Lord Hill 50K Trail Race

Last Sunday I ran the Lord Hill 50K Trail Race; my second trail race and my second ultra marathon . With nothing planned for the start of the year I needed some encouragement to kick start my running in the New Year. In the first few months of the year there are very few organized races, but the Lord Hill race at the end of February seemed like a somewhat aggressive but attainable goal, and despite the fact they offered a 5 mile, 10 mile, 20 mile and 50 kilometer race, I figured I might as well sign up for the full thing and do 50K. I was surprised to find out my wife signed up shortly after me (but for the much more reasonable distance of 10 miles). The course was a 10 mile course with the 50K races doing the 10 mile course 3 times, then a small 1.1 mile loop at the end.

Immediately I discovered my training schedule was going to be very limited with Tuesday’s devoted to City League ski racing and Saturday’s devoted to taking my daughters up skiing for lessons. I tried to get in as many runs as I could with my usual 6.5 mile maintenance and a longer weekend run when I could pull it off. By the time of the race I had only managed 2 runs on trails, and only one run over 10 miles in length. Add to my severe lack of training, the weather forecast was calling for 1 to 2 inches of snow between 10 AM and 4 PM on the day of the race; this would be exactly the time I would be running. I knew I was in trouble.

As the day of the race came around, I tried to reassure myself that I wasn’t trying to set any records with this race, and that I wouldn’t push myself too far and I would drop out if it was no longer prudent to run. On race day I awoke to pretty much blue skies in Seattle, and I figured my concerns about the weather were unwarranted and the forecast (as always in Seattle) was wrong. We drove on out to Lord Hill Park near Monroe, WA but as we neared Monroe the skies suddenly were filled with clouds. Upon arriving at the start of the race, one of the parking volunteers commented that he hoped we had really good mud shoes, and that the race was going to start with a river crossing.

A pre-race briefing was provided to the 20 mile and 50K racers at 8:15, then the 20 mile and 50K race was to begin at 8:30. However, just before the race was to begin it started snowing. As the race kicked off we ran about 100 yards, before crossing the previously mentioned “river”. The river turned out to be little more than a creek that could easily be jumped over; however I found out that as I did my second and third loop of the course the creek became increasingly more difficult to jump over.

The small creek was the least of my worries during the race. After about half a mile the course turned sharply up “Oh Lord Hill”, a steep series of climbs, straight up a hill on a narrow muddy single track trail. The hill was steep enough so that pretty much everyone just walked it. After “Oh Lord Hill” the rest of the course was a beautiful (albeit very muddy) single track course winding though woods, along creeks, and past a large pond. There was an aid station at the 4 mile point on the 10 mile loop, which worked out to be a great spacing as the majority of the effort was put into the first mile of the course as you climbed “Oh Lord Hill”. The first loop was interesting with snow falling and the course receiving a little dusting of snow, but by the second loop the snow had stopped, and by the third loop the sun was out. I now had no excuse not finish this race.

At the end of my third loop I was greeted by my two daughters and wife (who had time after she completed her race to drive an 45 minutes, pick up my daughters, have lunch with them, do some shopping, then drive back 45 minutes to the race course, and wait 45 minutes before I finished loop 3). After thanking them for meeting me I headed out for the final 1.1 miles (and the most difficult 1.1 miles I’ve ever run).

When the race was over I ended up finishing in 7 hours and 29 minutes and coming in 39th place out of 55 racers. Not a ranking that is going to win me any prizes, but one that I am proud of anyways. And now with a couple of days to recover and some time to contemplate the race, I find myself looking on the internet trying to find the next race and a little bit surprised by the fact that I can’t wait to run my next 50K.

Holiday Road

This year the week between Christmas and New Years will be spent in Southern California. When I started shopping for plane tickets for this trip months ago it quickly became apparent that plane tickets and rental car were going to cost a fortune. When I compared the cost of flying to driving it suddenly made seemed to make sense to just drive. So our family has decided to boycott the obscenely high cost of plane tickets and instead do our holiday travel by car.

However this morning, while listening to the radio, I was reminded that tomorrow, the day we depart, is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Tomorrow the family and I will be in the car for 11+ hours and there will only be around 9 hours between sunrise and sunset, and this is just the first of 3 days of driving.

We may be spending quite a few hours during this drip in the dark, but I think it will still be a fun family adventure...

Edit: Had to add one more video

First Rainier Ski Trip of the Season

With the first days of December, a record setting high pressure system settled over the Pacific Northwest and promised up to a week or more of good weather (and smog in the lowlands). My brother Alex and I decided to take advantage of the good weather and get in our first ski trip of the season to Camp Muir.

On Saturday December 3, we started out at 6 AM, arriving at the mountain 9:30. When we got to the parking lot we realized there were quite a few other people with the same idea. From the parking lot to just below Panorama Point we set a pretty good pace. But as we looked up the climb to Panorama Point it was clear all the other skiers were struggling. At first the climb was easy. Alex stated that he was going to try and skin all the was up. A couple minutes later Alex, who was ahead of me, yelled back to me to put on my ski crampons. A minute later he was hiking with skis over his shoulder. As I approached the area where he had given up skinning I thought I might be able to make it with my ski crampons, and I probably could have, but it would have been a long way to slide down if the crampons didn't hold, so following my brothers example, I put the skis over my shoulder and headed up hill.

