A few years ago, after three early trips to the Incline, the Greco-Roman wrestler T.C. Sometimes, coaches will call wrestlers at 3:30 a.m. The wrestling teams incorporate the Incline into their workouts, as do triathletes, speedskaters, weight lifters and volleyball players. This stairway to heaven - or at least to the Olympics - is used by all kinds of athletes at the training center. The Incline follows what was once a cable car route that closed after a rock slide in 1990. "Everybody's looking for the notch on their belt." "The Incline is one of my favorite things about Colorado Springs and a real source of pride at the training center," Fretta said. She knew no one would be able to complete the challenge, having herself run the Incline with friends each year on her birthday - all of them dressed as Marilyn Monroe in high heels, boas and halter dresses. Like the time Michelle Blessing, a triathlete coach, offered to give her Porsche to any athlete who could run the entire trail. A reporter called recently from India, wanting to know his secret and asking about his stories. The same day he broke the record, Fretta ascended four times.Īs the legend of the Incline grows, so does Fretta's place in it. The triathlete Mark Fretta owns the unofficial record up the Incline, with a time of 16 minutes 42 seconds, notched despite a broken collarbone he got in a bicycle crash in South Africa. "It's not running," the Greco-Roman wrestling gold medalist Rulon Gardner said. On his drive back to the Olympic Training Center, he developed full-body cramps, and the van carrying the freestyle wrestling team had to pull over so that coaches could administer a rubdown. So even though this made it harder, it was like, ‘Okay, this is what I asked for, I asked for it to be hard, I asked to not know if I could accomplish this.’”Īll the while, no one but her family knew she was climbing for two.The wrestler Daniel Cormier first conquered the Incline in 2002. That’s why I did this, that’s why I started this. However, I was okay with it because I started this challenge because I had wanted to dig deep within me and to push through adversity, and I wanted that struggle. Had I not become pregnant, I would have finished the 1,000 early, before the 365-day deadline that I had picked. “The first trimester, like I said, it was tough. ![]() And I just didn’t even know if I could finish it, but I thought, ‘As long as I can do my best, I’m just going to try.’ So it really was one day at a time, one hour at a time, one lap at a time. The health of my baby and myself, they always come first. “There were days where I planned on hiking, there were days where I planned on doing six, eight, 10 laps that day where I just couldn’t get out of bed, so I didn’t. Now, she would dig deep within herself to finish it. When she started the challenge, she had asked for something hard. So more than halfway through her challenge, Jones was doing multiple Inclinathons to help get her to 1,000. The 13 laps were actually part of another challenge within the challenge she was already doing: an Inclination, when people attempt 13 Incline laps within 24 hours, which comes out to about a marathon. So, I really had to fit laps in around my work schedule, so sometimes it was a lap or two before work, or on my days off I would be there all day long. ![]() “Of the 365 days that I hiked, I was on the trail 239 days, and that’s because I was working full-time. Jones walked Grewe around a typical day on the Incline while on the road to 1,000: It gains more than 2,000 feet of elevation within a mile, averages about 40 percent grade, with a max of nearly 70 percent. The train shuttered decades ago, but the tracks remained and soon gained a second life as an endurance challenge for locals, and eventually, people around the world. ![]() It’s 2,768 steps of what was once a short, vertical railway taking tourists up Mount Manitou. The Incline is a mile-long scar in mountains overlooking Colorado Springs.
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