Fueled by Tailwind Nutrition, gels, ice cream and air-fried pizza bites, Durango’s Kyle Curtin was making great time on his quest to run the fastest time on the legendary Colorado Trail.
As he closed in on the last 100 miles, Curtin’s ankle started to flare up and the pain got worse and worse. By the time Curtin had about 10-15 miles left and was in the home stretch of his journey, he said the pain in his ankle was the worst pain he had felt in his life. But he had no choice but to finish and finish he did.
Curtin crushed the previous Colorado Trail record and ran the 487.2-mile trail in six days, 15 hours and eight minutes, becoming the first person to complete the trail in less than a week.
“I definitely am proud of the effort,” Curtin said. “Overall, it went really well and pretty close to best case scenario for what I hoped and what I thought I was capable of. I'm not sitting here looking at little things I could have changed to do a little bit better. Overall, it is pretty close to the best I was capable of. I’m pretty proud of the effort and then pretty thankful for all the support I had along the way. I really couldn't have done it without a good crew and I really couldn't have imagined a better crew to do it with. It really was just people really dedicated and committed to helping me out, people who are professional and really good at doing that too.”
Curtin credited his friend and fellow Durangoan Michael Robertson with helping with the pacing and provided his minivan as a home base for the whole crew while Curtin was on the Colorado Trail.
Another key member of the team was Curtin’s girlfriend Sarah Ostaszewski who Curtin said is an amazing runner, was there from the start to the finish and helped pace Curtin for large chunks of the run.
Devon Olson, one of Curtin’s oldest friends in Colorado since he moved to Colorado from Ohio, was an essential part who ran 134 miles with Curtin and carried a lot of Curtin’s essentials throughout.
Fellow trail runner Tara Dower helped pace Curtin at the beginning of his run before she had to leave for a race in California. Another Durango runner Robyn Lesh paced Curtin for a while in some tough storms.
Curtin had been looking at running the entire Colorado Trail since 2017. He’s hiked it in the past and also did a relay with some co-workers. This gave him a taste of what it would be like and the logistics needed to break the record.
He knew he wanted to do it in the summer but in the past, everything didn’t come together whether it was the snow on the trail or the time. But this year, he committed to it and planned it out with his sponsors.
The Colorado Trail begins just Southwest of Denver and goes through numerous mountain passes as runners or hikers head Southwest toward Durango. The trail ends about 3.5 miles North of Durango.
Before running the entire Colorado Trail, Curtin’s longest run was a race in Italy which he said compared to the Colorado Trail with its elevation gain but was only 220 miles. He said it helped with learning how to function at an all-day pace through difficult terrain.
Curtin served in the Army and after he got out, he hiked the Appalachian Trail with his father which also helped him prepare for the Colorado Trail.
“Being on the Appalachian Trail, more than anything, just the mindset gained from living on a trail for four months, I think was really helpful,” Curtin said. “I was talking with Sarah before starting this event, the mindset has to be you are on the trail. You come to the trailhead to get aid and support and that kind of stuff, but you have to be on the trail this time. That was a critical part of it actually.”
Curtin started his journey South of Denver on June 24 at Waterton Canyon and said he had good pace at the beginning because it was at a lower elevation on more used, flatter trails which made them quicker. Then once he got into the wilderness sections it got tougher, along with higher elevation with snow covering parts of the trail.
A typical day for Curtin on the Colorado Trail started after only two hours of sleep on a blowup mattress. He would swap out pacers a few times a day and they were doing 20 or 30-mile segments. For the most part, his pacers carried everything he needed so Curtin could focus on moving.
For nutrition, Curtin didn’t eat a lot of food in part because it was the run was so exhausting that it took more energy to chew food while he was running. He had 100 or 200 calories an hour of Tailwind Nutrition and about the same amount in gels. From time to time he’d had some bites of a sandwich, some soup, pasta and ice cream.
Around Molas Pass was where his ankle started to flare up but he pushed through at the end to find his friends and supporters at the finish line in the dark cheering with glow-in-the-dark sticks and cowbells.
All told, Curtin gained 92,070 feet of elevation and burned 60,683 calories.
“It's just like such a cool event to be able to essentially run across the state with my friends,” Curtin said. “That's better than any race or any other kind of running thing I've done. Then just the route of actually physically running from Denver to Durango over essentially the Continental Divide. There's an enormity that I don't think I've ever matched on any other kind of run.”
The weather was inconsistent which Curtin expected before he started on the Colorado Trail. He said the weather was good as he left Denver. But there was lots of rain during his journey, especially on Thursday, June 30. He and his crew were prepared as Curtin ran in a puffy jacket and snow pants to keep warm.
He picked June 24 as the start date because it’s the earliest date the Colorado Trail can be completed quickly with less snow. Also, Curtin and his crew didn’t have to carry much water because of all the running water from the snow in the mountains. Plus the days only get shorter as summer continues.
Curtin had extra motivation for this run as he partnered with Big City Mountaineers, an organization focused on creating opportunities for the youth to explore the outdoors. Curtin has a goal of raising $10,000 and at the time this article was written, he has raised $11,251. He said the organization aligned with a lot of his values and what he gets out of the outdoors.
“I'm pretty proud to be able to make this more about than just myself and pat myself on the back too,” Curtin said. “That's really cool and motivating for me to know all these people who get into a cause with the assumption that I'm going to do this thing and having that as a motivator is pretty important to me.”
Curtin spent some time in the hospital after to get some blood work done and to check out his ankle. Luckily, Curtin didn’t break anything in his ankle and had some tendinitis and some rhabdo, also known as rhabdomyolysis, which is an injury to skeletal muscle and involves leakage of large quantities of potentially toxic intracellular contents into plasma. Rhabdo can happen after extreme muscle strain and excessive exercise without rest.
After his phenomenal achievement, Curtin has nothing planned on his calendar for the immediate future other than recovering, watching the Tour de France, drinking a bunch of coffee and eating pastries.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
