Joshua Simkins
Melia: I’m Melia Coury here with Joshua Simkins and you just won the Silverton Alpine 50K. How does that feel?
Joshua: Good, I wasn’t sure what to expect today. Through the competition, altitude or weather but fantastic weather and felt pretty good about it. It was a good race, beautiful course.
M: Was there a part on the course that just kind of took your breath away? (A part from the altitude)
J: The whole thing it’s hard to choose one spot. Right along the river so beautiful. And then you get up high by one of the last aid stations and right before that one pass?
M: California Pass?
J: Yes, right up there and there is just this whole mountain side of sheep. I had never see so many sheep before that was crazy.
M: Was there any struggle today or just a nice easy run?
J: Some struggles for sure. We started out, the kid that is in second now, we ran together for the first 18 miles at a pretty good pace. And then I kinda broke off a little bit. And it wasn’t too bad going up hill, I had a little bit of cramping in my calf but besides that everything seemed to go pretty smoothly. I’m happy with it.
M: Cool. And I know you have run well at some of our other races Cave Creek Thriller and you were 9th male and got around a 17-hour time so you have run a couple different ultras. Do you know what is going to be next after this?
J: I was using this as kind of a building block going into Run Rabbit 100. And so this was my last big race, last push and I will have a block of steady state runs going into that but this was the last final push.
M: One last recharge.
J: Yeah get use to elevation, competition, fueling and all of that kind of stuff.
M: And then being up here is there something that attracts you to more of this alpine running versus I know you have done some of our desert races? Is there something that you prefer about any of them?
J: I think I like the mountain running more. Just feeling consumed by it and lost in the mountains. The desert has a special attraction too but I definitely like the mountains more.