The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Queen of Lead King Basin
Crested Butte Community School second grade teacher Stevie Kremer racked up another trail running title last weekend, winning the Lead King Loop 25-kilometer race.
Not only that, but Kremer posted a time of 2:11:19, smashing the previous course record by more than eight minutes.
In July Kremer won the Barr Trail Mountain Race, a 12.5-mile race that goes 3,630 feet up the Barr Trail on Pikes Peak before coming right back down. Kremer won that race in a time of 1:51:58, just 25 seconds ahead of second place.
She then joined 11 of her friends to take second place in the Epic Rocky Mountain Relay July 22-23.
And last weekend, she won the Lead King Loop 25-kilometer race, which was the United States Track and Field (USTAF) 25-kilometer state championship.
It was Kremer’s first time in the race.
“Shari Sullivan-Marshall encouraged me to do it because it is such a good course,” explains Kremer. “It was a good race with great competition.”
The runners lined up in the cold morning air in Marble and jumped right into a sustained six-mile climb into Lead King Basin.
“It started off and my legs were cold and stiff,” says Kremer.
She only had one plan in mind: keep last year’s winner in her sights and try to build time on the climbs.
“I’m a better climber than descender and she just flies on the downhills,” says Kremer. “She has legs as long as my body.”
Kremer spent the first two miles in second place but took over the lead and hoped to build on it by the time she hit the end of the first big climb six miles into the race.
At that point the pressure was really on as the course then turned into a long downhill. Kremer kept her focus forward, aware that her competition could be reeling her in.
“I really had no idea how far behind me she was,” explains Kremer. “I refused to look back because I didn’t want to know how close she was.”
Kremer held her lead coming out of the descent and despite stopping twice to make sure she was on course, she held her lead the whole way to the finish, with second and third place under three minutes behind her.
“This was one of the few races where I told myself, the pain will go away,” says Kremer.
Kremer made a point of not looking at her watch the entire time and didn’t find out until two days later that she set a new course record.
“I just wanted to place well,” says Kremer. “I was pretty excited with my time.”
Kremer took home $200 in prize money, a marble foot and a case of honey milk for her effort.
She returns to the trail running world this weekend when she will line up for the Golden Leaf half marathon in Aspen on Saturday, September 24.
