PEAK PERFORMANCE

LAZY MOUNTAIN — The steeper the climb, the harder the fall.

Such was the case for Harlow Robinson, who saw his six-year winning streak at the Matanuska Peak Challenge come to an end Saturday. Longtime rival and friend Matias Saari charged up and down Lazy Mountain and Matanuska Peak in record time to claim his first race title.

After finishing second to Robinson the past three years, “It’s sort-of emotional to break through finally,” Saari said.

The 39-year-old former sports writer was among a strong field of 60 runners to gather at Lazy Mountain Recreation Area for a 9 a.m. start. Regarded as the toughest mountain race in Alaska, the Mat Peak Challenge has been the focus of the racing season for Valley residents Braun and Lance Kopsack for more than two decades.

Braun started the race 22 years ago and chose Lazy Mountain and Matanuska Peak as the course for the 14-mile event’s grueling 9,100-foot elevation gain. Over about seven miles, racers climb more than 1.7 miles in elevation, then make the frenzied descent. Steady rains in the hours leading up to the race didn’t do much for sure footing along the trails, Braun said.

“Considering it poured all night, we’re blessed with this weather,” he said about the mild mid-50-degree temperatures. “But the trail will be slick, very slippery. You never know what the weather’s going to do. We’ve had it blowing and snowing at the top of Matanuska before, really cold.”

The rain cleared up minutes before the race started, which was just fine with Saari, who finished in 3 hours, 3 minutes and 8 seconds, ahead of last year’s record of 3:05 set by Robinson.

“It was ideal temperature-wise, but it wasn’t exactly a fast course,” Saari said. “I was slipping and sliding. I knew I was on record pace, then I was losing time the last half hour. I was just trying not to fall, and hold it together.”

The plan was to jump out to an early lead and pressure those chasing him, Saari said.

“I led start to finish, which is what I hoped to do,” he said. “With Harlow winning this thing six years in a row, I didn’t want to just go out and hang with him. He’s got great endurance. He’s gutsy, so I thought I might as well go hard off the bat and get a lead and put the pressure on the guys behind me.”

The tactic worked, Robinson said, after giving Saari an enthusiastic embrace at the finish line.

“We’re good buddies and we’re pretty much neighbors (in Anchorage),” said Robinson, 43. “We don’t train a lot together, but we’ve had quite a few duels. He earned it today, man. It was only a matter of time. I promised myself that whoever beat me would have to earn it, and Matias had me beat the second we left the parking lot. … This year, Matias showed he had another gear. I didn’t have the ability or the will. I got too far behind. When you get that far behind, it’s hard to keep your mojo.”

Aside from competing in what he calls “the toughest mountain race in Alaska,” getting together with other runners is what keeps Robinson competing.

“It’s a great community,” he said. “We all love to compete real hard and love to support each other afterwards.”

That’s what had Tor Christopherson charged up even after finishing the punishing 14-mile course. This was his first Mat Peak Challenge, and as he crossed the finish line in fourth place, “the rookie” received good-natured jibes from Saari and Robinson.

“Those guys are my idols; they’re the real deal,” Christopherson said. “I haven’t done this much elevation before. I actually think coming down is harder. I got whacked by a tree coming down. I didn’t realize I was bleeding until one of the guys I was running with said, ‘Hey, you’re bleeding, man.’ I said, ‘No I’m not.’ I looked down and, yeah, there’s some blood.”

Christopherson said he’s been asked more than once what motivates someone to voluntarily run seven miles up mountains and back down.

“It is kind of absurd we do this for fun,” he said. “I do it for moments like this when you finish and you have this endorphin high and you’re like, ‘yeah, this is cool.’”

It’s the total package the Mat Peak race offers that prompts Fred Thomas to travel from Wyoming each year to compete. He’s never in contention to win the race, but Thomas said the combination of the Alaska scenery, tough course and local running community is something he can’t find in the Lower 48.

“Look at this crowd. You can’t run with this bunch of guys in Wyoming,” he said. “We come over here to run Mount Marathon every year, then go back and do some haying, then we come back up for this.”

Saturday was his third Mat Peak Challenge. What Thomas enjoys is that the course tests runners in ways other races don’t.

“You can fake Mount Marathon, but you can’t fake this one,” he said. “There are some tough boys in this race. I like to chase them. I never catch them, but I like to chase them.”

Mindsets like those displayed by Thomas and Christopherson are familiar to Gloria Kopsack. As mother of the race founders and widow of a runner, Richard Kopsack, Mat Peak “is fine for them,” she said. “I would never try it. I wasn’t build to be a runner, basically.”

Instead, she works the registration table and official time clock, and admitted even with her family’s dedication to the mountain race she has a hard time categorizing the runner mentality.

“There has to be a special name for people who do this stuff,” she said.

That’s what Robinson was thinking shortly after his second-place finish Saturday. Now that he won’t be the returning champion, he’s noncommittal about a return.

“It’s a little different when you don’t have a streak to protect,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just take a vacation.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.