For the record: I'm not a fast runner. I'm a solid middle-of-the-packer who sometimes makes it into the top third in my age group. Part of that is the remarkable running community in this town. You people are talented, and more ambitious runners keep arriving all the time. (Take my friend Scott Spillman, who moved to town late last year. He won the Super Half-Marathon and the Take 5 in the Garden this year. I hired that guy at the student newspaper at the University of North Carolina. I now refer to him as "my fast friend.")

So! May 2010. I had signed up for my first (and only, to date) Pikes Peak Ascent and had no idea how to begin to train for the thing. A friend of mine told me about a new race at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo called Run to the Shrine. I had been to the zoo once, so I knew it was in the foothills, but I had never seen nor heard of this shrine. I signed up a few days ahead of time, looking forward to a challenging 10K. My friend kept mentioning the hill, but I still wasn't concerned, for some reason. I wrote a flippant Facebook post about the race the night before, saying, "I hear there's a hill."

Driving up to the zoo the morning of the race, I began to see the error of my ways. I looked up ... and up ... and up into the hills at a conspicuous pointy gray building. Oh. That hill.

Crap.

I had been doing some "Rogue Incline Club" workouts (where I borrow the Incline Club's prescribed hill workout for the week and do it on my own at a different time), which were helping my hill capacity immensely. As the gun went off, I set a goal: Let's see if we can do this thing without walking.

I kept it steady on the way up. The original course had the high point just before mile 3. (They have since changed the course. See Garmin screen shots A and B for comparison.) I was thrilled to see the turnaround at the top. Running down was awesome. I kept picking off people, including some who looked to be 25-29-year-old women, some of whom had been playing leapfrog with me all the way up. Right at the end, I passed my final mark, stopped my watch, and tried to catch my breath.

After checking out the post-race festivities for a short time, I headed home. My time wasn't a PR by a long shot, so I was feeling ambivalent about the race, though it had been a good workout. I didn't realize the grade of the hill until I downloaded the data from my Garmin. I felt better about my effort.

I didn't realize how strong that effort had been until Tim posted the results a few hours later: second in my age group, ninth woman overall. My final mark had been a 27-year-old woman, whom I beat by 1 second. Sorry, Sonja Demuth. This is a close second to the "best race" I wrote about on the PikesPeakSports.us Triple Crown Runners team bio page.

In 2011, when the course was changed to include a 4-mile hill instead of a 3-mile hill, I didn't do as well. Plus, I think more of you fast-running people had heard of the race by then. I didn't quite make it through without walking that year (though I was coming off an injury and a painful first marathon). The photo at the top of this post was taken on my way up the hill in 2011.

I'll be returning to the Shrine on foot on Saturday, but I've chosen to do the 5K this time -- the plan is to run to Barr Camp on Sunday with the usual suspects. Because it's on pavement, it's great practice for the Garden of the Gods 10-miler. I don't expect anything great for 2012, but 2010 will stick with me as the time I almost came close to winning something.

Sort of.