The Crown King Scramble: an infamous race that takes place every April, from Lake Pleasant up the mountain to the town of Crown King. To me, this became a sort of bucket list race – one that I’m not sure I would’ve wanted to do more than once, but also one that I wasn’t sure how to get it on my schedule.
This is happening!
Logistically, it seems to always be scheduled the same weekend as WrestleMania. My friends and I have made a habit of traveling to Mania, thereby eliminating this race as an option. But as fate would have it, I decided to skip this year’s big event – which freed me up nicely to run Crown King.
I talked it over with Laura and she decided she wanted to take her Jeep up the very roads we’d be running, so she could drop me off at the start in the morning and then we’d get together with our friends at the top for celebratory beers that night!
The Race
I sort of went into this race with a similar mentality as the Mesquite Canyon 50K, running at whatever pace felt comfortable. That worked out pretty well for me.. for about the first half of the race. Then it became tough, and power hiking became my MO for the rest of the race pretty much.
I was a bit disappointed in my inability to muster out much uphill running after a certain point, but my power hiking skills are (I’d say) above average so I still kept pace pretty well in relation to the people around my position.
When all was said and done, I was happy enough with my finishing time. I know I could do better, and I’ll admit – part of me wants to give it a go again to see what I’m capable of. We’ll just have to keep an eye on that WrestleMania schedule!
Post-race shenanigans
After the race, a group of us got together to run a beer mile. For the uninitiated, a beer mile consists of: (1) Chug a beer (2) run a quarter mile (repeat four times). I’ve done some pretty quick beer miles (sub ten minutes – nowhere near record setting, but I’d consider it to be pretty quick) – so this was nothing like that. I pretty much chugged beers and hobbled my way around the pseudo-course we had made up. Others with fresher legs were quite a bit speedier. Luckily (or not) this whole thing was captured for posterity:
…and for some reason (*cough* Erica *cough*), a human pyramid seemed like a good idea at the end. Don’t mind my poor form here – it’s the best I could muster!
To cap off the weekend, Laura took us home on the dirt roads en route back to the I-17. It wasn’t anything like the steeper uphill trails we took to get there, but it was still pretty fun to blast some country and kick up some dust!
Let it be known: I survived the Crown King Scramble! Also, I apparently survived Jurassic Park!
Feature Photo Credit ?: SweetM Images
Also published on Medium.