Sunday, January 18, 2009

Capital Peak Half Ass

Met at the Y at 5:50 to carpool to this race in the Olympia area. We ended up taking two vehicles for the seven of us; Steve, Eric, Michelle, Linda, Jenny, Abi, and me. We arrived with plenty of time to make clothing decisions and sign in and even rest up a bit. The race started at 8am and it was just getting light at that time. The temperature was in the low 30's but it was not supposed to rain. Hmmm. How many layers?! Deciding on what to wear is sometimes the most difficult part of a run.

I had promised Michelle I'd run with her this race and I was glad for that. It'd be fun and energizing and we'd just take it easy. As we started it seemed that Abi was going to run with us - at least for awhile. She kept open the possibility of taking off later on (she never did). The course this year was different from last year's due to snow and the flooding we'd had in the last month. It ended up being the perfect combination of mud, snow, streams, mud, logs, clear trail, mud, puddles, mud, and fir bough-strewn trail. Did I mention the mud?

It seemed that the finish line appeared too soon. We were still having fun and I almost hated to see it end. The food spread was good, the fires felt great. We changed and warmed up and ate while waiting for the 50K runners to come in. I loved watching the 50K runners come in with their dogs. I talked to Allison for quite awhile about running and dogs. The sun came out. What a wonderful day. Nice!

2 comments:

Backofpack said...

I didn't let myself read your report until I had written mine, so I wouldn't be influenced. It was a wonderful run, and I had so much fun with you and Abi! Thank you for sticking with me.

Steve S said...

These are great little mini-adventures. The side benefit of getting older and slower is that you focus less on the time and placing and more on the journey.