Recovery

Today I ran 9 miles in the woods.  I've been back to running for the last month or so, gradually working up from 30 minutes a day to today - my longest/hilliest run yet.  Despite the fact that I was running through a cloud for most of the run, it was absolutely wonderful.  Wonderful to hear the sound of my feet on gravel, dirt, and decaying leaves.  Wonderful to be surrounded by the deep greens and dark browns of an Oregon forest in December.  Wonderful to have those fleeting moments of feeling simply alive.

The past few months post-injury have been challenging.  The physical recovery has been hard, sure, but the biggest challenge has been emotional and mental.  Running has become a large part of who I am and I have missed my weekly routines of meeting up with my friends for a few hours in the woods.  When I'm running alone, running soothes me - I process my thoughts or even better, just get out of my head and breath.  Above all of that, on days like today, I come back to the thought that it is experiences like this, places like this, where I feel the most spiritual, the most in touch with something else beyond me. 

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.”  ~John Muir

Yin and Yang (a.k.a. our vacation in British Columbia)

Ross and I decided to treat ourselves to a two week vacation this year. Start off with a week-long backpacking trip on the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island, then have a more civilized week touring Victoria, Vancouver, and places in between. A nice balance of challenge and luxury, relaxation and activity.

If you're just interested in the pictures, I took a ton more pictures that didn't make it onto the blog.  You can check them out by clicking this link, or watching the slide show at the top.

We had a great start to the trip, being present for Laurel and John's wedding in Seattle and staying with Amanda, Nick, and Amelia. The next day we left early to drive to Port Angeles to catch the ferry to Vancouver Island. There was very little traffic, and our early arrival gave us enough time to visit a bookstore and locate an outdoor gear store just a few blocks from the ferry line-up. The store opened at 12:15, which gave us just enough time to find and purchase a new pump for Ross's campstove and hurry back to load the truck onto the ferry.

With Amanda at Laurel and John's wedding

From the ferry, we headed out to Port Renfrew ("A" on the map). The highway between Victoria and Port Renfrew was marked as a main highway, but that was a generous description. Super narrow, windy, and a lot of one-lane bridges. Pretty, though.  It was a nice night, so we went for a long walk along a back road before eating dinner and going through our packs one last time.

West Coast Trail Day 1
It started raining somewhere in the middle of the night.  I didn't really think of the consequences of the rain until we walked down the ramp to the dock early the next morning to load onto the sea taxi taking us up to the north trailhead in Bamfield (near the 'Pacific Rim National Park' marker on the map).  The sections of the dock were moving in independent directions, making it a bit challenging to get to the boat, let alone get onto it.  Our boat captain was cheerful and helpful, though, and after a family of 3 joined us, we were off  -- into more than 7 foot swells.  The ride was fun for the first 20 minutes.  Then the nausea hit; that was with taking anti-nausea pills.  Everyone except the captain felt sick.  Three of us were over the rails.  I ended up spending most of the 3 hour boat ride sitting in the very back where although it wasn't dry, it moved the least.  A few whales supposedly passed by the boat.

Happy (and clean) faces starting the trail

Buoys marking camping spots (our tent is tucked in the trees)

We got into Bamfield near 10am and where taken by a local to the park trailhead about 5km (3.1 miles) from town.  Ross and I had thought that we might have to wait a day or two to get our walk-on permits.  (Most of the permits are handed out ahead of time.)  However, the weather was good for one thing - no one else was trying to get walk-on permits.  We tried to dry out our clothes as much as we could while waiting for our orientation.  While we waited we saw several people coming off the trail come in, soaked and muddy - a preview of what we was coming for us.  By the time we hit the trail at 2pm, the rain had pretty much stopped and we just had to deal with the drippy fog. Our hike to Michigan campground I12 km) was pretty uneventful.  Some on the beach, some in the forest - some nice big old trees, a lot of mud, and our first exposure to the ladders.  There were a lot of people at the campground - we later found out that rangers had been by when it was raining and told everyone heading south to stay put.  The rivers and creeks that we had to cross where too high to cross safely for about 24 hours.  After our busy day, we easily went to sleep to the sound of the ocean.

West Coast Trail Day 2
We woke up to a marine layer that burned off by 10, leaving us with blue skies and sun for the rest of the day.  Today was our first exposure to the true nature of the trail - more adventure/obstacle course than hiking trail.

Standard trail & boardwalk conditions

Tons of ships wrecked just off the coast - and are why they made the trail.

