I feel a little strange  writing my RR without having participated in the forum for so long....but today at the end of my very long day of "fun" I very unexpectedly saw Tet, just off his plane from Japan and already undertaking another one of his amaizing deeds...running a marathon distance in memory of a runner friend who passed away a couple of months ago.  He suggested I do so ....therefore here I am recording yet another special day.

 

I signed up for for this race because it fell just 2 days after my B'day and I wanted to celebrate with it my turning 50.  The format was a 12h race in a beautiful park overlooking the Puget Sound, tough course though, 430 feet elevation change , including tons of stairs,per 1.93mile  long loop. After having spent  the entire day in such park . I can now  confirm that the only flat stretch of trail of the loop was no more than 100 yards long..you get the picture...

 

This race was all about the 3 aspects of running I'm really bad at: running  a wooded trail in the dark., lots of uphill and running on a steep downhill still on trail. 

We started at 6am so we had more than an hour where we needed a light... and I was pretty miserable for the entire time despite my carrying both a headlight and a flashlight....the sunrise brough on such a relieve!!! well in short I went round and round mostly walking up the steps and the worst uphills and running the as many downhill as fast as I could manage ...,which in many case was walking speed,...21 times...for a total of more than 42 miles including the many extras I threw in by getting off track on several occasions..11:30 hours to cover 42 miles..excruciatingly long day, but I got my goal 50K to celebrate my 50th...with plenty to spare!!!....I knew that 50M where out of reach...only the top woman barely broke it!

 

Will I ever learn...??

 

 

Thank you all for reading!!

 

Francesca 

great job, frankie.  Carkeek is down the street from my house, but runs through there are so challenging that I don't run it much.  I can't imagine running that far in there, and certainly not some running in the dark.  wow.

Happy Birthday!  Awesome running!  And a surprise Tet sighting, it doesn't get any better than that! 

Wow!  You are amazing!  What an awesome way to start your 50th year, though.  Great job!  Did you run with Tet at all?

Dear dea goddessa,

 

thanks for the special 50th birthday RR at what turned out to be probably the most memorable ultra you could have found.  You looked so pert, pretty and refreshed at the 6pm/12hour finish, I wouldn’t even have imagined you’d done one of the 5K’s we used to do so many times over the recent years. 

 

In fact, I was thinking you must have had to miss it or something and had just come out to be sociable to your increasing ultra fans and friends.

 

Starting late around noon myself, I fully expected to complete a marathon distance (14 laps) in around six hours but’d only made 10 laps by the 6pm cutoff.

 

It was a bit of shock to encounter that first long set of stairs to the first Puget Sound overlook right after the grassy football-field length meadow and then have the reality of the hilly course set in when ultra-Tracy was passing me on one of the two metal-grated footbridges about half-way around. She said that they were the only other flat places.
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It's hard to imagine anyone thinking that that hiking trail could have anything to do with running.  The only other time I thought that about a course was the 8,700' up and down two mountains in the White River 50 mile Endurance Challenge. 

 

However, with 430 feet up/down per lap at Carkeek, you exceeded 9,000 feet in eight less miles!

 

Afterwards, the RD said the circuit had been recently googled and it is still the hardest 12-hour run in the country.

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Now that’s what I call a very special happy birthday! . . . . especially for someone who’d never run an ultra until a little over a year ago and only one marathon some years before that!
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 .nearing first overlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2nd flat place (even dog doesn't want to go down the stairs!)

What an amazing experience!