It has been said before ...

In my run today with Lucho, of course Pikes came up as a topic. And of course, if you talk about Pikes, you end up talking about Matt Carpenter.

You know, when you look at what Matt has done on the mountain, it is mind boggling. The number of wins, the records ...

... but beyond that legacy, that I wonder if I will ever see surpassed, Matt has been a pioneer in a lot of other regards. Starting the Incline Club. And if you look carefully at his website in 1997, you will see he was blogging even before that was a verb. Looking for a news article of how a race went down a dozen years ago on the Peak? Matt's got it up there. Oh, thinking that the entire prize money elite competition conversation that is a suddenly hot topic this year is new in MUT? Go and read the history ... this guy was yelling about it a decade plus ago.

Oh yeah, the ... competition ... between him and Elliott (two guys I like and respect a ton) a decade ago ... read that up.

Elliott trained for the Ascent for four months, spending the last two weeks living at spartan Barr Camp to train and acclimatize.

For seven of the 10 days Elliott was there, Carpenter was too. It was impossible not to run into each other on the course or at mealtimes.

"I saw him up at the top a number of times," Elliott said. "We chatted, mostly shared our thoughts about the race. That's about it."

But Carpenter was taking inventory.

"I'd see him walk in the door at dinnertime and think, 'He's got a little black under the eyes, he's moving his sandwich a little slower to his mouth,'" Carpenter said. "It's all a game. The mental part of sports is what's fun."

The race wasn't much different. Carpenter stayed on Elliott's shoulder for nearly three of the first four miles, like a shadow with bad intentions. Neither said a word.