in the end and I probably didn’t spend enough time stretching throughout the day nor did I spend enough time at the aid stations refueling. All stuff to improve upon for the next round. Also choosing a 55k with over 8000 vertical gain wasn’t the wisest choice. I should’ve done a standard 26-mile marathon with more like 3-4k of vert. Gonna finish 2019 with the Sawmill 27k at White Ranch in December and already looking forward to next summer’s lineup.

Unique medal all finishers receive.