Bisbee 1000

[tempe8]

This past Saturday I ran in the Bisbee 1000, what a fun little race. I'm posting it here because it involved travel around our great state and it was sort of like a hike.

Bisbee is an old mining town, turned into a quaint tourist stop, with a cute city built into the hills around the copper mines. Apparently they have a lot of old stairs between houses and buildings that have falling into disrepair and they're looking for ways to raise money to maintain them.

Someone came upon the idea of holding a race through the city; up and down the hills and stairs. It's a challenging race, about a 5k in length, but you have to climb up about 8 sections of stairs with a total of 1050 steps. The course is layed out in a figure 8 through the city, you run between the stairs...and then do your best going up the stairs.

Now I've done plenty of hikes up Squaw Peak in my best 'speed hiking' form, but this race definitely pushed me. First it was almost 3 miles long, and secondly you never caught your breath between stairs because you were running the flats. Most of the stairs I'd start running with the momentum I was carrying from the flats, but my lungs would quickly max out and I would transition into a fast walk/hike up the stairs. The winner of the race finished in 31 minutes to give you an idea of duration of the event. Most people finished around the 1 hr mark.

The course was really pretty, running through the old historic town, it was a unique idea for raising money, and it was small enough to be organized well...I'll definitely be doing the race next year!

http://bisbee1000.org