Mount Rushmore - Vacation Races

First off this has been a bucket list race since I heard about it.  I heard it was the last year and wanted to do it.  I was hoping to get a pacing spot and was lucky to get one as a 3-hour pacer with my favorite pacing buddy Heather.  Like Pikes Peak, I didn't know what I was signing up for (other than it is one of the hardest Vacation Races in their series) but once I got closer and looked at the course I was like omg it's going to be like Pikes Peak. I noticed there was an 1800 ft elevation gain.  The difference is that was over almost 8 miles and not two.  In addition, it is not as high as Pikes Peak.  

It was a long drive there, like no joke.  The longest I have driven to a race but with the current situation with Covid and the expense, it was cheaper to drive.  It was about 13 hours to Keystone not including stops.  We arrived early Friday morning.  We decided to take a quick nap then breakfast.  As we wait for the expo to open we went to Mount Rushmore park which was amazing.  It was all done by hand and explosive. It was crazy that they could do it back then without the technology we have.  We spent an hour or so walking around the park and taking in the view.  We headed to the expo and decided to drive the course from Keystone to the start line knowing that we will run it in reverse the next day.  It was a beautiful drive, there were so many hills and trees, very different than Oklahoma.  As we drive the winding roads we know that this won't be an easy pacing gig.  The top was a little over 7.5 miles so we will need to adjust our pacing due to the course.  We had talked about strategies and options while we drove.  We got to the expo which was at the start line to grab our bibs.  It was exciting to see a lot of runners and get back to some normalness.  We didn't stay long as we wanted to go back and get some rest. 3:30 am came very quickly.  We had to catch the first bus at 4:30 to the start line because we had to meet up with the other pacers.   Luckily when we went downstairs we noticed one of the pacers in our lobby.  I looked out and there were buses.  We got very lucky and instead of walking .5 miles to the bus, we had to walk across the parking lot.  My legs were thankful.

We drove about 30 minutes to the start line.  I don't like point-to-point races but this was made sense.  We got there a little after 5 and hung out until we did a pacer picture and started to line up.  The race kicked off at 6:30 am and with 2800 it was a little difficult to get a good pace going.  We decided on using the course-specific pacing to help all of our runners.  During the first three-ish miles we were doing 60/30 run-walk and a lot of people enjoyed that.  We had a decent group going up the mountain and when it got steeper we flipped the run/walk and did 30/60.  This worked perfectly as some of the miles on our pacing chart was 17 min and 18 min mile.  While on the course there are several tunnels and when you look carefully in the tunnel you will see Rushmore, which was a cool experience.  We made sure to get a selfie.

Once we hit the top we flipped back to 60/30 and took it a little faster than the 13:44 average pace due to losing some time going up the mountain.  It was a nice and easy run down and tried to take in all the views.  We made sure to take all the pictures as this will be a one and done as we check off South Dakota from the 50 states. While we were pacing it felt great to have a good group and to be able to help them. In some of the smaller races we race we generally don't have many with us so it was great to have a lot of them that we help going up and down the mountain.  Our average was around 12 min mile going down and it felt very easy.  My quads didn't like it the next day but felt good at the moment. 

Once we hit the main road we knew we had less than a mile so that was key.  We are supposed to be within one minute of our time so we had to calculate and be smart.  We ended up finishing 2:59:05 according to my Garmin and with a clock time of 2:59:03. We had initially thought the course would be longer due to hitting the miles very early going up and down the mountain.  I was happy with our finish time since it was within the minute but we had some time just in case the course was long.

 

Overall it was a great race and hope it comes back for other runners.  It was one of the most challenging road races I have done and glad I didn't have to race it. This was the best way to see Mount Rushmore.