Woke up to 01:45am alarm and did not sleep great at Tambopaxi last night. Minor crisis as the truck wouldn’t start but good thing Conor is smart and knows stuff about cars and turns out one of the battery terminals was loose and we were able to get a wrench from the Tambo guys and fix it. Phew.
Drove out to the start and then loosened up and then did a very short jog w/ Conor, about 5’, mostly just to see how many layers I wanted to start in. We both felt great and were running too fast and the weather was quite warm down there, probably about 40F and no wind.
Started just a few minutes late as expected.
The plan for the day was aggressive: I hoped to try to get both the long and short records on Cotopaxi in a single run. This meant running the first ~1000m and 13km or so as controlled as possible, then ripping very hard for the short segment from the refugio to the summit and back -- trying to break an extremely stout mark that Karl had done fresh, without a 2+ hour “warmup” -- and then run back to park entrance with whatever I had left. I had only started thinking about this in the last week or so since training had been going so well, and I felt comfortable giving it a big squeeze.
Conor had volunteered to run with me for the first 1-2 hours, as a way to keep things fun and calm. Apparently, Kentucky Derby horses sometimes have a “companion pony”, that’s basically their buddy that keeps them calm and relaxed (Conor told me this and it seems like an apt parallel).
That first 7km was on easy dirt road and we kept the pace chill and conversational. We did not take Karl’s “shortcut” but stayed on the road as it was super dark, and so we were actually about 2 minutes behind his pace when we started up the steeper switchbacks towards the parking lot. At that point, Conor and I split up and I felt very good and was having to hold myself back, forcing myself to hike some of the steeper sections that cut the switchbacks, etc. Also worth noting it was very warm and I was actually running shirtless for most of the first flatter section until maybe halfway up the switchbacks when it started to get windier.
I hit the parking lot in 1h39 (now a few minutes ahead of Karl’s splits) and then actually did some 30/90s on the short stretch from parking lot to refugio to simulate doing strides before a hard effort after a workout. I literally stopped just below the refugio to go to the bathroom one more time and just let my HR come down a bit before getting started on the short segment.
Started out well and made good time up to crampon point, where Flavio was waiting for me. I’d been running up so far in the LaSpo Prodigio Pros and now changed into the Cyklon Cross (with micro-spikes) and continued up with one pole and my ice ax. This stop was 2.5 minutes, about 1 min of which was my own damn fault because I couldn’t find my mittens. Oops.
The snow was a bit softer than yesterday and this made some of the uphill sections a bit slower than I’d hoped. Still, I found myself running almost all of the traverse and even some of the steeper uphill chunks above that. I could see by about the 40’ mark that my original goal of sub 60 was way off today, but I could still be well under Karl’s uphill time of 73’00.
Also two other problems: 1. My glasses kept fogging and I had a lot of trouble seeing the footprints as the sky and the glacier were basically the same color. 2. I didn’t eat anything on the entire refugio/summit/refugio segment as I was using my hands for my pole/ax constantly and literally didn’t want to stop for even another 15-30 seconds after the shoe-change had taken so long.
I passed a few groups near the top who were very kind and gave me right of way and encouragement. I passed that one tricky steep pitch, a bit scary going up but no biggie, and then topped out just under 70’ (69’56 on my watch).
I immediately flipped and started booking it down, as Karl’s RT time of 1h27 was on my mind as well and I knew that would be very tough. Most of the way down was loose snow, which ran kind of like scree and was pretty quick and easy, actually, though that one steep pitch was very slow -- like kick, place ax, step, repeat, down a ladder. Otherwise, it was smooth sailing all the way down until the very last 300m or so where the ice pack had a crusty upper layer that made it very slow going indeed and I had to backtrack over to the main trail. Definitely lost time there, but still came down in 1h27 to match Karl’s RT time to the minute and continued running all the way down to the parking lot.
Took a quick stop there to change back into prodigios and slammed some liquid and gels and then took off. Turns out I felt fantastic on the descent and my legs were full of running. The steep descent down from the parking lot (4.8km, 720m-) felt great and I was down in 20’ (7 minutes ahead of Karl’s time on that segment) and then once I hit the valley floor, I felt fantastic and was running under 4’00/km pace for the last 7km, really letting myself run and enjoy it. I think my last 5K was under 19’00, which is definitely the fastest I’ve run in the last like 6 months, let alone at 3800m at the end of a 4.5 hour effort.
The timing worked out great as well, as Conor and Flavio caught up to me in the truck with about 1km to go and followed me in and then we all celebrate together. I stopped my watch at 4’29’58, almost an hour ahead of Karl’s round-trip time.
This was a monster effort and a huge flex honestly. It was a great day for me training- and confidence-wise and I was so glad to be able to share it w/ Conor on such a special mountain for me. Cotopaxi was really the start of my mountain-running career and I have some many wonderful memories in the park.
Total 31.8km, 4h30, 2221m+.