为胜利跟自己和时间赛跑

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去年，Matt Carpenter赢得了六场长跑比赛的胜利，并打破了两项比赛的记录。现在他正在为了6月将要在Vail举办的Teva山地运动大赛做着准备工作，这样才能继续保持胜利的果实。

The course follows old Ute tribe trails 20 miles up, down and around Pikes Peak, a narrow, gravelly passage rising 7,815 feet to crest 14,110 feet above sea level. Tourists with respiratory ailments are cautioned against making such an ascent, even by car. Motorists on nearby roads are advised to employ manual transmission. Promotional materials for the summit warn of altitude sickness, lightning, hypothermia, rattlesnakes and wild animals carrying bubonic plague.

Matt Carpenter expected to run it in about three hours.

At 44, Carpenter is known as the grand paladin of high-altitude distance running. In 1993, he set record times - still standing - for the 13.3-mile, or 21.3-kilometer, Pikes Peak Ascent and the Pikes Peak Marathon, races he won again in 2001 and 2007, both times on consecutive days. He has also set speed marks in a high-altitude flat-surface marathon, a 50-mile race and a 100-mile race.

In 2002, after his marriage, the loss of his sponsorship and the birth of his daughter, Carpenter was considered a champion in eclipse.

Nearing his 39th birthday, he won only the familiar Pikes Peak Ascent, with a time 22 minutes behind his own record, and placed 33rd at another mountain race.

But as the milestones of fleeting youth have given way to the slipstream of middle age, Carpenter has returned to form. Last year, he won six long-distance races, setting two course records.

"Whenever we race, I know it's going to be a good competition - unless it's at high altitude, and then I don't stand a chance," said Uli Steidl, 36, who placed second behind Carpenter at a 50-mile race in San Francisco in December.