Has peaktus interruptus
left you unfulfilled?

By MATT CARPENTER

Pikes Peak 1994 is history and I am not feeling as good about the outcome as I thought I would. I did not run the whole course but opted instead to take the easy way out. I thought I was getting away with something but that little voice inside my head now asks, “Was it worth it?”

I didn’t feel the loss until the day after the ascent while I was watching the marathon at the turn-around point on top of the mountain. The more people I watched stagger to the top of Pikes Peak only to have to turn around, the more I began to feel like I cheated. In the second it took to check the box marked Ascent on the entry form I had cut the course in half.

I had experienced this feeling before. In 1987, my first attempt at Pikes Peak, I ran the Ascent. I was a mess when I reached the “finish” — is still the only race that has caused me to get on my hands and knees for an audit of my breakfast. Right then and there I decided that anyone who ran the round trip was one stupid individual. But the next day as I watched the runners finish the Marathon, my sense of accomplishment diminished. I promised myself I would never do the Ascent again.

Until this year I kept that promise. In 1989 and 1990, while I did run the Ascent, both years I came back the next day and ran the Marathon. In 1991 despite little training (the race was my first run in about a month) I still did the Marathon; finishing that race meant more to me than winning the Ascent the previous year.

Ascent runners miss out on half the race and they miss out on half the struggle, including the heat, dodging other runners hundreds of times and the terrifying downhill falls. They won’t have to come up with the courage to try and get up and start running fast again.

There are other people who feel the same way. While training for the Peak one year, I met Jim Heidleberg, a top-five finisher in the marathon. He had hurt his foot while training for the race, so I assumed he was going to do the Ascent. I was wrong. He called running the Ascent “Peaktus Interruptus.” I also know a woman who, because of a broken toe, had to pull out of the Marathon at the top. A couple of weeks later when she was healed, she took the train to the top of the mountain so she could run down and “finish.” The long, bloody struggle makes you realize that a race is sometimes more than trying to win or run a fast time — sometimes it’s about finishing. Finishing the Pikes Peak Marathon is winning. Doing half the race is doing half the winning.

As for myself, I might have a friend drive me to the top of Pikes Peak so I can take care of some unfinished business...

If you are interested in what got cut and changed click here.

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