By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
The Manitou Incline near Colorado Springs, with it's 2,700 steps, 2,000 feet of elevation gain in under a mile, and an average grade of 45 percent, is a tough physical challenge. It was the easy part of the weekend for Great Bend native Jenny (Shirk) Stous. She also ran in the famed Leadville (Colo.) Burro Race on Aug. 6. The race features 15 and 21-mile courses that begin in the highest incorporated city in the United States.
"You can train all day running," Stous said. "You can put as many miles in as you want, but it's really going to be up to the burro on how much of it you're going to run."
Now a mother, wife, and speech pathologist in Topeka, Stous has paced some of her ultramarathon buddies in five races. Last year, the pals decided to join a burro race in Buena Vista, Colo. That race, the Leadville race, and one in Fairplay have made up the WPBA (Western Pack Burro, um, Donkey Association) Triple Crown since 1979. Stous's race Sunday took just over six hours to complete.
"We climbed about 2,500 feet in height before coming down," she said. "We started the descent at about 7.5-8 miles. The burros were really pretty cooperative the first half or so. They kept climbing the whole time. Generally, once you start on your way down they're ready to run. Miss Millie that I was running with decided she was just done for the day and she wanted to walk the rest of the way. It was a much longer 15 miles than I anticipated."
Leadville is an old mining town, and as such, the burros must be equipped with a regulation pack saddle, a pick, shovel, and gold pan. The burros are led by a halter and rope not to exceed 15 feet in length.
"Letting go gets you disqualified," Stous said. "I have never seen one just flat bolt on a person. I have seen a person get dragged before. Most of the ones are trained enough, they'd have to get spooked pretty bad just to flat take off."
Stous and her sister, Hanna Brownback, rented their donkeys for the event. She found out just the day before that Millie had been pulled from the wild by the Bureau of Land Management just six months before the race, but the burro was tame and even ran in a practice run the day before the race.
One racer finished about an hour ahead of Stous and Millie, despite that donkey refusing to move near the finish line for some 25 minutes. Stous battled Millie for the final eight miles of the race. She, too, had some problems near the finish line but was helped out by a stranger, whose burro took a liking to Millie.
"For whatever reason, that day, she just got in with my sister and I and did not want to leave the little pack," said Stous. "She didn't want to go in the front, she wanted to be in the back of it. I felt bad for him because once ours started being stubborn, his was not going to pass."
Stous estimates there were 96 runners and burros to begin the Leadville race, and approximately 85 crossed the finish line. Some runners in the 21-mile race spent more than nine hours on the course. The dozen or so racers that did not finish had no injuries to blame but rather stubborn donkeys.
The prize for finishing? Cash is rarely on the line. Like most of the 100-mile-plus ultramarathons and other wacky races across the United States, finishers were rewarded with a belt buckle.