Home Trails

(Pikes Peak, with the Incline and Manitou Springs at its base.  What a huge mountain.)

Yesterday I headed down to Colorado Springs in the evening for a change of scenery for today's long run.  Today was to be my longest run in my final preparations for Western States, so I wanted a bunch of trails to choose from instead of just doing multiple loops of Green Mt. and/or Walker Ranch.  Additionally, because I've been doing essentially the same long run for the past two months now--laps of Green with Walker thrown in the middle--I wanted some new terrain where I wouldn't constantly know how many minutes/seconds I was fast or slow from the week before.

(The day's route, without the Garden of the Gods portion.  Pikes Peak in the upper right.)

Before the Leadville 100 last summer I did two 50 milers in the final weeks before the race--one in each direction on the out-and-back course--and because I'm so familiar with splits and checkpoints all along that route I think I ended up doing both of those runs a bit too hard.  The purpose of today's run was to log lots of running time on my feet, but to not feel compelled to hit any specific split or pace.

(Almagre and Rosa top out at 12,350' and 11,500', respectively; I'm not sure why MapMyRun's scale doesn't depict their elevations more accurately. Basically, one 6500' climb and three 1500' climbs for a total of 11k'.)

There are just so many trails to choose from in the Springs.  Today I ran from my friend Brooks' doorstep and, except for a couple short out-and-backs to the tops of climbs, I basically never ran the same trail during nearly 60 miles of running and only had 4mi of pavement (I did start less than a mile from downtown, afterall).  And, I didn't even touch Pikes Peak or the Rampart Range.  And, for very large chunks of that, didn't see a single other person.  Over the past few months I have become quite enamored with Boulder, but in terms of sheer variety of trails and immediacy of access to high altitude, Manitou/Colorado Springs is awfully tough to beat (having lived there for seven years, I admit I have a bit of a bias).

I'll let a few pictures from the day tell the rest of the story: (Warning, 8+ hrs is a long time and there was a whole lot to see, so there are a lot of pictures to follow...)

(The optical illusional twin summits of 11,500' Mt. Rosa as seen from town.  The high point on the left is actually a full 500' higher than the "peak" on the right.)

(A couple miles into the initial 14mi/6500' climb, in Bear Canyon on the 666 trail--affectionately known as either El Diablo or Balls-to-the-Wall (due to its steep nature) by the CC XC teams.  I've drank from the just-uphill source of this spring literally hundreds of times.)

(Brilliantly budding aspen of Jones Park at 9000'.)

(Looking back down the 3000' vert of Bear Creek Canyon, which I just ran up.)

(The buttery smooth single track of the Pipeline Trail has that name for a reason.  Contouring flat for a mile or so at ~9100', this is part of the Ring The Peak route.)

(The beautiful secret single track along North Cheyenne Creek, accessed off of Pipeline.)

(The six mile road climb to the south summit of Almagre.)

(~1mi and 400' to go to the summit towers of 12,350' Almagre.)

(Pikes Peak from Almagre's summit. You can clearly see the Cog Railway's (very steep) route.)

(What nearly 6500' of vertical relief looks like.  Colorado Springs below.)

(The Sangre De Cristo Mountain Range off to the southwest.)

(Just below the top of Almagre, with Pikes over my shoulder.)

(Running an exquisite ribbon of high ridge single track leading to Rosa's 11,500' summit. One of my favorite sections of trail in the Pikes Peak region.)

(The 4000' drop off of Rosa can have a good bit of gnarl...)

(...or be blissfully perfect.  I've never seen another person on this three mile stretch of trail above St. Mary's Falls.  People are crazy.)

(Part of the 2mi/1500' grunt back up to 9000' on the Seven Bridges Trail.  This climb came after 5hrs of running.)

(The view west up the Cheyenne Creek drainage from 8300' Mt. Buckhorn.  Rosa is in the center of the photo with the road switchbacks on the shoulder of Almagre visible in the upper right corner.)

(After the descent off of Buckhorn and yet another 1500' climb you come to the namesake of the Dog Rock Trail.)

(From the top of Section 16 you can look back across the Bear Creek drainage to see Mt. Buckhorn (on the right) and Mays Peak (on the left).  The steep road cut is High Drive, which I just descended before climbing back up to Dog Rock and Section 16.)

(Some of the flawless, endless single track in Red Rock Canyon.)

(The classic sandstone of the Garden of the Gods.)

(The trail in the Garden that shares the name of my hometown.  Through the curious mechanism of a vast, ancient interior sea, the same white, chalky rock that this trail runs over forms endless bluffs along the Missouri River valley in and near Niobrara, NE and is considered this particular geologic formation's type location.  I also really like this trail in the Garden.)

 

(A parting shot of the mountain that oversees everything.  But, if these pictures show anything, it's that there is a TON of trail running in the Springs that doesn't involve Barr Trail and its crowds.)