The Garden of the Gods has always been one of my favorite places locally. I remember going there with my parents as a boy for the first time and being amazed. Being so young I was fascinated by the sheer size and relief of the rocks. I remember seeing climbers scale up the tourist gully on North Gateway rock and thinking that I would want to do that myself some day. Years later I cut my teeth on many of those same routes and others as I learned rope craft and honed my early climbing skills. 

In rock climbing each individual route is given a grade or level of difficulty. This grade is often a consensus of the difficulty based upon the opinion of the climbers that have successfully completed it. The term "Testpiece" is generally defined as climb that is a bit harder than its actual grade. 

The Garden of the Gods 10 Mile is in my mind a testpiece for running. This is not your regular 10 mile road race. This race forces you to focus and come in with a gameplan. Take off hard from the start down El Paso and charge up the first climb like a madman up to Balanced Rock and it could become a long day. I prefer to be measured through the first half of the race. For some reason this has worked well for me in the past and I will lean on this experience Sunday. 

My strategy is to try and take everything in from the moment I park. This is one of the few opportunities that we get as runners to take over the roads completely without worrying about rubbernecking tourist swerving into the pedestrian lane! The race is so well ran with such great support I think it allows you to focus on both a good finish time and having great fun. Running the rolling hills past balanced rock to the loop as the sun rises to the east over Cathedral Rock, gasping for air while finally reaching the top of the biggest climb at the north end, and taking time to enjoy and thank the hardworking kids at the aid stations are top priorities. So is running a good hard race. I don't know what to expect in terms of time on Sunday given my current fitness level. As long as I know when I cross the line that I ran a hard and truthful race I'll be content. 

See you all out there!