The world-famous Leadville 100 illustrates a significant paradox: it’s one of the hardest 100-mile races to complete and the barrier for entry is remarkably low. You don’t need to have a qualifying race or do volunteer work, and the relatively large field size (typically between 700–800) offers plenty of opportunity for newbies to jump in. However, the prospect of running 100 miles at high altitude under relatively aggressive cutoff times, consistently proves to be more than most runners can handle which is why the race often has a DNF rate of over 50%.
Conventional wisdom for ultrarunners is to build into larger challenges progressively. You don’t need to jump straight into the deep end of our sport to experience pain and humility. In light of that, the Silver Rush 50 provides a perfect test lab for anyone who wants to find out how their body will perform at altitude.
The race is six weeks before the Leadville 100 (LT100) race, which is perfect timing as a final big tune-up in advance of the 100-miler. It’s an ideal experimental opportunity to see how gear and nutritional strategies work under the stress of big miles and high altitude, with time to tweak and adjust as needed afterward. For anyone who is contemplating the Leadville 100 but is uncertain of the terrain and altitude, the Silver Rush 50 is a much lower-pressure environment.
This year’s 15th Silver Rush 50 was the first half of a weekend doubleheader that featured the Silver Rush 50 MTB ride on the same course the following day. Each event has close to 800 starters, and while the course is run extensively on fire roads to accommodate the crowds (particularly for cyclists), for mid-pack runners, it takes 3 or 4 miles before you can really run a normal pace without bumping up against others. Not to worry though, the first 11 miles of the course are almost entirely uphill, so jostling for position doesn’t happen too quick anyway.
The Silver Rush 50 course showcases a completely different section of mountainous terrain than the LT100. It traverses the landscape south and east of Leadville, whereas the LT100 is predominantly west of town. The 50-mile route offers a close-up glimpse of Leadville’s mining heyday, as the back half of the course passes by a number of quarries and abandoned mine shafts, giving runners a sense of the simultaneously harsh and spectacular conditions workers experienced.
In similar fashion, the course itself is harshly spectacular, or spectacularly harsh: there is more than 8,000 feet of climbing, with four separate passes at 12,000 feet (by comparison, the Leadville 100 exceeds 12,000 feet only twice). The terrain is quite rocky and technical, and despite officially being considered fire roads, runners spend very long stretches on these “roads” trying to figure out the best path to minimize the potential for loose footing or rolled ankles. And while the thin air limits everyone’s oxygen intake, the scenery and mountain vistas practically take your breath away. The first climb of the day is spent with close-up views of Mt. Sherman (14,010 feet), Gemini Peak (13,921 feet) and Dyer Mountain (13,826 feet) and from the 11-mile mid-course saddle between passes, runners can look across the valley at Colorado’s two highest peaks, Mt. Elbert (14,439 feet) and Mt. Massive (14,429 feet).
Course layout and time considerations are similar to the LT100, in that the race is run in an out-and-back fashion, with not-super-generous cutoffs in place beginning at the halfway mark. The thick part of the bell curve of mid-pack runners will spend the second half of this race within an hour to 90 minutes of cutoffs, which is fine if your race is going well, but doesn’t leave a ton of time to regroup if you need your stomach to settle down or get a second wind. The overall cutoff is 14 hours, which matches the 50-mile turnaround cutoff time of the LT100. If you are struggling to get in under the wire at the 50-mile event, you will almost certainly be strained to complete the 100-miler in time. If, on the other hand, you can complete the Silver Rush 50 with a decent time cushion and feel like you could keep rolling at that pace for a while longer, you can be confident about your chances of success at the LT100.
At the front of the pack, women’s winner Devon Yanko finished in 7:55 and was a mere 3 minutes ahead of second place Alisyn Hummelberg who finished in 7:58. Third-place female finisher Barrett Gray rounded out the podium in 8:29. The men’s race was even tighter, with first through third finishers separated by just 2 minutes. Brad Miles took the win in 7:01, with Will Murray second in 7:02 and Joel Shores third in 7:03. As is usually the case at Silver Rush, the majority of the pack successfully reached the finish line, with a drop rate of only 15%—one of the lowest in race history, likely aided by perfect weather. Conversely, the thick part of the bell curve, more than a third of the field, finished in the final 2 hours.