Been meaning to write this post for a good 6 weeks or so. I’m way behind on posting, having spent most of the last month exploring the Andes with Kelly in Peru (will catch up on those posts soon!).

Another great run organizing by James Varner of  www.rainshadowrunning.com. on 6/12 (even through this was written on 7/19, I’ll back date it so it shows up in the correct order on the blog). I believe it was the first beacon rock run and consisted of some amazing single track on the north side of the Columbia River Gorge.

Kelly and I camped out the night before and it was fun to hang around the camp fire, see new friends (Brandon and Erica rocking their first 50k), Pablo, and many others, not to mention making new ones. The 25k course was a figure eight across two ridges with a dog leg out to the finish (or half way point depending on how you look at it). And then a repeat of everything all over again for the 50k runners. The 50k course has over 7k feet of elevation gain in which puts it in the top 3 in WA w/respect to climbing I think.

It had only been ~two weeks since returning from Nepal. Because my lungs were about 1/3 full of ‘junk’ (to put it nicely), a lot of muscle mass had disappeared somewhere (still to be found) and I had only logged a few miles running since February – I had pretty firm plans to just do the 25k run and cheer Kelly and friends on for the rest. But I also had a lot of red blood cells in my system, it was a beautiful day, and I decided to hang in there. I caught up with Kelly and friends and ran together for part of the first loop, running the second loop (figure 8 really) by myself. With the amazing navigation skills I learned on Everest, I managed a wrong turn and added a couple bonus miles. I staggared in a couple minutes under 9 hours. About 3+ hours slower than my best 50k but still a lot of fun. Kelly did great and the beer at the finish never tasted better. Thanks James and Candice for putting on such a fun run.

Full pics have been up for a while on https://picasaweb.google.com/wolpin/2011BeaconRock50k

A few selected ones are below. Cheers! Seth

Night before

Brandon, Erica, Kelly dominating the first 4 miles of the course (virtually all uphill)

Brandon and Erica

Guess which way we went?

Post-race Kankles and missing toe nail (more on that later)