Had a nice run on Saturday out by Granite Falls at the Ron Herzog 50k Memorial Run. Scotty already has a great write-up on his blog so I will keep this simple. It was great to meet Lindsey, Craig, Ravi, Stan (who finished is 300+ ultra/marathon), Susan and Reed. Tony Covarrubias and Shawn McTaggar did a great job as co-race directors.

Normally I would not be inclined to run a 50k with ~30m on forest roads, especially when the first 8 miles or so are UP a road, but the close location to Seattle, the fact that it was a low key event (35 runners), a memorial run, and the lure of the ‘tank traps’ was just too much. So off I went. What can I say? We ran through some really deforested areas for maybe 12 miles (?) before leaving the forest road for the ‘tank traps’. This entailed running on some of the most overgrown trail I have ever been down with occasional deep ditches. Some of these were only a few feet down, others were over your head and found us slipping down one side and clawing up the other (well – ok…there was only one as bad as this). But definitely a nice change from running on the roads and fun overall. The aid station was around the half way point and I loaded up with Halloween candy and more before a long gradual descent in the rain. The last couple miles were on the paved Mountain Loop Highway where some yokels were busy shooting their guns behind a thin curtain of trees. Nothing like gunfire to make you kick it in on the homestretch 🙂 Full pictures are online but here are a couple:

A little overgrown?

All done and in dry clothes!