August 18, 2018. Leadville 100 Trail Run Race. DNF.

If the altitude does not hit you, the aggressive race aid station cut-offs will. This is LT100 Run Race.

If you DNF-ed in a race because you missed the cut-off, without any injuries or because of medical reasons, you just didn’t train enough for this race. Plain and simple. I am not being harsh (at least to myself), I am just stating the fact.

This is what I was thinking when I was hiking down back to Twin Lakes aid station after being cut at Hope Pass, or more popularly know as Hopeless Pass, aid station. I missed the cut-off by a few minutes, with the aid station almost in my grasp. But it is what it is. Cut-off time is cut-off time. You’re done whether you miss it by 1 minute or 10.

Did I not train enough? For this race, I guess so. I DNF-ed, didn’t I?

Did I get acclimated to the altitude? I don’t know. I arrived in Colorado 6 days before the race. Went to Rocky Mountain National Park on my arrival and did a scenic drive to RMNP Alpine Visitor, where I got hit by massive headache and terrible shortness of breath on a very short walk @ 12,000 ft. The feeling became better as the days progressed and after making hikes to places above 12,000 ft – Mt Elbert, Hope Pass, Mosquito Pass.

However, on race day, I couldn’t run like the way I would run back home. There was an extra effort trying to do the same pace I could do back home. LT100 is a ‘running’ 100 miler, in the highest town in the US. Leadville is the highest (incorporated) town in US at 10,152 ft – Wiki. You have to run most part of the course to finish. I just don’t know how to run in high altitude.

And also, there’s Hope Pass. The crux of the LT100 race. We hiked this on Tuesday, and I wrote a short post about it. It’s where my dream died. In LT100, Hope Pass is between 2 aid stations, Twin Lakes and Winfield. Winfield is the turn-around point in in the race at 50 mile point. The distance between these aid stations is roughly 12 miles, passing Hope Pass twice, race outbound and inbound, with the inbound having the steeper profile. I got cut on the outbound. My friends got cut on the inbound. (Unofficial) 2018 race statistics shows 377(?) finishers out of 713. I bet majority of these DNFs happened between Twin Lakes and Winfield.

Speaking of cut-offs, LT100 has a very strict and aggressive cut-offs. This is fine. However, I am writing this part of this post because of what I have seen while at Twin Lakes aid station trying to stay warm. The official cut off at Twin Lakes aid station inbound is 10PM. They extended this to 10:15PM, unofficially. I believe they did the same in 2017. You can’t, and shouldn’t, do this on race day, without official announcements. If you want to enforce a strict cut-off, then so be it. If you want to extend it, like at Twin Lakes, then change the official cut-off at 10:15PM. And you know what, even at 10:15PM, it is still very, very hard (almost close to impossible) for average runners to do that 12 miles back from Winfield to Twin Lakes in 4:15 hours.

I am now trying to find words to finish this post. Enjoying this moment, with friends, old and new, at the AirBnb we’re staying for this event. Drinking and having post-race talks, analysis, plans for future races, and whatever.

DNF hurts. Plain and simple. Having friends around to share the hurt, it still hurts. But not as much as before. 2020, we come back.