Lost Lake 50k

I just got back from Denny’s. After the Lost Lake 50k yesterday, I came home thinking a couch and a movie sounded good, maybe a Dominos pizza with their new recipe, but after a bit of reading, it was bed instead. A restless stomach and tight muscles woke me up intermittently. Come 4:30, I decided I’d get up, and get a bite and some coffee. Denny’s at 4:30 Sunday morning is always a good anthro study. A few old timers getting ready to go fishing, a zonked ultrarunner, the dude on the stool, the waitress outside on a smoke break.

Anyway....the second running of Lost Lake was outstanding, as far as the event goes--great weather and organization--and a little hard for me personally as far as performance goes. The 50k is exceptionally tough, starting with the fact that it’s probably 55k, and then there’s a whole lot of up. Up like the movie, Up like the Shania Twain song, Up.

The course starts with two consecutive climbs to Fragrance Lake. There’s Chinscraper, there’s the Hemlock Trail, and then at Mile 19 there’s a very steep out and back to the Pine and Cedar Lake trailhead. My leg turnover going down that steep slope was laughably grim, with the ankles not flexing and the heels landing first, quads stiff. I ran a hard week, after the Sunflower 26.2 last weekend, and I felt it.

In fact, the first three or four hours of my run were pretty lame, as far as my running went. I took the Early Start, in hopes of getting the Early Done. Right away, I was sweating way too much, my body fighting being out there. I have officially decided from hereon out that I will not do Thai food buffet as a pre-race meal.

When I feel like this, I just go with it and laugh it off. I took pictures, some good, many blurred, and I ate four different flavors of GU. I pounded more Endurolytes than usual, to see how that worked. Nutrition and ultras are mad science. At least when I'm on it. By the time I started the climb out of Pine and Cedar, I seemed to be sort of catching a groove, but the quads were still tight.

Behind Lost Lake is a most outstanding waterfall. The course trail starts at the top of one side, then does some K2 life-imperiling type descent down to the bottom, crosses, and then climbs to the top again. Gorgeous. Somewhere around here I bonked—the shortest bonk of all time—five minutes or so--but for the record, it did happen, about the same time I busted my Nathan bladder and ran out of water. Frustrated, ready to be done, I started pushing, and knocked out the last two hours of the course in relatively strong fashion.

Alvin and Skagit Runners puts on a wonderful event, a quiet affair, with an awesome possum barbq to boot. Folks hung around for hours in the Clayton Beach parking lot afterwards, just enjoying the sun and our own company, listening to Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, and Queen, and watching runners come in. The music was somebody's mom's Nano, I think, hooked up to speakers. Pictures of some of the volunteers below, with a Cosmo cameo. More pictures of the course and even a few runners at this link. Seriously, this is one of the best events around.