Wow! I just realized that I haven't done a blog post since April! That's crazy. But it's understandable considering everything that's been going on this year... so here's a little photo filled trip down memory lane
In early May at Little Mountain 10k/25k in Mt. Vernon, WA Joe Cappoccia, best known for his musical talents as a former band member of the Blackberry Bushes String Band and as of leader of the new band The Pine Hearts (both bands have played our races multiple times), runs his first trail race in almost a decade!
Later in May we headed East to the Methow Valley for the Sun Mountain 50m/50k/25k/1k. It was warm, sunny and the wildflowers were outstanding. I'm shown here on the 50m course carrying all the course signs in my backpack. With the help of Anthony Skierkowicz and Rasta Jason Vaughn we installed a half dozen brand new swinging trail gates so runners no longer needed to climb over, through or under the barbed wire fences out there on the DNR section of the course.
A few weeks later we headed back to the Methow Valley to direct the Winthrop Road Marathon and Half Marathon. Here's first place woman(and 3rd overall) Stephanie Wilson showing off her unique first place finisher's medal. All finishers got similar medals that were upgraded this year to include a chrome finish to make them extra cool. Big thanks to Brad Nelson, who ran the full marathon, and his workplace Allied Medal Displays for the original idea to do the chrome and for being such great folks to work with to supply the runners with such cool medals!
Just a week later we were on the opposite end of the state, going from Winthrop where the Canadian Border is just a dozen miles north of the starting line of the marathon course to the Beacon Rock 50k/25k which is just a mile from Oregon on the other side of the Columbia River pictured above. Summer had arrived as the weather was perfect for drinking beer, swimming, lounging on the group camp lawn while listening to live bluegrass music from The Pine Hearts at the start/finish area, and yeah perfect for running too!
After directing four races in about 6 weeks we went on vacation, which included running 4 races(2 for each of us) in 5 weeks and driving about 3000 miles. Candice killed both of her races(Tahoe 100 and Silverton 12hr. I however DNF'd both of mine. I really should be training a lot more like her... Running in Boise, the San Juan Mountains and at Lake Tahoe sure was great! And so was hanging out with all the fun peeps!
As you can tell by late July we were back to work. The Chuckanut 30k/12k was the last race in the Bellingham Trail Running Series that Candice created this year and so we had to throw a big party with lots of food, beer and laying around in the grass while listening to the Pine Hearts. There were awards handed out and such too...
And a week later we were back in the Methow Valley for the third time since late May-- I love that work takes me back there so often! Angels Staircase 60k/35k with it's high point of 8000ft, tons of elevation gain(10,000ft for the 60k and 6,000ft for the 35k), and remote and rugged trails make it one of the hardest ultras in the Northwest. But it's scenery, wildflowers, high alpine lakes, waterfalls, jagged peaks make it one of the best trail races in the country! "Trail Angels" Lexi Painter and Michael McNeil were just two of many incredible volunteers who hiked miles to carry in the supplies to the remote aid stations!
Last but not least Candice is back to training for another 100 miler(yes already). She's doing Plain 100 which was my first 100 back in 2004. In the past week or so she's ran most of the course in two big training runs(one 53 mile day with Dan Probst and one 40 mile day with me). The day before the 2nd Plain training run we did the 18 mile Enchantments run which I hadn't ran in years and Candice had never ran. It was a super fun day filled with lots of stops for swimming including our first stop at Inspiration Lake which is show in the video above.
Stay tuned for next post with all the upcoming announcements!
