By Bob Stephens
PikesPeakSports.us

The weekend of Aug. 15-16 was highly unusual for Roger Austin – and not because he ran the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon on back-to-back days.

No, Saturday and Sunday were different for Austin because those are just the third and fourth days in 2015 that the 50-year-old has not gone up and down the Manitou Springs Incline.

Austin is the unquestioned “Incline King” with 1,111 trips up and down the steep trail of railroad ties since Jan. 1, 2015.

“People say I have an Incline addiction,” Austin said. “They tell me there’s a 12-step program for that. I say there’s a 2,700-step program for that, because the Incline is about 2,700 steps.”

He did the Incline six times on Thursday, but just once Friday, the day before he ran the 13.3-mile Ascent.

“Doing it once Friday was my tapering off for the races,” he said.

He set a personal best (3:23) by about 10 minutes in the Ascent and completed the Marathon in 5:52. He’s run the Marathon about a half-dozen times, he said, and usually “doubles” in both races in the same year.

“My best in the Ascent had been 2008 when we had the blizzard on the top of the mountain,” Austin said. “I was worried about the heat today but the rain cooled it off. I hit the rain about five miles from the bottom at Bob’s Road.”

Austin said his Incline obsession was beneficial in the few miles above tree line.

“Everything above the tree line is a power hike,” he said. “I was passing people who were trying to run and I was just power hiking like I do the Incline.”

Austin, who is a retired Air Force Chief, moved to Peterson Air Force Base in 2007 and first ran the Incline a year later, he said. He began tracking his Incline trips on a spreadsheet in 2012, when he did the Incline approximately 365 times.

“I color code it, so when I see red, that means I didn’t do it,” he said.

In 2015, he missed two days while in Seattle and then, of course, this weekend. In 2013, he did the Incline 719 times, after blowing past his goal of 500.

“Friends will push you, and goad you to do it again,” he said. “I had a lot of the year left and had done 500, so I decided 719 – since it’s our (telephone) area code – was the perfect number.”

He’s not sure how many Inclines he did in 2014, when the revered trail was closed for renovation. It was also closed this weekend during the Ascent and Marathon.

“So what else was I going to do? I figured I might as well run (the Ascent and the Marathon),” he said.

Still, when his exhausting “double” was complete, he said, “I’m glad to be done! I’m going to go sit in Fountain Creek and have an ice bath and then go eat and chill out and put my feet up.”

So what’s the agenda for Monday, Aug. 17? Will he do the Incline? “Absolutely,” he said just minutes after finishing the Marathon. “I might even do it later today. But the chance of that is probably slim.”