Tammy's and Paul's RRs prompted me to write one for my race also!

The Cheyenne Mountain Trail Race offered three distances: 10k, 25k, and 50k.   There were 94 finishers in the 10k, 69 in the 25k, and only 34 in the 50k.   The course is sort of a figure 8, with two different loops for the 25k.  The 50k just does this twice. Each loop goes partway up the mountain and back down to the start/finish area.

I went with four friends; 3 were running the 25k and two of us did the 50k.  We rented an Airbnb in Colorado Springs for 2 nights and had a fun girls weekend.  Here's a picture of us at the start, with Cheyenne Mountain behind us.

The race was in Cheyenne Mountain State Park.  Fun fact:  Cheyenne Mountain is also the home of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) , in an underground chamber inside the mountain, built during the cold war.

As you can see from the picture, the weather was gorgeous.  In the 40s at the start, but I ditched my jacket in the first mile or two.  Highs were in the 60s by the afternoon.

Since the 25k and 50k started together, all of us ran together at the start, close to the back of the pack.  There were some speedy folks in this race, and we're all older and slower.   The three 25k runners got ahead of me and Eve by the end of the first loop, but we didn't try to keep up.  They all finished their race in around 3 hours, +/- 10 minutes.  Eve and I finished our first 25k in about 3:15, and our friends cheered us on as we started lap 2.

We stayed together for part of the next loop, but Eve got ahead of me and we ran on our own after that, and I hardly saw anyone except when I came back through the start/finish area on my way to the final loop.  I definitely walked more on the second half, but I felt fine and was enjoying being out on the trails.

I finished in 7:14, and was 2nd in my AG (out of 2) and 32 of 34 finishers.  I was also the oldest finisher in the 50k!  And I wasn't DFL.  A nice way to start the racing season!

The aid station food wasn't great - just snack foods like M&Ms and peanut butter pretzels, and PB&J sandwiches.  No pickles or boiled potatoes like Tammy's race.   But it was a small, cheap, low key race, and there were 3 aid stations that we passed a total of  11 times because of the looped nature of the course, so that was a plus.  The finish line had pasta salad, which was excellent. No beer, but I brought my own.  Here's me and Eve after the finish.

Thanks for reading!

Congrats!  Great start to the season, indeed!  An excellent race and wonderful report with beautiful pics. Loved it.

All those smiling faces; you must be doing something right.

Great 50K so early in the season, Carolyn! Sounds like everything went OK except aid station food and having to BYOB -- what's up with that? Is it weird at all to think of what's going on inside that mountain while you're running near it?

Nice running Wild. What a beautiful place to live and run.

Great race & report Carolyn. This looks like a race that I'd like to run sometime. Actually any race on Colorado trails I'd like to run. I'm really glad you wrote this up.

Paul

Carolyn, that's excellent.   Great pix...for this flatlander, I can only dream of such beauty!!   The race sounds well laid out, even if the food wasn't the best.   Great job persevering through all four loops...who cares how fast you are??   You ran 50K in the beautiful mountains and didn't get in the way of NORAD radar!!! 

Thanks!!!

Congratulations on another 50K!  Sure looks nice there and I am glad you thought ahead and brought your own beer.  Well deserved!