Most of the boardwalks were falling apart and all of them were super slick.  More roots and mud.  At one point, Ross slipped on a bridge and almost knocked his front teeth out.  At another, I discovered that what appeared to be a solid edge to the trail wasn't and found myself almost falling down a cliff.  Luckily I was able to grab some roots with one hand and one foot.  Ross was there before I knew it to help me scramble back up.  It would have been a long way down.

On the positive side, we saw A LOT of whales today!  At one point, at least eight playing off the coast.    Some sea lions, too.  And the scenery was amazing.

Tsusiat Falls

We ended our day at Tsusiat Falls.  Super pretty and great to be able to take a much needed shower in the waterfall - but there were way too many people there.  We didn't even bother heading over to the official camp area.  We found a nice little cave to tuck our tent into and enjoy the sunset before some much needed sleep.

West Coast Trail Day 3

This was our longest day – 17 km.  Really, not that long by normal standards (about 10.5 miles), but all the mileage on this trail took so much longer than what we were used to.  There was a problem bear at the campsite we had hoped to stay at, which forced the longer day.

The day started off nice - ate breakfast while watching some whales playing just off the coast.  Snuck through a hole in the cliffs as the tide was coming up.  Also saw an area where they are working to reintroduce an endangered plant that I work with in Oregon.

We had to take a ferry across the river at Nitinat Narrows.  This area is on tribal land and the ferry operator also has a crab/salmon/whatever is fresh shack set-up.  We each asked for a crab (Dungeness).  He pulled up a cage holding several large, live crab that had been caught just down the river, killed them, and steamed them as we waited.  Combined with two cans of Canada’s finest malt liquor – one of the best lunches ever.

We had a nice, short section of soft, level trail, but most of it was more of the muck, roots, and slick broken boardwalk.  We arrived at Cribs Creek more than ready to sit-down.  Unfortunately, this is the site where Ross got bit by a bunch of no see ums (1-4 millimeters, in the family Ceratopogonidae, related to the black flies).  The bites became red, itchy welts and his ankles totally swelled up for over a week.  Great sunset, though.

Sunset at Cribs Campground

Cribs is also where we left our float.  Old floats were hung in trees to mark campgrounds and where the trail exits/entrances (e.g. when you had to leave the beach for the woods).  Ross had picked up one as we were walking and spent time at Cribs carving it up.  It now hangs near our campsite at Cribs.

West Coast Trail Day 4

Super narrow (&swingy!) suspension bridge.

We thought this would be an easy day, fairly flat, mostly on the beach.  However, the beach was loose sand and gravel – real tiring.  We both got a second wind in the afternoon, but decided to call it a day when we got to Walbran around 3pm.  It would have taken us a bit more than 3 hours to get to the next campsite and we decided to take it easy on ourselves and rest.  There was a thick Marine layer all day, so we didn’t get much of a view, although there were some cool tidepools.

West Coast Trail Day 5

Today – super muddy, slick roots, broken board walks.  I slipped while climbing down a bunch of slick, tangled roots.  I needed Ross to help me back up. On the plus side, it was super cool to be hiking through a temperate rainforest and a super cool swamp (particularly when the boardwalk was in good shape).  On the minus side, it's looking like I tore my meniscus.  It slowed me down a bit, but I still hiked out.

West Coast Trail Day 6

The water was often stained brown like tea.

We left Camper a bit late to travel on the beach, so headed inland through the woods.  My knee hurt quite a bit, but loosened up as we moved.  The trail through the woods was actually pretty nice and there were some huge trees.

Thrasher (a.k.a. Dawson City)

Thrasher was packed.  This was the last campground for those of us hiking north to south and the first campground for those starting at Port Renfrew and moving north.  We hung out around a campfire with a family we’d been seeing on the trail and at camp all week.  It was a bit of a party as those of us heading out the next trail tried to eat up or give away the food they had left.

There was some excitement in the evening.  Ross and I started looking at the afternoon high tide line and realized that our tent was probably close to where the high tide would be that night around midnight.  At about 10pm, we moved our tent to one of the last places left higher on the beach and tried to get some sleep.  As clock ticked, it began to sound like the ocean was about to come through the tent.  A little after 11, a bunch of flashlights came on and we could hear a bunch of murmurings through the camp as several tents were nearly swamped. 

