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