After over 45 years of competitive running, I’d never run more than 31 miles, the length of a 50K. (Well, there was that one 50K that turned out to be more like 57K. Such is trail racing.) I had previously volunteered for the Mt. Si Relay and Runs, which includes a 50 mile distance. Last year I even persuaded Katherine to come out before dawn to staff the 2nd aid station. Having volunteer three or four times, I figured 2023 was the year to finally run it. I followed a training plan from David Roche that I found on the Trail Runner magazine website, which seemed to have a lot of flexibility, and it was well within my abilities. I had several weeks over 70 miles, topping out at 77 miles one week, with my biggest run being a trail marathon at the Redmond Watershed. I also had two other 25+ mile runs, and a handful of 20 mile runs. I considered a 30 mile run, but after some thought that just seemed like a road to injury. An extra five or six miles just wasn’t going to make that much of a difference.
It was still a little dark for the 6:00 a. m. start, but light enough to see fine. Unlike your local charity 5K, no one was pushing to get to the front of the pack at the starting line. Nope, like most trail and ultra races I’ve run, there were a few front runners kind of lingering close to the line, while the rest of us hung back milling around. For one, there’s a timing mat which nullifies the need to shove to the front. And for the majority of us, a few seconds over the course of 50 miles isn’t going to make any difference in the overall standings. There was a countdown, and off we went.
It is said that there are three rules to running a marathon: don’t start too fast, don’t start too fast, and don’t start too fast. That goes double (triple?) for races longer than the marathon distance. So of course I started too fast, like I’ve done for 45 years. Now the years have taught me to not start quite as too fast as I used to, but too fast it was by 15-20 seconds a mile for the first ten miles or so. I was planning to shuffle along at a nice, casual 9:00/mile, but I was clicking off miles at more like 8:30-8:40.
Aid Station #2, the one Katherine and I had previously volunteered at, was at about the ten mile mark. That aid station, though, required us to load up supplies in a wagon and hoof it half a mile to where the aid station needed to be set up. So I was not going to see Katherine at that one. But there was one before then that served as the Aid Station #1 and #3 at 5.7 and 14 miles (the course was out-and-back, turning around at Aid Station #2, so we hit the same station twice). That one could be driven to, so I saw Katherine twice at that one. After a measly six miles, I didn’t need anything but I put my order in with Katherine (fresh bottles of Tailwind drink) for when I came back through the second time. I didn’t need anything at ten miles, either, but I thanked the aid station volunteers for walking all that way, hit the turnaround and headed back.
I walked through Aid Station #3 with Katherine while I swapped bottles and nibbled on Honey Stinger waffle. I would see her again soon enough, as she was chasing ahead from aid station to aid station, so off I went back to Snoqualmie. When I hit Snoqualmie, I found it kind of surprising that it didn’t feel like I had been out there long enough to knock out twenty miles. It felt like I’d run the miles, but it didn’t seem like that much time had passed. Maybe I’d just done so many long, long runs at that point that being out all morning running seemed…normal? Regardless, there was still a whole 50K ahead of me, let’s not get too pleased with ourselves.
I saw Katherine at the 20 mile point where the coursed turned, climbed some stairs to the old railroad bridge, and then proceeded on the old railroad grade that would be the rest of the race course. I had just seen Katherine six miles ago, so nothing was needed. Perhaps she was thinking that her job was pretty easy. Haha! The work was just beginning, m’lady.
Just down the trail is the town of North Bend. If you were a viewer of the television show Twin Peaks, you’ve seen parts of the town. In fact, I still drive by Big Ed’s Gas Farm once in a while on my way to North Bend, though it has changed a lot in the last thirty years. Bigger fans of the show could tell you of more landmarks than I can, but I can tell you that the diner is downtown and hard to miss. Food’s not bad, either.
Anyway, this part of the trail I was well familiar with because I had run most of it twice before race day. And that five mile climb from North Bend to Rattlesnake Lake was just as much of a grind as it had been previously. It was not particularly tough, trains had to be able to traverse it at one point, it just goes on and on at 5-ish percent forever.
One nice thing about using an Apple Watch for racing is that I could text Katherine before I reached the next meeting point (usually an aid station) with what I might need when I got there. “Hey Siri, send Katherine a text message saying ‘a fresh bottle of Tailwind, a bottle of water, and the jar of Vaseline’.”, since the watch doesn’t have a keyboard that’s usable on the run, and it worked well enough. Katherine was at the Rattlesnake aid station with what I needed, and it would be the last time I would see her until I turned around to come back. In fact, I didn’t know if she were going to be at the turnaround or not, or if she was just going to hang at Rattlesnake.
Once past Rattlesnake Lake park, it was a straight shot up what has now turned into the Palouse-Cascade or John Wayne Pioneer trail, depending how old your map is. This is a beautiful trail that always make me wonder what it must have been like to drive a train up and down the grade as a job. The views are spectacular, there are waterfalls to see along the way, and tunnels of tree cover. But I imagine it might be a job that turns harsh in the winter, and the snow can stay a while.
“Wait a minute, is that…I’m pretty sure it is Chanelle (from the Redmond trail marathon a month ago).” But by the time I figured that out, she was long past going the other way. The 50K runners started before the 50 mile runners, and Chanelle was on her way back to the finish already. I, on the other hand, still had a good three or four miles to the turnaround.
