Leadville, 2019 Call me a schadenfreude asshole but the moment that stands out from this adventure was watching Eric throw up for the first time in his ultra career, just after we left the Hopeless aid station.  That’s the first point where I thought I was actually adding value.  Until that point I felt like a bit of a third wheel, maybe some poorly chosen window dressing for Eric’s 8th LT100.  But, right then as he tried to yawn a toxic combination of noodles and electrolyte drink into the bushes, I felt like I was needed, like there was work to be done. And who doesn’t like to be needed? Chapter One: Anticipation Eric asked me to pace him at the Leadville Trail 100 some time around the beginning of the year, 6 -7 months ago.  He caught me at a low point.  That ebb in activity where the fall race season is behind you and the spring training hasn’t started yet.  A time when summer is as far off as old age used to be. That mid-winter blue period. The doldrums of the year.  A time when I wallow in manic depression without the so much of themania.  He knew I’d be weak.  You may have heard of the Leadville Trail 100 ultra-marathon.  “The race across the sky”.  It was established in the early 1980’s as a secret government program to harness the psychic energy of ex-drug addicts, by making them suffer at altitude for hours on end.  Then the iron curtain rusted, the wall fell, and Vladimir Putin started posing for romance novel covers.  They had to make up a cover story about saving the town of Leadville from imminent demise from the abrupt closure of the Climax mine.  The fun thing about Leadville, and here I use the term ‘fun’ to mean ‘awful’, is that it sits at an altitude approximately 200 meters south of the moon’s orbit.  It’s a place where only a few thimble fulls of oxygen reach and those few thimbles have to be shared among everyone in town and a few dozen shaggy mountain goats.  It’s known for its rough Western setting, it’s panoramic scenic mountain vistas and spontaneous nosebleeds … right before you pass out.  As we came into the summer and the event started getting closer it began to dawn on me that maybe this wasn’t a good idea.  It’s one of those things that seems like a really good idea 6 months in the future where it can’t harm you but starts to get gnarly looking as it comes into focus in time.  Eric casually mentioned that one of his pacers was in Europe for a wedding and the other one was hurt, so, hey, I’m going to need you for 39 miles.  Wait, what?  39 miles, at altitude, in the middle of the night?  That’s terrifying. So I did what I usually do and didn’t train for it.  Well, I mean I was just rolling out of a stout effort at Boston, and in general maintain a pretty solid level of fitness, but 39 miles at altitude is an ultra-marathon.  I live at about 250 feet above sea level.  Hope Pass is 12,600 feet above sea level.  You do the math, unless you’re actually on Hope Pass because you won’t be able to do math at that altitude, but, yeah that’s two miles straight up.  The highest I’ve ever been is Denver and that’s 1 mile up.  Hope Pass is 2 miles up.  Again, math-wise, twice as up.  Here’s the thing they don’t tell you, until you get there and it’s too late, then they tell you because they think it’s funny, the oxygen content in the air is not linear. At sea level, where I (and all the bright people) live, the oxygen content is 20.9%.  Where we were running it was in the 12-13% range.  42% less oxygen.  Just a reminder, humans need oxygen to do things, like breathe, run, and stay alive.  I had visions of me bent over coughing up blood by the side of the trail while Eric ran on.  I read a race report from the Leadville trail Mountain bike 100 held a couple weeks previously from a guy my age.  He had a small stroke at the top of one of the passes and the mean old race officials made him stop racing when he was slurring his words.  He was pretty sure his racing days were over.  On the minus side of the ledger: