Saturday – the kids had a track meet at the HS and I was there with them all day. The kids were in the early sessions of the 4 x 800m. It was their first races of the season and it gave them a good sight of where they are in their fitness and now they have a good competitive objective measure they can work from. JZ had not done an 800 on a track before and it had been a few years since KZ had done one. Separately they both commented on how that third 200 has its challenges.
We spent the rest of the day at the meet. There were at least a dozen schools in the mix. I helped out in gathering splits on everything from the 800s (every 200) to 1600 to the 3200 and even the 4 x 4. There were some pretty good perfomances to open the season for a lot of these kids (with some running events they would not typically run by going over or more typically under distance), but none of them are hoping this is their best performance of the season. They are looking to improve.
I got so wrapped up in the meet and the day that I completely forgot that Saturday was the day to register for Pikes. I got a text from JV mid day asking if I had registered and realized I had completely spaced on it. He also shared with me that it was 188 bucks to register.
I am not going to criticize the cost – because I see that as a simple supply and demand thing. If you have a product or a service that people want, and are willing to pay for, then you can charge what the market demands. It might chase some folks off, but if you are filling your till to satisfaction and you have satisfied customers – go for it. I have taken this sort of stance with races like Bolder Boulder: a 75 dollar 10k with 50000 people ain’t for me. It is obviously a great buy for a lot of people.
I long thought that Pikes was a very good buy for a race. It was often (and probably still is) cheaper than a lot of road marathons. While it probably does not have the costs of like a big city marathon of shutting down roads, getting police, etc – it does have its own set of challenges in that the course is on a 14er and getting supplies to the aid stations can’t be managed by driving to the A-frame.
At 175 though, the old man memory can’t help but recall that not too long ago (less than a decade) it was probably half that. And yeah, I avoided costs for years with comp’d entries to be fair. I think the Ascent was 50 or 60 bucks when I first did it and that is now 150. Interestingly for a few years, the Marathon was cheaper than the Ascent by 10 dollars or so because there was some cost consideration of the ride down.
Again, I am not opposed to the outright dollar cost alone. I dropped close to 400 for Leadville reg last year (which does create the math of cost per mile comparisons) so I am okay with dropping a few bones on races where there is a personally percieved value.. But a combination of the cost of PPM, what kind of shape I am in, what I have planned for rec and work this summer, and what fire I have in my belly right now – I don’t see myself registering for Pikes. I just don’t put together a subjective value in it … I’d drop 200 bucks to screw around and put up a sub par performance on the hill. That ain’t worth it.
That is a bit weird because even up through last year, I thought I would do Pikes every year for probably the rest of my life or until I couldn’t. My thinking has clearly shifted on it and while there is a part of me that is a bit sad about that, I am actually very much – “hey it is okay, the mountain is there when you want to go back, do something else for a bit.” In fact, I will probably either be at the Leadville course or Pikes that weekend to, at minimum, watch the races if not help or something more.
Oh, back and forth on the track all day, collecting splits, etc was good for 9 easy miles. My left hammy was a bit irked most of the day though.
Sunday AM – got out with Shad (who ran a great Salida race), Bob, and Dave over after Mayerhoffer and the donks Boog and Ellroy. This included paces of 0 miles an hour to paces of 12 miles and hour. With the number of bikes, dogs, people on the Coal Creek Trail it is always a bit of a challenge … and a bit funny as people whip out their phones and say “you don’t see that every datay
Decent week for me back home … a good number of miles where the pace was nudged by doing stuff with the kids. Being on or near the track so much has me thinking about goals in that direction … maybe. The week was a bit more loaded towards the front, and a bit lighter over the weekend – both in terms of quality and quantity - but it was okay on whole.
