Waterton Canyon

The Arapaho call it Niinéniiniicíihéhe.  You and I call it the Platte River.  It originates in Park County along the eastern flank of the Mosquito Range near Fairplay at a place where you could cross it with one step.  From South Park, it passes through 50 miles of the Platte Canyon and, at its lower section, Waterton Canyon.  It was in this lower section that our little group met to run this past Saturday.  We ran up and down South Platte River Road which parallels its namesake from Waterton Road to the Strontia Springs Dam.  

 

I suggested the change of venue for this week’s long run because I wanted some hill work and I wanted a break from our usual hill run at the Cherry Creek Reservoir.  It has been a particularly mild winter so far and the Highline Canal Path is virtually clear of snow.  The path is less demanding on our old joints, but is virtually flat.  The spring marathons we are running are hilly and require adequate training.

It is seven miles from the parking lot to the gate at the top of the dam with an elevation gain of about 800 feet.  In comparison, the Newton Hills in the Boston Marathon rise only about 200 feet over six miles.  Those hills culminate with Heartbreak Hill which rises only 88 feet (from an elevation of 148 feet to 236 feet), but it comes in the portion of a marathon distance where muscle glycogen stores are most likely to be depleted at mile 20. 

So, we train on hills to acclimate our bodies to climbing.  Running uphill trains the lungs; running downhill trains the legs. 

Uphill running teaches us to run with much better technique.  It forces us to lean forward and to run with shorter steps with a higher stride frequency.  It also trains us to keep our weight on the balls of the feet.

When running downhill, the tendency is to try to “brake” which puts a lot of stress on the leg and hip muscles.  We need to train ourselves to keep some of the forward lean so we don’t tax our legs. 

The Boston Marathon course elevation drops about 220 feet from the crest of Heartbreak Hill to the finish.  Anyone who has ever run the Boston Marathon can tell you how hard it is to run down Beacon Street. 

My spring marathon is the Colfax in May.  I came across an ad for the inaugural edition in 2006.  “It's flat, with elevation gain of only 279 feet.  No Heartbreak Hills.”  Whoever wrote that should be pummeled with Pumas.  While it is a fact that the finish was 279 feet above the start, the elevation chart looks like a hockey stick.  That course rose 538 feet over the last nine miles including about 150 feet in the last mile. 

This year’s edition of Colfax has an elevation gain of 548 feet, which is spread over about 15 miles.  The nice part of the course is that there is a six miles descent from “the Glenns” down Colfax Avenue to the Platte River. 

Sunday morning my legs were feeling the effects of the hill workout.  This means the workout was effective and it means I have more work to do.