Finding Leadville: Introduction

This is part of an ongoing series called, Finding Leadville. This story tracks the journey of Barbara Powell as she discovers, trains for, and runs the 2023 Leadville 100. It chronicles her experience in emotional healing, navigating elements of the patriarchy, Catholicism, and forgiveness, and the simple-yet-profound power of just moving forward. We are all worthy of love and we all deserve to tell our story.

The author treks up and over Hope Pass between Twin Lakes and Winfield, CO in the 2023 Leadville 100

Ten thousand feet in the clouds and I was running. 

Well, maybe you could call it “running,” given the context. 

It was smack in the middle of the Leadville 100 trail run. And I was about to pull into the Winfield Aid Station which marked the official turnaround for the out-and-back course. Wearing daffodil yellow shorts and a circus pink tank top, I pulled a custom-made hat over my face to protect it from an unforgiving alpine sun. The bubblegum print, My First Rodeo, scrawled in cursive threading above the gracious brim.  My back hunched, equipped with a pack that held a water bladder, now-limp bottles for liquid nutrition, and several crinkled, sticky packaging of long-ago consumed gels. 

I was moving downhill, and faster than when I was going up. But, it felt and looked more like a hobble. My head tilted, as though looking up fully would cause the nearing aid station to draw further away. My feet begged for relief, opting to rebel by becoming heavier as I went. I had ignored them the entirety of Hope Pass, a climb to 12,000 feet and back down again. Paying any attention to something that will only keep hurting is like rewarding a dog for bad behavior – it’ll just make it worse. Now, aware that reprieve was nearby, they were defiant as ever. 

A beep from my watch prompted me to check my wrist: 50 miles. Fingers grasped white around the trusted trekking poles and I willed my feet to keep following the directions of the day: just keep moving. 

Step, step, pole, pole. 

Step, step, pole, pole. 

What are you doing, a thought crept in, Why are you even out here?

The air was thin. Each foot scuffle kicked up dust on the old dirt road, caking my once-wet socks from the earlier creek crossing. The creek crossing.  That seemed like a lifetime ago – a lifetime before I crawled my way to 12,500 feet in the sky, and the last time I saw my crew before the Hope Pass saga began. 

The sky was a brilliant blue, nary a cloud. Flashes of the morning’s hub bub ricocheted through my mind: excited chatter at the start line and hugging my partner Chris; the tilt of the shot gun toward the stars; the whooping shuffle of runners taking off from 6th street toward the wilderness. The wonder I held and the curiosity that bubbled in me. The hope I felt, now a balloon that had lost some air along the day. Already a series of memories. 

How the hell am I going to turn around and do it all again?

A shuttle idled on the dirt road a few yards beyond the aid station. Its doors were open, daring each of us haggard souls to use our remaining strength to crawl inside, lay our bodies to rest, to call it. Cots flanked the opposing side of the road, their sturdiness and promise of respite one of the most appealing things I could lay eyes on. Forcing my awareness away from the shuttle, I collapsed onto one of the cots instead. 

Looking down, I took in the power of my body: the swell of quads, blue veins working beneath skin, and the heave of lungs in the chest. Pieces of hair stuck to my cheek and sweat had long ago dried into salted flakes of white on my skin. My eyes brimmed with tears. 

I thought of how far my body – and mind – had come. It was a disservice to question that. Belief, a small wisp turning into a plumage of smoke, swirled around me. My headphones were still in my ear and Cardi B throbbed inside my skull. 

No matter how I felt, I was a powerful being, making her way through the clouds, on foot. The act of feeling it all, every bump and bruise and ache and twinge, all merely meant I was alive. The mere act of it all meant I was embodying a belief, bringing it to life, allowing it to grow into a mighty new reality. I was going to turn my ass around, leave this aid station, and return to downtown Leadville before the 30 hour clock ran out. 

“Fucking watch me,” I whistled through my teeth, “I’m doing this.” A prayer, an intention, a knowing, a desire. Call it what you will, it was a spoken agreement I continued to make with the trails of Leadville during the most difficult race of my life. 

I knew I was going to carry my body all the way back, another fifty miles, to where this race had all begun.