Log crossing

West Coast Trail Day 7 – Last day

We woke up early, thinking it was raining, but realized it was just rain dripping on the fly.  The last 6 km went by pretty fast (relatively – about 3.5 hours).  The trail revisited our favorites from the past, ladders, mud, boardwalks, plus a ton of logs to walk across and slippery rock bouldering.

A short ferry ride and we signed out at the ranger station.  We found out that in addition to being shuttled from the trailhead to our truck (parked near the harbor), our parking lot came with the benefit of clean, warm showers.

So, we took 7 days to do the trail.  Could have done it without pushing too much in 6 - but we were on vacation, what's the rush?  I found out that someone has actually run the trail in about 10 hours.  Someone else had been planning on trying to beat the record our first day on the trail, but decided to cancel due to the weather.  You'd have to have perfect conditions to run it in that kind of time. 

The 'civilized' half

The civilized portion of our trip started with burgers and beer at the Coastal Café, then getting back in the truck and driving on an old logging road (now paved, though still just a secondary road)to Lake Cowichan.  We camped near a lake and spent a few hours hanging out on a beach and swimming.  From Lake Cowichan, we went through Duncan, where we went on a guided tour of the cities many totem poles.  We wandered through Cowichan Bay, a cool artsy, environmental bayfront town.  We found a great park to hike in and spent some time wine and cider tasting.  We also continued our exploration of BC's best cheese shops, bread bakeries, and farm stands.  On this part of the trip almost every lunch consisted of super yummy cheese, fresh heirloom tomatoes, and crusty artisan bread.  We spent a fun couple of hours kayaking through Cowichan Bay.  We didn't see any whales, but we did see a couple of see otters munching on something tasty and a ton of seals, including some babies that were hanging out on floating logs. 

A busker at Victoria's inner harbor.

From there, we went on to Victoria.  I was able to introduce Ross to both high tea (though we went a cheaper route than the infamous Empress Hotel) and one of my most-favorite-ever restaurants, Rebar.  We saw a great exhibit at the Royal BC Museum, had drinks on the fancy porch of the Empress, and generally enjoyed wandering the city.


From Victoria, we went to Salt Spring Island.  This island is known for its artists and was where a bunch of draft dodgers came during Vietnam.  Our first stop was a bakery, followed by a wonderful cheese place (both of them were at the owners' homes and farms), and a couple of wineries.  We wandered through a few art shops before stopping for dinner at a restaurant that grew it's own vegetables and bought most of the rest of it's food either on the island or in BC.

The Olympic Torch from the 2010 Winter Game.

Our last few days were spent in Vancouver.  We had briefly passed through here a few years ago on our bike tour, but didn't get a chance to stay.  We spent a lovely two nights at Nelson House Bed and Breakfast, right near downtown.  We wandered all through the harbor and China Town, took a tour through the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Chinese Garden, and had a couple of great runs through Stanley Park (my knee actually felt better after moving).

Great trip over-all.   It was hard to come home, though very nice to see our Tobey-dog and Ceacelia-cat again (many thanks to my parents for once again watching the kids!).

The Mac!

The Mac is the reason why I fell in love with trail running. In 1996, one of my best friends and I ran with her mom as she trained for the first ever MacDonald Forest 50km. When I moved back to Corvallis, I knew I had to run this race, and despite its challenges (over 6100' of elevation!), it is one of my favorites.

My anxiety for the race this year was at an all-time high - in large part because I'd set a pretty high goal for myself - finishing under 6 hours. My previous times were 6:36 and 6:35; improving by over 30 minutes was ambitious. However, I'm running better than ever and had a lot of encouragement from my running friends, so thought it might actually be doable.

I showed up early and had my vitals checked for a study on sodium and ultra-running. My blood pressure (which the day before was measured at 86/52 - normal for me) was around 100/60 and my pulse rate (which during normal activity usually hovers around 55) was already at 96 bpm. Sheesh - you'd think I was running already!

The race started as it always does - without much fanfare. The gong was rung, and we were off. Peter, Linda, and I were all hoping for sub-6 finishes this year, so I kept pace with them - which felt really fast to me. I credited running fairly conservatively for the first part of Peterson with how well I did there, so wasn't too concerned when I lost contact heading up Powder House. But when I turned onto Road 580 and saw that Meghan was running with them and Dan was running just behind, I couldn't resist and ignored the little voice telling me to be conservative and sprinted to catch up to them. When else would I be able to run with Meghan during a race?

