Runners high in Leadville, CO

(Originally published June 27, 2012)

Newton, Iowa: elevation 940 feet vs Leadville, Colorado: elevation 10,152 feet.

I have experience running in Leadville, having been there four or five times to vacation, visit family and eat the world’s best pizza at High Mountain Pies.  I know just how hard it can be to go for a run there after arriving from the flatlands of Iowa.  The elevation can inflict pain and make even the easiest running pace seem hard.

Seemingly everyone has heard of Leadville thanks to the publicity generated by the epic 100 mile run and bike races there.  For runners, the book Born to Run also drew worldwide attention to the small town and a movie version is in the works.  While the Leadville 100 races may be the big draw there are plenty of other races leading up to them and one Iowan did them all in 2011, and plans to do them again in 2012.

Last year Newton’s Matt Scotton was one of 25 athletes from around the country who completed the “Leadman” competition.  To earn the label of Leadman he had to run the Leadville Marathon , compete in either the Silver Rush 50 mile mountain bike or run race (Ed. note: why not both?), ride the Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race, run the 10k the following day and then complete the Leadville 100 run a week later.

Scotton is director of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Skiff Medical Center in Newton.  A baseball and football player in high school, he didn’t really get into cycling until after graduating from Central College in Pella when he tried a few days of RAGBRAI and then was convinced to try a triathlon followed by a mountain bike race.  This progressed on to 12 hour mountain bike races and then the Breckenridge 100 race in 2010.  Running went along with the triathlon and at age 32 Scotton began the way many beginning runners do: run a block, walk a block and repeat.  Within a couple years it was on to central Iowa’s Dam to Dam 20k. A few years later, it was the Des Moines Marathon.  By 2009 he had completed the challenging Sawtooth 50 mile run on the Superior Hiking Trail of northern Minnesota.  Now he has become hooked on the comaraderie and contagious energy and enthusiasm he finds at the ultra distance events.

After crewing for a friend competing in the LT100 bike race and competing in the nearby Breckenridge 100 in 2010 Scotton knew he wanted to compete in the LT100 bike but didn’t think that his odds of getting in through the lottery process would be very good.  So rather than rely on luck he simply decided to enter the Leadman competition, which would guarantee his entry in 2011, provided he could finish the earlier races within the time limits.

So in 2011 Scotton and his wife made four separate trips out to the town to “explore nature and human performance.”  Scotton got plenty familiar with the big beautiful mountains of the area spending 47 hours, 46 minutes and 43 seconds competing in the thin air.  His combined time was the 8^th fastest of the 25 Leadman finishers and he aims to lower that time this year by being faster in each event and place in the top 5 overall.  One hundred people have signed up to compete in 2012, including one other Iowan, Brian Block from Adel, president of Ames Adventure Outfitters.

Scotton balances a full time job and a family with the need to train enough to make it through the grueling races.  He says that on average he manages to put in 30-40 miles of running and 6 to 12 hours of cycling in each week, and his lunch hours are crammed full of running and weight training. Trips to watch his high school daughters’ swim meets, soccer games and tennis matches are often done via bicycle, and when he arrives he finds clean clothing and food waiting for him, packed by his wife or a daughter.  While Scotton is quick to thank his wife, Sandy, and his daughters for being so supportive during his training and racing, one of his colleagues at Skiff just happens to be Olympic Trials marathon qualifier Robyn Friedman of Iowa’s Runablaze racing team and Scotton credits her with providing some of the motivation to get out and train.

While simply putting one foot ahead of another in Leadville can be hard for those of us used to plentiful oxygen, Scotton says that within 72 hours of arrival at 10,000 feet he is usually feeling like he can run and has re-learned how to consume enough oxygen to make forward motion at something faster than walking pace possible.  To that end Scotton is heading west with family and some running friends, including teammates from his recent Relay Iowa trek across the state, this week to compete in the first of this year’s races – the Leadville Marathon.  In it he will face some of the toughest terrain of the whole series, a brutal climb up (and subsequent descent) of 13,185 foot Mosquito Pass at the midpoint of the race.

Certainly many runners I know in Iowa and elsewhere go out of their way to avoid hills.  For some Iowans, though, the lack of challenging terrain and the ease of running with abundant oxygen are enough to send them in search of something harder.  And in the Leadman competition Scotton has indeed found a challenge unlike anything available in Iowa.

We will be following Scotton’s adventures in Leadville through the course of the summer so stay tuned for updates.