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July 16, 2001
The Great UnknownWomen’s champion surprises field in Barr Trail Mountain Race
By Meri-Jo Borzilleri/The Gazette
Not that it helped. Nobody knew who she was.
Now they do.
Bryan, 33, of Jackson, Wyo., won the 12-mile race to Barr Camp and back in 1 hour, 51 minutes, 38 seconds, a women’s record for the second-year event.
Matt Carpenter, 36, the local mountain-running icon, successfully defended his title, winning the men’s race in 1:30:05, breaking his record of 1:31:22 from last year and besting a field of 351 entrants.
With their wins, Bryan and Carpenter earned spots in the World Mountain Running Trophy Race in Italy Sept. 15-16, considered the world championship of the sport.
We know about Carpenter, the Manitou Springs marvel who holds the records for the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon and has been ranked the world’s best runner in sky marathons (26.2-mile races on courses at 14,000 feet or higher).
Bryan’s another story. A former mountain and road cyclist, Bryan, a full-time home builder and designer, has been racing up and down mountains only for the past two years.
“I’m overwhelmed,” Bryan said after she finished. “There’s incredible athletes here. I just ran out of my head. Everyone has his day, I guess.”
Bryan’s day was better than most. She wasn’t mentioned in the pre-race press release. Veteran mountain-runner Kari DiStefano of Telluride, who finished 2 minutes behind her in second place, didn’t know who Bryan was. Neither did third-place finisher Lisa Goldsmith, or even Nancy Hobbs, manager for the women’s U.S. Mountain Running Team that Bryan is on now.
“I didn’t even put her down as a possibility,” Hobbs said.
Understandable. Bryan was running in a competitive field that included not only DiStefano and former U.S. Mountain Running Team member Goldsmith, along with defending champion Sarah Gray, but also Kelli Lusk, who ran in the 2000 Olympic Marathon Trials and finished second in the Barr Trail race last year.
On Sunday, Bryan led nearly the entire way, from below the Barr Trail parking lot at 6,570 feet to Barr Camp at 10,200 feet, almost halfway up Pikes Peak, and back down.
“She looked fast to me early on,” DiStefano said.
Few heard of Bryan because the races she has won have been close to home: the Rendezvous Mountain event near Jackson, and a race at Grand Targhee, where she’s the record-holder, both won in 1999.
Bryan also just recently made mountain-running a singular pursuit — dropping cycling — after a near-fatal allergic reaction a year ago made her rethink her priorities.
In June 2000, Bryan was airlifted from Driggs, Idaho to Idaho Falls after being treated for a blood clot after dental surgery. A week after the surgery, Bryan had been on a training run when her right arm went numb. Doctors discovered a clot and gave her Coumadin, the anti-clotting medication, in the hospital. Bryan was allergic to the medicine.
Her legs went into spasms. Her body turned blue. Doctors rushed her via helicopter to a bigger hospital In Idaho Falls. Bryan did not lose consciousness in the helicopter, but felt herself losing the ability to breathe. She knew exactly what was happening.
“It was like going into shock,” Bryan said. “I thought I was dead. I thought, ’This is it.’”
It wasn’t. Thirteen months later, Bryan was being handed the winner’s trophy for the Barr Trail race.
“Last year, what happened to me made me want to take a hard look at things,” she said Sunday. “I wanted to see where I could be if I just focused on one thing: mountain running.”
Bryan didn’t even realize until after the race that a trip to compete in Italy came with the first-place prize.
“I’ve got goosebumps,” Bryan said when she found out.
For Bryan these days, competing is its own reward. A trip, a trophy and now some name recognition are bonuses.
“It’s good to be alive,” she said. “It’s good to be running.”
Meri-Jo Borzilleri may be reached at 636-0259 or merijo@gazette.com
Copyright 1999-2001, The Gazette, a Freedom Communications, Inc. Company. All rights reserved.
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