Our little group broke up again as we crossed Lewisburg Saddle, but early on in the maze, John from Albany started running with me and we ended up running most of the race together. We chatted off and on, but mostly just having someone on my heals helped me keep my motivation to keep pushing myself.

I hit Chip Ross (22 miles) at around 4 hours and realized that my goal really was within reach. I had hoped to get to the Saddle again (now at 26 miles into the race) under 5 hours. Not quite, but close enough that my goal was still within reach, if only I could at least jog the remaining 5 miles.

Miles 26-28 didn't go so well, and despite knowing that I didn't have the time to waste, I ended up walking a decent amount of the climb up Road 500. I hit PowderHouse and pushed through - it hurt a lot, but I was almost there - and it's not like I needed to have anything left - just a little harder....

I finished in 6:03. Not quite my goal, but pretty close. And I managed to shave 32 minutes off of my previous course time. That feels pretty darn good (and was good enough for 13th woman and 68 out of 201 runners).

A few favorite moments from the day: Dennis pointing out the flowering dogwood as I left Baker Creek; Almost falling as I turned onto two bits because I was distracted by Mikio and his camera (in hind sight, it was pretty funny); The Mac Ale (already consumed!); Sam's bluegrass on Horse; April and Craig got married!; LD won her agegroup!; and the hugs, good luck wishes, offers to fill my pack, laughs, and over-all great support from all my running friends both on and off the course.

Peterson Ridge Rumble 40 miler

have a habit of contemplating entering a race for years. Since I started running ultramarathons, I've considered running the Peterson Ridge Rumble -- it took five years for me to actually enter. This year, they increased the distance to 40 miles, which also meant I was finally going to attempt my goal of running longer than 50km.



One of the things I love about ultramarathons is the attitude that most of the runners seem to have surrounding the events. Although we all take our races fairly seriously in our own ways, the rest of the time is about fun and camaraderie. You can't help but laugh when five people who are running a 40 miler end up collectively bringing a full cooler of beer for an overnight trip (at least we didn't drink it all the night before).

I'd been neurotically checking the weather all week, especially since we'd had a late snowstorm come through few days before the race. However, Sunday morning was actually somewhat warm and only a few, non-threatening clouds hovered over-head as I positioned myself near the back of the pack at the start. After some shuffling for a position I was comfortable with and a quick jump in the bushes (perhaps I'd gotten a bit too hydrated before the race), but when I found myself near Caballo. We ran together, with our pace kept in check by his heart-rate monitor. A few miles later, Drew, a former Corvallis-resident joined up with us, and then next 10 or so miles flew by as we chatted our way along soft-single track and dirt roads. The course wasn't very technical, and most of the rocks were easy to pick your way through, but that's what made them so dangerous. The ease of the trail could lull a runner into a sense of complacency, and sure enough, I found myself kissing dirt somewhere around mile 14. What a happy surprise - the ground was soft! I picked myself up, inspected my scrapes and cuts (minimal, just enough to help with that 'tough' look) and was able to keep up the pace.

Unfortunately, I lost Drew and Caballo when I stopped to eat a little at an aid station, but the rest of the race was still really nice. I took another digger, but didn't do much more damage (wow, that dirt was soft!). I was shocked when I looked down at my Garmin and saw that I was already at mile 20. My slowest miles were between 20 and 30 - nothing remarkable good or bad. At the second-to-last aid station, we made a turn for the mostly downhill final 10 miles. I could hear LocaDork in my head, saying that this is where the race should begin. I figured that from hear on out, everything was going to be new territory, so I might as well see what I had left.

I made a few calculations and realized that not only was I in good shape to beat my 7 hour goal, but had a slight chance of beating my slowest 50k time. There were several voices and thoughts in my head for those last 10 miles - Meghan's descriptions of her recent win at Way Too Cool, knowing that Pam had just made the US National Team for the 100k the day before, an old friend's advice that there's always more left to pull out of your gut - so I just ran hard. And I tried to run harder the closer I got to the end. The only major problem I had was when I run hard, I tend to have asthma issues; and I really have asthma issues when I get emotional. So when I looked down at my Garmin and saw that I was at a little over 38 miles and started to get a little emotional, I started having a pretty nasty wheezing spell. Figuring that I still had about 2 miles to go, I opted for stopping, taking my inhaler, slowing my breathing. Once I started and got another 200 meters down the trail, I saw that I was actually about 1/2 mile from the end. The emotion and wheezing came back, but at that point it didn't matter. Through the parking lot, onto the track, then crossing the line at 6:43:32. Just a bit slower than my fastest 50k; definitely under 7 hours. Yippee!

