R & R & Wind & a Party

After doing 100k last weekend I felt surprisingly well. I did a little stretching and walking Monday and Tuesday. Then Wednesday I did a hard 3 on the treadmill at 12%. Hamstrings were a little tight and the back of my knees were mildly sore, but that was it.
Saturday I was going to do 6 summits at Tiger but I only made it to T3 and turned around. It was pretty windy and I was by myself so I headed back down. I had already seen a few fresh branches / trees down and it seemed to be getting windier.


Sunday was my son's 2nd Birthday party. So I expected to do Zero miles. I ended up doing 3 workouts.

1st while Jenn was doing a run, I did 45 minutes of the Biggest Loser workout. I worked muscles I never work. It felt good and strange all at the same time. After Jenn got back I had an hour before I had to start rolling my Chicken Enchiladas,
so I went for a quick Tempo run. I got in about 7 1/2 with 3 minutes to spare. I felt much better. My legs and arms got a correct workout (running).

Arthur Jr's party was nice, Shawn was there with her (kid/husband) Seth.

Jenn was set to make a cake shaped like Lighting but they saw this one at Safeway and couldn't resist.



After the party my friend Chris wanted some company running, so I figured I could burn off the cake I ate. We did an easy (he's slower than Jenn) 40 minutes.

Miles this week: about 20

Chuckanut - Pac Rim Double

All three of us (Tony, Shawn, Me) made through the weekend. Each of us did 50k x2.

Chuckanut was wet and very muddy. I went out too fast, just like last year, but didn't seem to feel any adverse affects from it. Shawn, surprisingly enough, was right behind me when I hit the first hill right after AS#1. She always goes out slow so she can squash people later in the race. I know because I've been one of her victims. I told her that we were going to fast but she didn't slow down. She jumped ahead of me as soon as we hit traffic and I followed. 8675309. I passed her and she passed me back as soon as I eased up on the pace on one of the climbs. I got ahead of her at a log crossing traffic jam and stayed ahead until AS#2.

At AS#2 she jumped out to a good 100 yard lead while I filled my water bottle. It took me over half the climb to AS#3 to catch her but I did. Six months ago I could have never caught her. I recited all the names of people that were behind us that normally finish ahead of us in an attempt slow the pace. It didn't work. We pulled into AS#3 together and I switched from bottles to my Hydro pack. Last year I ran out of water in this section, and spent some time with GI problems, and bonked, and nearly DNF'd. So I made sure I didn't make that mistake again.


I really like the next 2 miles or so of this coarse. It's more down than up, single track and very technical in some places. We smoked through that part of the coarse passing everybody we saw, except 2 that passed us but we may have passed them back. There are just so many people in this race now. They all start to look the same. After you come off the single track it's pretty boring for a while. It was extremely muddy in this section and that slowed down everybody. I could have gone faster but I was trying to save some gas for Pac Rim. I was doing surprisingly well on the climbs. I offered but nobody wanted to pass. We caught up to three groups of runners on the big climb back up to AS#4 we passed all but 3 of the runners/walkers/staggers that we came across. I was surprised Shawn had not passed or even tried to pass me during this climb. She even fell back a little once in a while but I could still hear her back there.;) I guess the pace was started in get to her. I was trying to figure out how to pass the last three when we ran out of hill.

At AS#4 my plan was to change my shoes and drop my pack. Well it was so muddy I just left the shoes on but I did drop the pack. From here it's downhill to the next AS. I would normally fly down the hill as fast as I could get my legs to turn over but I wanted to save some for Pac Rim. I know I'd been saying that all day but now we were going to finish well under 6 hours and there was really no reason to go faster. At the bottom was AS#5, last stop. Just an easy 10k in from here, mostly flat and we had well over an hour to do it. I was trying to hold Shawn back because we were already going too fast and she wanted to go even faster. I know she had been pushing hard all day, same as me, and I wanted her to be able to run another 50k. Well I could only hold her back for so long and with about a mile to go she left me. We both passed two more people and finished less than a minute apart. Tony finished just 20 minutes ahead of us.

We sat in the creek, then grabbed a quick bite and changed into dry clothes before jumping in the car of the long drive to Pac Rim. After 4 stops we finally got there and started running around 7:30. I quickly ran 10 laps (miles), took a walk break and ran until I got to 1/2 marathon. After that I started a run walk run walk...at 2:45 minutes (10:10pm) and 16 miles into it, I decided to take a break. I napped in the car for almost 15 minutes. It seemed much colder after that. So I bundled up and started running again. Time and laps slipped by and before I knew it Tony was missing, done with 50k and resting in the car. I still had 2 laps to go. After 1 1/2 laps I looked at the time and saw that I was coming up on 7 hours. I shifted up a gear (well 1/2 a gear) and ran to finish out my 50k in 6:57. I went straight for the car and layed down. Shawn kept running because she had 2 more laps to go before hitting the 50k mark. I don't know how long it took her but it seamed like 30 seconds.
After a 2 hour uncomfortable nap, I got up and decided it was time to collect my race shirt and pack my things. I knew Tony wasn't going to run anymore but Shawn kept saying she wanted to do another couple laps. I think she just wanted to run more miles than I did. Her mind might have wanted to but her body wasn't listening!
So we crammed all the wet gear in the back of car and were all our way.
A couple of picture by Glenn T.


