Ep. 870: The Colorado Crush - Robbie Balenger
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2022
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Running: Robbie White Completes Colorado Crush – Leadville Marathon, 500-Mile Colorado Trail, Leadville 50, All 58 Colorado 14ers, Leadville 100 in One Summer. Robbie has done some legitimately legendary adventures. He ran across the US, has the FKT for the Central Park Loop, and even outlasted a Tesla by running farther than it could drive on a single charge. However, on today’s episode we talk about something, in my opinion, that was much crazier; The Colorado Crush.
In an effort to experience all the glory and magnitude that Colorado has to offer, Robbie pieced together an adventure of outright ridiculous proportions. The goal was to run the Leadville marathon in early summer, complete the nearly 500-mile Colorado Trail, run the Leadville 50-mile in mid-summer, then climb all 58 Colorado 14ers and finish with the Leadville 100-mile ultrarun, completing the Colorado Trail, the 14ers and the Leadville Trail Series in one summer.
Unbelievable.
Now let’s hear the story…
Learn more about Robbie and watch the documentary below:
Colorado Crush film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch-n7LwMVZ4
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, folks, super, super excited about this conversation. |
| 0:18.0 | We're talking to Robbie Ballinger. |
| 0:20.3 | Robbie is, as you'll hear, new to Colorado, |
| 0:23.2 | but he did this thing called the Colorado Crush, which is absolutely insane. He's going to explain |
| 0:29.2 | it more, but what I'm going to tell you right from the outset is go watch the film. It's like half an |
| 0:34.4 | hour. It is amazing. It's on YouTube. It's free. It shows you visually |
| 0:40.7 | what this experience was like. And I'll be honest, it was way more hardcore than Robbie made |
| 0:45.4 | it seem even. He's so nonchalant about it. But it was, I mean, it's a crazy feat. It's doing |
| 0:51.3 | the Leadville Iron Man, doing the entire Colorado trail, 500 miles, |
| 0:57.0 | 100,000s of feet of elevation, change, and gain. Then doing the Leadville 50-mileer. The Leadville |
| 1:05.0 | is the big races in Colorado near Leadville, Colorado, named after the town. Highest town in the U.S., by the way, 10,000 feet, 10,200 or 800 or something, so over 10,000. |
| 1:17.6 | So Robbie did the marathon, the entire Colorado Trail, which is a huge bucket list item for tons of people, then the Leadville 50 Marathon. Then all the Colorado 14ers, literally all |
| 1:31.9 | 58 14ers, all the mountains over 14,000 feet. That's a huge achievement in anyone's lifetime. |
| 1:39.8 | And then the Leadville 100 mile race, the ultra run. He did all that in one summer, back to back-to-back, doing one event after the other, |
| 1:50.2 | knocking it out to basically finish everything in time to do those Leadville events, |
| 1:56.3 | which are on a schedule. |
| 1:57.5 | The other ones he has to just do on his own time and make sure he finishes in |
| 2:01.3 | time. So, um, holy cow, I don't know if I've heard of anything crazier in that. Uh, |
| 2:07.4 | there's a few folks we've had on here that have done some pretty crazy stuff, but Robbie did an |
| 2:13.2 | absolutely epic thing. So here's the conversation. And Robbie actually last week when we were having |
| 2:19.5 | the hurricane a couple weeks ago now, Robbie checked on me. So I really appreciate that. Robbie, |
| 2:24.3 | that means a lot. It shows what kind of guy you are. And yeah, you can care about things like that, |
... |
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