Here we go...

I actually had a New Year's resolution this year -- I was going to challenge myself to face my fears and start running with the other ultra/trail runners in Corvallis. I faced a similar challenge when I started going on group rides during my road biking days in Missoula. As in Missoula, I struggle to keep up, but everyone has been so supportive and I think I'm becoming a stronger runner for it.

I've also found myself signing up for more races - and much closer together - than I had before running with the group. The excitement of signing up for new races and getting into the big ones can be both catching and addictive.

So on Friday, March 11th, I found myself driving with Ross to the Columbia River Gorge for my first of four endurance events within as many months. Our first stop was at Nicholas' in Gresham for Lebanese with seven of the Corvallis crew. From there onto the KOA for our stay in the Kamping Kabin. It as a kozy, kute spot, though I only saw it at night (Ross reported that things were a bit bleaker by daylight). I had packed enough clothing for about three runners, but I wanted options - and well, I can be a bit neurotic before races. I finally decided on an outfit, threw together a few drop bags, then tried to settle down to sleep. At least that was the intent. Trains came by about every hour. I'm sure wearing my earplugs would have helped, but I was afraid that if I put them in, I would have missed my alarm (refer back to the comment about being neurotic).

Nevertheless, around 6:15, I found myself milling around Wyeth Campground with about 140 other runners. After repeated porta-potty breaks, we boarded buses for our ride to the start. Without really planning it, all the Corvallis-ites ended up on the same bus, which we thought would be the first to the start (first to the start = first to the porta-potty line). We actually were almost the last, but that ended up being a good thing considering the cold temperature and the light drizzle that was starting to fall.

Soon enough (enough time for me to start thinking, "I feel hungry ... crap"), we were off. The first two miles were a 1700' climb - and surprisingly I felt really good. I tried to keep the heartrate and effort low, but was able to jog most of it. The next ten miles or so were a mix of technical down-hills, gorgeous waterfalls, and short but steep-ish uphills. Over-all, I was feeling great -- singing "It's a great day to be alive" - great. I came into Aid Station 1 feeling like it was possible come in under 6 hours. Lobo was there with words of encouragement and a helpful hand, and I was off (an aside: the RD, James, bought re-usable cups for the aid stations and beer at the end -- very cool!).

Shortly after Aid 1, we passed by pretty Elowa falls. It was likely running through a fairly land with moss-covered boulders, waterfall mist, and blue waters. Happy. Heading up the next climb, I passed Colin who later dropped due to a twisted ankle. The next ten were a bit of a blur of technical trails, rocky ankle-twisting landslides, muddy-ucky-bulldozed roads, and pavement. Around mile 16, I felt the proverbial wall rising up. I'd been fueling up every hour -- either gels or the pb&j, coke, and peanut m&m's at Aid 1, so I thought I'd be able to power through it better. Instead, I started thinking about how when you hit the wall during a traditional marathon, you only have about 8-10 miles left, but in an ultra, you're at best about half-way through. Stinkin-thinkin.

I was feeling a little defeated at Aid 2, but Lobo was there again with a friendly smile and more words of encouragement. I couldn't figure out how to screw the top back on my water bottle without spilling the cup of coke I was also holding. Never occurred to me to put the coke down. Luckily someone helped me with that. More pb&j (best EVER), peanut m&m's and corn chips (is this what they mean by "mana from heaven"?), and I was off (yeah -- I was kinda carb and salt hungry by then).

Some of the best trail of the course was in the last 10 miles. I kept trying to convince myself that I should be enjoying the nice, rolling, relatively nontechnical pine-strewed single track. Unfortunately, by then I had little "go" left in me and I felt every foot-fall through every aching joint. Caballo passed me during the short down-and-back around mile 22. His singing made me laugh and perked me up a bit for the next mile or so. When I eventually found myself heading down to Wyeth at mile 30, I was ready to stop. In fact, when I saw Ross about a third of a mile from the finish, I did. To say hi and that I was tired. He suggested we run together, which made the ending so much more pleasant than it would have been otherwise.

6 hours and 36 minutes. Instead of breaking 6 hours, it stands as my slowest 50k time. Considering the technicality of the trail and the elevation gain (over 5000') I'm going to be okay with it. Besides, only a few more weeks till I get to try a new goal at the Peterson Ridge Rumble (40 miler) April 10th.