Evergreen Trail Runs

Squak Mountain is the second race of the year for Evergreen Trail Runs that offers a 50K option. They have had two half marathons since Lord Hill. While “David doesn’t do halfs” might not be completely accurate any more, David still has a hard time justifying driving to Seattle for a half.

My alarm went off at 4:50am and I managed to drag myself out of bed. I thought I had put everything in my truck the night before. However, about five minutes down the road I realized that I had forgotten my Discover Pass. Since this run took place in a Washington State Park, I would need the Discover Pass to use the parking lot. After a quick detour back home to get the pass and a longer than normal delay at the border, I made it to the trail head at about 7:45. Because I was late, the park parking lot was full and they were parking us on the street so I didn’t need the Discover Pass after all.

The course looks a little confusing on the map. Thankfully, like all of Roger’s races, it was very well flagged. Basically, the course was set up for the half marathon distance. It starts (blue section on the map) up an access road with a small lollipop detour about a quarter of the way up. After returning to the access road for a little way, the course jumps back in to trail to loop around and back to the access road a little further up. There’s then a little bit more climbing until we got to the aid station at the peak.

From the aid station, we did an 8K lollipop loop (green). There was a steep decent down the stick of the lollipop. The first half of the loop section follows a contour line so it was quite runnable other than a short section of sketchy trail with some downed trees and other obstacles (although I’m sure that would still have been runnable by a more confident trail runner). The third quarter of the loop is a climb almost back to the peak just for the last quarter to go back down to the bottom of the hill that leads to the aid station. The downhill section of the loop is very nice trail. Going up the hill to the aid station (about 120m climbed in 3/4km) is definitely harder than coming down.

After the second visit to the aid station, we then went a little way further up the access road to meet up with the section of trail that we climbed on the previous loop section. This time we got to go down it. At the bottom of this section, we turned away from the flat section of the loop and ran a nice bit of single track back to the finish (purple). It was easy to just zone out and enjoy the scenery on this section of trail – apparently too easy since I tripped on a rock the first time through and went down. Thankfully, there was no harm done.

The full marathon repeated the entire thing. To make up the extra 8K for the 50K, we also repeated the entire thing but we did the lollipop loop from the aid station twice on the second loop. Climbing up the hill back to the aid station the first time on the second loop I was strongly considering dropping down to the Marathon. However, after stopping at the aid station, having a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and some cola, I managed to convince myself to head back out for another 8K loop. By the time I got to the bottom of the hill, I had got a second wind and felt glad that I had sucked it up and gone out to finish what I started.

Squak Mountain Elevation

The total elevation gain over the 50K course was 2500 meters (8200 feet). Although there was a lot of climbing, only the climb to the aid station on the lollipop loop was difficult. Even with almost 1000m more climbing, my finishing time was only 20 minutes slower than Chuckanut.

I went with the handheld water bottle again and no pack. I used the aid station for all fuel (they even had cookies left the last time I came through). I wore my Inov8 Roclite 295 shoes and this was my longest run so far in them. They provided plenty of grip on the dirt trails. They are definitely not as cushy as my Adidas Glide’s so I could feel the rocks a bit more if I wasn’t paying complete attention to where I was putting my feet, but the Roclites felt far lighter and did not make my feet nearly as warm.

During the first loop I ran in to Tho, who ran with us for a while during the Night Run in November. He didn’t remember me and I didn’t remember him but he did remember Candice. Tho ended up telling the third person in our little pack at that point about Candice’s swamp. I guess some things really are just that memorable.

Next up is Capitol Peak 50 Mile on April 26. Being able to finish Squak Mountain and feel as comfortable as I did combined with another couple of shorter but still hilly (1100m & 575m) runs on Sunday and Monday has left me feeling good for Capitol Peak.

The short version is that it was a race with lots of mud.

The Lord Hill 50K on February 23 was the first race of the year for Evergreen Trail Runs. I’ve done the race the past two years and we’ve been quite lucky with the weather. This year I woke up to snow in Langley and considered just staying home but since I had talked Solana in to signing up (see her race report here), I decided that I should head down.

I left my house just after 5am and made it across the border by 5:30. The CBP agent asked me again whether I was going down to run or volunteer. I guess I just don’t look like a runner. I stopped in Bellingham for coffee and a breakfast sandwich from Starbucks. I think there must have been close to a foot of snow in places in Bellingham. Thankfully, the snow pretty much disappeared around Burlington and I made it down to the park about 20 minutes before start time. Unfortunately, the lower parking lot had filled so I had to park up the hill. The charging connection had also come out of my cell phone and the battery died just as I got there, so I missed the texts from Solana.

I picked up my bib at the start line and hung around for a few minutes before Roger, the race director, gave his briefing. Since it was a cool morning and the aid stations at Roger’s races are usually well stocked, I decided to just go with a handheld water bottle and use the aid stations for nutrition.

The 50K course is three 10 mile loops and a small 1.1 mile loop to make up the full 50K distance. The loop starts off with the namesake Lord Hill for the first mile, some nice rolling trail for about 8 miles and then another climb followed my a more looping decent of Lord Hill and down the road back to the start line. There is an aid station at about the 4 mile mark. There is about 1600m (5300 feet) of climbing over the 50K.

Because it was so wet, by the time 500 people had gone up Lord Hill, the trail was quite chewed up. A lot of the rest of the course was also muddy and quite slick. I wore my Adidas Glide 5 shoes which have less aggressive tread than the Salomon shoes. I could probably have used the deeper tread on some of the mud, but I think the much better comfort was the better choice overall. I might have slipped a little bit but I didn’t slip enough to end up on my ass (or, worse, over a cliff). I also didn’t have to deal with trying to stuff the Salmon laces back in the pouch in the tongue every 20 minutes.

I saw Solana, Shea and Melissa during the first two loops on a lollipop section of the course. I discovered that the directions I had given them from the website weren’t clear to them so they were about half an hour late to the start. Next year, I will give them the directions that I use going down US Hwy 2. They told me when I saw them on the second loop that they would likely drop after their second loop. Even if I didn’t actually get to run with them, it was still nice to see faces of people I know on the course. Jay also popped out unexpectedly a few times from the woods with his camera.

For me, the first and second loop were quite comfortable and even. I finished the first loop in about 2:07 and the second in 2:05. On the third loop, I got talking to someone coming up Lord Hill and stuck with him until just before the aid station but he was moving a little too quickly for me. My pace dropped for the last five miles, so the third loop ended up taking 2:22. Worse, the aid station ran out of cookies before I got back there the third time. Thankfully, they still had peanut butter sandwiches and Coke.

When Roger did his briefing, he talked about his goal of marking the race in such a way that nobody can get lost. The course was very well marked. There really is no excuse for going off course on the last loop since you have been through twice before. However, I not only managed to go off course on the third loop but I managed to go off course on the third loop in the same place that I went off course last year. I may not have noticed the large amount of flagging marking the trail junction, but I did notice the private property sign a little further along. The only issue was that I gave myself another little hill to run back up to get back on course.

Overall, I really like this race. It’s a great way to kick off the early spring (or, this year, more like late winter) trail running season in the PNW. The marking, organization, volunteers, aid stations and course are all very good.

Watch Data on Garmin: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/450552565

Maniac1655

Incoherent Ramblings

Tag Archives: Evergreen Trail Runs

Squak Mountain 50K

Lord Hill 50K