The 18 is a little bit of a guess, but it was a long day out there. Krissy organizes the Chuckanut 50k that I'm signed up for in March, so we stayed up in Skagit Valley and went to run the middle 18 miles of the race course. A crowd of 12 showed up, so we had a good crew, and unexpectedly the rain held off (a little blue sky, even). A lot of climbing and rolling back downhill, it's a course with some good elevation and great terrain. The hiccup was that one girl fell way back, and lost from the trail. So we broke up into smaller search party crews for an hour or so. We found her eventually, then took back to the course and ran part of it backwards (still found the signature hill and hiked up it, whew). Good run though. Even coming off a race day, my legs felt pretty good after the first few minutes of getting the blood going. I did hit a fatigue wall at about 2:30, just didn't fuel enough and was a little lightheaded heading up Chinscraper Hill. But I pounded a few bars at the top and got another wind to finish. I don't think running the 50k will be a problem fitness-wise, given how I felt, but I'll need to pay close attention to fueling. About 4:30 total, but maybe 45 minutes or more we were stopped trying to find that girl (or come up with a plan to find her). So I'll call it 3:30, probably on the conservative side.
brooks cascadia -- 77
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