After the race was over, someone would later ask if I did a lot of walking. And the answer is: not really. I walked through the aid stations, I walked with Katherine for a bit when I’d see her, but for the most part I just kept running. That’s part of the problem I had with this race: not enough hills to walk. Most trail races, at least the ones in Washington, have at least one climb that’s steep enough that I might as well walk it. Tough though such a hill might be, at least it’s some variety for the legs. This race didn’t have any climbs worth the walk; 5% at most, and I don’t walk until at least 15%. Consequentially, my legs were getting a little tired of the same ol’.
The turnaround/aid station was at about 35 miles, and it had one extra redeeming quality: there was a few hundred meters of steep hill to negotiate. Well, at least it’ll wake the legs up, I figured. But, man, it was steep enough that I kind of hobbled down it. I don’t think I saw anyone running back up it. My plan was to walk it as well. Katherine was at the aid station, so I grabbed some yummies from the aid station table, and she decided to walk back up the hill with me. That was a pleasant break, and Katherine got a chance to hear how it was going…whether she wanted to or not. I did mention that I was soon to enter the “danger zone”, as the upcoming 37th mile would be further than I’ve run before. If you’ve seen the adult television cartoon Archer, then you’ll understand “Hey, Katherine: danger zone” (cue Kenny Loggins). If you haven’t seen Archer, well, never mind. Oh, here; now you, too, can get the joke.
Top of the hill, and off I went. All I have to do is get back to the Rattlesnake Lake aid station at 40 miles, then it’s single digit miles to click off to get home. And it is literally all downhill from here.
Man, after all these miles, you’d think the next five to the Rattlesnake Lake aid station wouldn’t seem that far. Maybe it was because I’d already come that way, but that stretch just dragged on and on for some reason. I texted ahead to Katherine with my order, and shuffled on in shortly after. I stood around for a little bit talking to Katherine while I woofed down a Honey Stinger waffle, then right before I took off running again I heard, “hey, Mike…” and Kenny Loggins playing on Katherine’s phone. I took off a little more slowly than an F-14 from a carrier deck.
Someone somewhere said of ultra marathons: “it never keeps getting worse”. It’s true; it might not be getting any better, but it won’t keep getting worse. Eat something at an aid station, and it doesn’t settle to well, “oh, no, I’m going to puke! I’ve made a horrible mistake, my race is over!” Calm down, give it twenty minutes, the stomach will be fine, you’ll feel better in a bit, it’ll quit getting worse real soon. Feet hurt? Of course your feet hurt, and they’re going to continue to hurt. But the good news is, this is about as bad as it’s going to get.
And that’s about where my feet were at after the Rattlesnake Lake aid station. I thought maybe giving myself the luxury of sixty seconds of walking every mile might be the ticket. So I tried that for a few miles. The walk felt just as bad as the running, but maybe a little break will make the running easier. Nope, all I did was slow down unnecessarily for a minute. So I just kept running to the North Bend aid station, where Katherine was again waiting at about 45 miles. Nothing dramatic at that stop, no hilarity involving Kenny Loggins, I just wanted to be done. Thanks, honey, for the fresh bottle, some orange slices at the aid station table, now let’s go finish this thing off.
Oh…my…deity-of-your-choice. That stretch past the golf course, man, it’s flat, it’s boring, and I swear I could almost see the end of the trail two miles away (not really). It just dragged on and on. I gave the “walk for a minute” one more try, and…phhhhht, walking just slows me down, and then I have to pick up my feet and start running again. Easier to just keep running.
Just before the old railroad trestle, I passed a 50K runner and the woman who would turn out to be his pacer (she was way too fresh to have done the race with him). He and I would finish pretty much together, but first we had to get down the stairs of the railroad trestle. When I walked up the stairs at about 20 miles, I made a note to walk backward down the stairs on the way back so that I wouldn’t trip and tumble to the bottom. Which is what I did.
1.5 miles to go, and if the race is anything, it appears to be just about spot-on accurate on distance. I’ve done other ultras advertised as 50 kilometers, where “it’s a little long” turned out to mean it’s really 57km. That’s right, imagine having run the 31 miles you were scheduled for only to find out that you’ve still got another 5-ish miles to go. But this time it looked like when the watch said “50 miles” I’d be about done.
And so around the corner, see the school, and loop through the parking lot to the finish line. There was a little staggering around as I collected a finisher’s medal, got something to drink that wasn’t Tailwind, and looked for Katherine. After finding her, thanked the volunteers, talked to the race director for a bit, and then off the get some fresh clothes on.
Would I do another 50 mile race? This race was both a little bit harder than I thought it would be, yet mostly easier than I thought just because the time seemed to go by fast. So, yeah, I’d do that distance again, but more than likely a different race that’s more out in the woods. I’ve already got my eye on a few candidates for next year.
None of it, of course, would be possible without an excellent crew of race volunteers, and my own support crew of Katherine. Aid stations are great, thanks to hard-working volunteers, but there’s something extra nice about being able to text my order ahead to the next stop and have just what I was wanting waiting for me. Thanks, Katherine!