After the climb up to and above Panorama Point, the skinning went well up to about 8,000' where the travel required navigating patches of ice with strong gusts of wind coming from all different directions. A couple of the gusts were strong enough that I had to stop and make sure I was well balanced against the wind. Around 8,800' the wind was just too strong, and most of the downhill skiers had warned us that it was extremely icy higher up, and most all other uphill skiers had turned around. So at that point Alex and I decided to turn around. So with high winds, and on an inch of snow on top of blue ice we carefully transitioned and headed down.

Here our GPS tracks from the day's adventure.

Navigating Panorama Point on the downhill turned out to be not as bad as going up. The skiing down was not great, but overall it was a fun trip.

Making Long Term Memories

I'm doing the usual Sunday things, putting clothes away, cleaning up, getting ready for another work week for me and my wife, and school week for my children. In the background KUOW FM 94.9 is playing; the show that is on is Studio 360. On the show they are talking about memories, and how memories are what define who we are; but there is now way we can remember everything, so there is a part of the brain called the hippocampus that transforms the short term memories into long term memories. The problem is we don't get to decide what become a long term memory and what doesn't. I don't think this is fair!

My answer is this blog. Although I can't say what the future of this blog will be, I would like to think of it as my artificial hippocampus. My brain does not get backed up, but I'm pretty sure Google is kindly backing this blog up all over the place. Normally this show on Studio 360 was something I was certain I would largely forget about within in a matter of minutes, and this really annoyed me because I really found this show facinating...and I wanted to remember it, I wanted to be able to discuss this concept again later. So upon hearing this show I ran downstairs, and started this blog post...my artificial hippocampus. I choose to make this a long term memory...if I can remember to read this blog post again.

Trying to impress 12 year olds

Being the slave to social media that I am, I have a YouTube account. I really don’t do too much with that account; I created it out of curiosity more so than anything else. However, I do upload the occasional video that I put together.

In 2009 my brother and I went up to Alpental on opening day. I brought my helmet camera and captured some POV footage of us skiing and made a stupid little video with that footage. I really didn’t imagine anyone other than my brother and I watching this, but I did upload it to YouTube and make it publicly visible.

Well, nearly 2 years after putting together this video, it looks like someone else has watched my video. I guess he didn’t care for it, but his comment is pretty awesome!

Im 12 and i did that run when i was 11 so do somthing a little harder

Thank you, The Gocarter for your constructive criticism. I will make a point of trying to capture some footage of me hucking cliffs in the Alpental BC during the 2011/12 season, or maybe ski Mount Rainier or Baker. Either way, I will strive ski runs harder than what an 11 year old can easily ski.

Spoons

Yesterday I went to my favorite coffee shop on the University of Washington campus: Parnassus. As I was waiting for my coffee I noticed this poster on the wall.

The poster states:

“It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground ship it to a refinery turn it into plastic shape it appropriately truck it to a store buy it and bring it home is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you’re done with it.”

I guess this has been out there a while and been going around for a while, and it took a bit of searching, but I believe I found the person who created the poster (if not perhaps the text for it too). It’s a guy by the name of Max Temkin, his site is Maxistentialism. Cool poster, and I would buy one, except it is currently sold out.

The poster did give me pause, and I reached for a wooden stir stick instead of a plastic one. Although I did use the wooden stir stick then throw it away rather than washing it with the goal of using it again, but I did throw it in the compost bin instead of the garbage bin.

The 2011 Portland Marathon

Two minutes, and twenty four seconds. That’s how much time I missed my marathon goal time of sub-four hours by. In all fairness I was trying to cut 44 minutes off my previous marathon PR, but it should have been completely doable. I am pretty psyched that I ran so much faster of a marathon than my last marathon, but the fact that I failed to beat four hours, means I’m going to have to run another marathon. Darn this running addiction.

Overall, the Portland Marathon this year was a much more enjoyable experience than it was last year. The weather was mostly dry with mild temperatures, perfect for running. My strategy for running the marathon was just to come out as fast as I could maintain and then constantly adjust my speed based on how I was feeling, and constantly asking myself if I could run a bit faster. Other than noting the pacers, I really didn't use them at all, I just tried to keep as fast of a pace as I could maintain. My time at the half way point was 1:56:46, which would make it my 3rd fastest half marathon time! I did walk a bit on the climb up to the St John’s bridge. After the St John’s bridge I was dragging a bit, especially though miles 20 and 21 but then I really picked up the pace during the long hill leading down to the Broadway Bridge driven in part by the thought that around mile 23 there would be the beer aid station! After the Broadway Bridge my quads were really hurting, they almost felt like they were cramping. Between the leg pain and exhaustion of having just run 24 miles faster than I had ever run that distance before, I just couldn’t bring myself to push any harder and so I finished pretty slow.

So now nearly a week after the marathon, I’m feeling good enough to take a short run. I do need to get back into training since I have the Salty’s Half Marathon in a few weeks, followed by the Seattle Half Marathon a month after that. Right now I’m thinking about waiting until the packet pickup on the day before the marathon, and if the forecast is for dry weather on the day of the marathon I might just upgrade to the full Seattle Marathon. Other than that I have no other races planned for 2011, with the exception of participating as much as possible as my 8 year old daughter works on completing the Seattle Kids Marathon. However, for 2012 I would really like to run the Chicago Marathon!