High Country Trail Shoe
Usually, when I imagine the finish line of a 100-mile race, I picture the medal being hung around my neck. The flash of cameras, the glint of a shiny new belt buckle, the thunderous applause of my crew, my partner, and whichever three volunteers the race organization condemned to the graveyard shift at the finish chute). I picture myself, tired, but coherent, digging into a finish-line burrito while I regale my crew with tales of my athletic prowess, basking in the serene inner glow of a woman whose sodium levels are in perfect harmony until I can practically feel my UltraSignup score ticking up in real time.
What I never pictured: getting scraped off an ATV by a sympathetic ham radio operator and loaded into the back of an ambulance like a forgotten drop bag somewhere around mile 87 of the Leadville 100, all while scanning for new vessels to throw up into, having already worked my way through my shirt, a broken trash bag, and the back of that poor man's ATV. I didn't picture shivering in a space blanket like a sad human burrito (the only burrito I'd be getting that day) while grilling the ambulance crew about how much it costs to get carted to St. Vincent's. I made one last unconvincing run at Zoë-splaining that I was totally fine, my words slurring like a driver whose keys you were about to confiscate, while the EMTs exchanged knowing, exasperated looks.
A few hours, a saline drip, and one very expensive nap later, I was okay. Just disappointed, and freshly graduated from a very visceral crash course in hyponatremia (eat your salt, kids), having been pulled from the 2018 Leadville 100.
It was my first DNF. It was also the start of a six-year journey back to the Race Across the Sky.experiences. We decided to keep going, because when you’re in a race the last thing you want to do is stop or backtrack.
Even though this was a disappointing debut, to say the least, I knew I wanted to come back. To Leadville, sure — because nothing beats cresting Hope Pass to find an alpine meadow with its very own aid-station llamas, or climbing Powerline while the lines buzz overhead in the dark, or zooming through Space Camp in the middle of the night, unsure whether the unicorn onesies and vuvuzelas you just witnessed were real or an ultra-induced hallucination.
But mostly, I wanted to run 100 miles. As well as I could. And that might as well happen in Leadville.
So I took a step back from the longer stuff. I started training with a coach for the first time and committed to a path that was more about mastery, about getting to know the distance, getting to know myself, than about checking a specific event off a bucket list. I didn't know when I'd next lottery in or land a coin, but I knew I wanted to be ready.
After my DNF, my partner got me a signed poster from that year's winner, Rob Krar, which I hung by my exercise bike in my tiny home "gym" (a yoga mat, some dumbbells, and, I guess, now a small Rob Krar shrine). Krar had penned: "Keep dreaming big, Zoë! Come back and crush Leadville next year!", a message warm enough that I chose not to dwell on the fact that Rob Krar had apparently been briefed, in some detail, on my failure.
I would not be back the next year. Or the year after that. It would take six years to get back to the start line on 6th Street in downtown Leadville.
So, for six years, I worked on my speed. I built fitness. I honed my durability. I ran a handful of 50Ks, a few 50-milers, and a 100K or two. Finally, in 2023, I earned a gold coin at the Silver Rush 50, guaranteeing entry into the next year's hundo. Leadville bound, again!
By the time I had a gold coin in hand, or, more accurately, in my underwear drawer, where I now keep a small repository of Leadville™-branded gold coins, for good luck or as a decoy for potential burglars, I had so completely fallen in love with the process that Leadville itself, once the entire engine of my ultrarunning motivation, had faded into the wallpaper of my love for the sport.
So much of my early running had orbited a single goal: get back to Leadville and crush it NEXT YEAR!! But, the more I trained, the more I loved everything that getting back to Leadville required. The discipline. The adventures. The relationships. The gas-station gummy worms. Becoming less myopically focused on one event turned out to be the best preparation, and love story, I could have hoped for. When the second gold coin landed in my palm, it felt less like luck than an inevitability.
By the time I lined up at the 2024 Leadville Trail 100, I was a different athlete and a different person. The year before, my partner had run Leadville as his first 100-miler (do not recommend). To spice things up and kill some time while pacing him, I proposed at mile 95 (do recommend). Like and follow for more relationship tips!
The younger Zoë who toed the line in 2018 was insecure and brittle, too much of her self-worth and identity staked on the outcome of a single event, a dangerous game when your fueling plan was as bad as mine (man cannot live on Tailwind and gummy bears alone). The 2024 Zoë was settled and secure: not particularly invested in any single outcome, just excited to run in the mountains for a long time with her friends. And, sure, yes, a few gummy bears.
The 2024 race passed in a blur, but I remember the important parts. I remember yakking into a ravine somewhere around 50K (my first puke-and-rally — do I get a pin?). I remember jumping into the river at Winfield to cool off before heading back up and over Hope Pass to see the llamas. I remember cruising into Outward Bound at sunset, the sun dipping low over the Collegiate Peaks and soaking the course in a deep purple glow. I remember trying out new stand-up material on my pacer up the Powerline climb, which isn't nearly so bad when you're doubled over laughing. And I remember being told to stop swearing so much on the Colorado Trail outside May Queen, to my fellow runners, I am so f*cking sorry.
When I pulled into May Queen, the final aid station, I knew I was somewhere around the podium. but I didn't know I was in second place until a dude with an iPhone and a ring light started livestreaming my aid station stop. "Why is this guy filming me chugging a Red Bull while reapplying lube?" I asked my crew.
My partner, TJ, just looked at me and said: "You're in second at the Leadville 100 right now. Go finish!"
Buoyed, I picked up my final pacer, my longtime running partner, Kylee, for the last lap around the lake. Together we crested the final climb, and "climb" might be too generous a word. The Boulevard is less a hill than an accident of geography: just steep enough to call to mind , just long enough to be psychically punishing. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. One must imagine the ultrarunner swearing. (Sorry. Again.)
When I finally crossed the finish line, I swore (sorry. Again),I hugged Kylee and said "I knew I could do it," over and over. Because, all faux humility aside: I knew I could. I had spent six years visualizing that moment, working to overwrite the less-glamorous image of ending my day in the back of an ambulance. I thought about it on every grindy winter run, when all there was to think about was the cold and the snow. I thought about it on the treadmill, picturing myself crossing that line a thousand times. I thought about it every time I looked up at my Rob Krar poster while I wiled away injured hours on the exercise bike.
For once, the finish line looked exactly like I'd pictured it: the medal hung around my neck, the glint of a shiny new belt buckle, my crew and my (now) fiancé losing their minds, the graveyard-shift volunteers clapping like they meant it. I sat down in a camp chair, second place at the Leadville Trail 100, and ate a burrito.
Six years of visualization, one saline drip, several hundred gummy bears, and a mile-95 marriage proposal, all so I could sit in a camp chair at midnight in downtown Leadville and not throw up. Dream big, kids.
(You too, Rob.)