Thanks Glenn!!!

Chuckanut 50k 5:54
Pac Rim 50k 6:57
100k time 12:51

9 1/2 Summits

My plan for this weekend was 12 summits Saturday (easy) and 4 hours Sunday (really easy).

Saturday
We started off in the dark and ran the extra 1/2 mile to the trail head. (I hate starting and finishing there). We topped #3 in 54 minutes #2 in 1:03 and #1 in 1:13. We cruised down #1 past the Christmas tree and onto the East trail pretty fast. Everybody knows I love to run downhill! At 1:41 we came down onto a road that we were supposed to just run straight across.

We did and immediately lost the trail. We bush whacked for 20 minutes. Well it's still winter so there isn't really all that much bush out there. We couldn't find the trail and I was starting to get cold from the slow pace so we circled back around to the road. We figured it would have to lead somewhere and it was roughly in the right direction. We soon came to a 'T' and turned left because it looked like where we were supposed to be and figured the trail would cross it eventually.
The road made a few turns and we ran past a gate that looked very familiar. We both agreed that it was the way to Middle Tiger but we still needed to hit East Tiger. So up we ran over the a crest and past a wooden gate.


We couldn't say for sure if it was the right way but since there was no other way.

There wasn't any other clear trail and the road was going downhill, so we went through the wooden gate for about 5 minutes before I decided we should turn back and give up trying to find East. We were on the road for a total of 45 minutes.
We went though the metal gate we had past before and headed up to Middle Tiger which put us at 2:55.

Before we got to South Tiger we made one last wrong turn. We went left onto the Artifact trail.

I would recommend everybody take this trail at least once. It's pretty cool! Once we realized it was the wrong way we turned around and headed back down toward the South Tiger stump.
We made good time all way to South Tiger and got there in 3:41 .

Tony and Van were headed up as we went down. Tony got Shela and Rickie's attention with is cougar calls. Funny guy, I expected to have to look for my pack that I felt at the stump. Tony and Van started much later than we did but didn't have to park down at the gate. I wasn't surprised when I saw them considering all the wrong turns we'd made.
We got to the turn around at 3:53, our mileage was about right at 17 miles even though we skipped a summit. I refilled my go juice and grabbed a snack. Shawn had everything she needed on her back. I gave Shela a couple dinner rolls and we were outta there. I was on a tight schedule and didn't have the time for a leisurely lunch like the last time I ran 12 summits.
We skipped the out and back to South because I wanted save time and try to hit East.
We made it over Middle in 5:54 it was right around then I decided to just take the short cut back to the car. We also noticed Rickie was favoring a front paw at certain speeds and if I was going to be carrying a dog out 5 miles I'd need all the time I could get.
We made good time on the road. After going through a couple of blow downs that happened to mark where we needed to exit the road,


we found the trail again and ran until after we got past the Christmas tree. We power walked faster than I expected on the ups and made finished last 3 summits with ease. Standing on top of Tiger #3 I checked my watch (7:12) and thought damn we should have followed TC and Van to East Tiger.
We took the same way down to the trail head as we came up,(section line - nook) instead of what I call Tiger #3 Freeway. I like the challenge of the steep technical trail on tired legs. If I went the other way I might be temped to walk in some spots and I'd be a lot muddier.
We made it back to the gate in 7:46, mileage of the 9 1/2 summits ... 30.5

Sunday
Jenn and I were supposed to do 4 hours at about 12 - 13 m/m average. We slept in, that was nice! and only had time for about 2 1/2 hours. We dropped the kids off at granny's and drove a mile down to the Soos Creek trail. It's paved which will help to toughen up the feet and shins.
We went to the end and back then did enough to get to 10.2 miles. That's 1 mile less than last weekend. Jenn was a little sore from the asphalt so we called it good. We ran into we Patch and Eric as we were leaving. Too bad we had no time, we could have talked Chuckanut strategy. Jenn did 6 more on the treadmill after lunch.

Miles this week. 46

Hills, Hills, Hills

I've been very lax with keeping up my blog. Sorry! Life is unpredictable and finding the time between buying a new house and work and the three kids and birthdays is tough.
Here's what I've been up to (in my running life).
I've only run 1 marathon or longer race, Bridle Trails. It went real well. I thought the frozen ground made it harder than last year’s mud fest but I have not been able to find anybody that agrees with me. Last year the ground was real soft. This year there were a lot of places where the mud was frozen with horse tracks in it. It was tough not to turn an ankle and still keep up your speed. I ran a 5:42 but I think I could cut 30 minutes off that with better conditions.
I have been running shorter distances and with my wife Jennifer. I did 1 lap at Tiger Fat Ass.
I did 2 laps at pigtails, 1 with Jenn.



My last 4 weekends have been Tiger, Squak, Tiger, and Tiger.


I've been searching for the steepest trail I can find. So far it's the Nook-Section line up to Tiger #3. It came in at 1188 ft gained per mile. There was snow on it this weekend which made coming down pretty dicey.