Strong mountain running from APU elite team
This summer the APU team has had some impressive mountain running results. The athletes use these races to build fitness and practice racing in the off season, but apparently xc skiing all winter is excellent cross training for the mountains too! We caught up with David Norris after his win at Mt. Marathon who had this to say:
“Mt. Marathon went really well. It’s fun to feel good on race day and use the Alaska mountain running races to practice racing in preparation for ski season. The course this year was muddier than I had ever seen, and even though it wasn’t on the 4th Alaskans still turned out to cheer!”
In the women’s Race Rosie Frankowski once again dominated the race to the summit but didn’t risk life and limb on the descent and finished 4th. Here’s what she had to say about it!
“After missing Mt. Marathon for the past two years for smoke and the pandemic, it was super fun to return to seward and be able to race. Mt. Marathon is always a good test of fitness in the uphill and I was happy to run a quick time of day with difficult slippery conditions. I cut almost four minutes off my downhill, so I guess the extra two years of mountain adventuring helped me improve a bit!”
A few weeks later at Crow Pass Scott Patterson took his 7th victory and set a new course record of 2:50:05 for the 22.5 mile backcountry traverse between Girdwood and Eagle River. The previous record was held by Geoff Roes of Juneau who ran a 2:54:44 in 2010. It is worth remembering that in 2010 Geoff Roes won the Western States Endurance Run in a record time and Scott has been chasing that Crow Pass record ever since. We checked in with Scott to ask how it went:
“After years of chasing the Crow Pass record, I was psyched to see my hard work pay off in the race. Not only did I finally accomplish a long running summer goal, but it is a sign indicating my training is paying off. I’m now looking to continue building for the next months and chase even bigger goals this winter.”
Scott’s new record is made all the more impressive given the trail has changed slightly since 2010 for the slower with a trail reroute at the “Perch” and with the “flood plain” trail becoming too overgrown to use.
Some other notable APU finishes include:
Peter Hinds 14th Mt Marathon
Aubrey LeClair 23rd Mt Marathon
Duncan Wright 9th Crow Pass
Full race results can be found here:
https://www.alaskamountainrunners.org/archives/MtMarathon/2021/2021-Mt-Marathon-Results.pdf
https://www.alaskamountainrunners.org/archives/CrowPass/2021%20Crow%20Pass%20results.pdf