Grit and Glory at 14,000 Feet

High in the Colorado Rockies, where a summer day can turn instantly into treacherous winter, thrill-seeking athletes push themselves to the limit and beyond.

Photo courtesy The Gazette, Christian Murdock

I’ll never forget the Gatorade bottle. It made me think I might not make it.

I was crouched over, head down, in a half-run shuffle, eyes on my muddy running shoes. I stood up only when the trail snaked between large granite boulders that I had to reach to climb up and over. Heavy snow was falling, the flakes in my eyelashes making it hard to see. But when the lightning came, the strikes were quick, loud cracks that boomed as they hit the ground and made the dirt fly.

It was late summer 2005, and at thirty-eight I was attempting to complete my second Pikes Peak Ascent, a race that gains nearly 8,000 feet over thirteen miles, from Manitou Springs, Colorado — elevation 6,320 feet — to the top of Pikes Peak, at 14,114 feet. Because of the rapid elevation gain, ending where the partial pressure of oxygen is only about sixty percent of that at sea level, and the potential for storms that can roll in and turn a blue-skied August day into a struggle …