Chuckanut 50K (Gorrillas in the Mist)

The Pacific Northwest weather lived up to its rainy heritage with the wet stuff coming down from start to finish. On the bright side it was steady but not a torrential downpour. Our adventure began Friday afternoon when Michelle and I picked up Steve and Lori and headed off to Bellingham. Michelle's parents live near Bellingham so we made arrangements to stay there even though they were out of town for the weekend. We arrived in Sudden Valley around dinner time and went to a favorite Italian restaurant that is near where we were staying. After dinner we played doubles cribbage as we waited for Olga who was driving up from the Portland Oregon area. A very tired and road weary Olga showed up around 10:30 PM. We chatted briefly as we set Olga up with a place to sleep and we all hit the hay. Steve, Olga, and I all were running the 50K the next day. It seems the only person who got a decent nights sleep was Michelle. Michelle and Lori planned on a sleeping in and doing a little shopping in Bellingham while we were on the Mountain.



Olga


Steve and I had a good run with a 5:44 overall time. Steve had some fueling issues which combined with about four hours of sleep made the last 15 miles a tough run for him. He rebounded very well after going to a very low energy state. It's good to know that you can come back from a low like that and actually pick the pace back up. The course provided about 12 miles of gentle uphill or downhill. The climbing was moderate but at times very steep with one of the hills dubbed "Chin Scrapper". The race director had inspirational signs along the course. The two that stand out in my memory were as we climbed chin scraper the first sign said "Hills are cool". The second sign near the summit said "Well maybe going downhill is cool". I felt strong at the finish and I'm looking forward to the Yakima Marathon in two weeks. The cool thing at Yakima is that the race is the yearly reunion for Marathon Maniacs, the 100 Marathon Club, and the 50 States Marathon Club. This years guest speaker is John Bingham who writes the Penguin articals for Runners World.

We actually managed to run a race without any hint of snow. It was replaced with mud. Our Dirty Girl Gaiters came if very handy. Chuckanut Mt. is built of a fairly rare sandstone which many early buildings in the area used as a foundation material. It's an extremely dense sandstone which makes a very good building material. Combined with some mud and rainwater the surface of this sandstone becomes slicker than slug snot. I saw a couple of runners who had fallen and made mud angels. There was a good mix of technical single track trail and muddy logging roads to run on.

I have included a number of pictures of many of my friends from the ultra community and some marathon maniacs. The bottom picture is Kyle Skaggs (Montrail Shirt) who won the race with a time of 4:10. Check here for the race results.

I got in 10.5 miles this morning on a preview of the first section of the Tacoma City Marathon for a total of 41.5 mile for the weekend and 69 mile total for the week.

Thanks for stopping by!