Hello ya'll !!  Yesterday my son son, a friend of his and myself drove to the a place nicknamed "jumping cliff" off the Washougal river.  Long drive for us, about 4 hours, but so worth the drive!  I had planned all along to hit a trail there.  As we were looking for the swimming hole we drove past a trail head that turned out to be Three Corner Rock Trail.

After dropping the kids off I headed off to the trail.  It was pretty awesome run.  The trail start with a healthy climb up, starting at just about 300 feet up.  I could feel the elevation gain.  I reached 1289 feet at the highest point of the run.  The round trip was about 7.1 miles. I would had loved doing the round trip (which is about 15 miles) but since I headed out without a map I set myself a realistic target to turn around an hour in the run (unless of course the trail was shorter).  I took a break and turned around 55 minutes in.  With steep climbs comes fast downhills and the trip back was a load of fast fun.  Most the trail is fairly easy albeit narrow at times.  The trail turns into dry creek's rock bed at times which ins't so much an issue on the climb up than down where I was being extra cautious as to not roll an ankle.

Looking up the trail description now I see that there was views and meadows probably no very far from my turn around ... So yeah I am bummed I didn't make it to any kind of summit.  But the swim afterwards made up for that ten fold!.  The best part of the run was jumping in the water after I got back.  I stripped down to my underwear and joined the kids who had been hanging at the hole while I was running.  It was reminiscent of one of my fondest memory from my teens:  I headed out on a hike on a very hot summer day in CA while camping.  I was following a river bed.  I just loved doing that type of exploratory hike even back then.  Several hours in, I was hot, sweaty and thirsty.  I was walking by this random water hole.  I stripped down to nothing and just ... jumped in.  I still remember the cooling soothing feeling swimming in the cold water I felt as the water was submerging my body.  The swim after the run yesterday felt just like that!  It was amazing because although I still remember of that dip felt like 20 years later I really not expected I would get to experience it again in my life.

Looking up-river at the swimming hole.  There is a large cave that lies behind the jumping cliff too.

  I am so glad we went there!

Alger Alp 25K race Report

I completed the 25k option of the 5k/25k/50k Alger Alp trail run part of the Bellingham Trail Run running series today.  It was the first race up Alger, it's cool I had an opportunity to run it.  SGF volunteered the burger and soup station and did an awesome job keeping us crazy runners fed.

But back to the race itself.  It kinda went like this: 5 ... 4 .... 3 ... 2 .... 1 .... Climb!  The course started with  a relatively steep climb at there trail head, so if you hadn't warmed up your climbing legs prior to the start you were SOL.  I push pretty hard that first climb ... I was excited and bouncy and bouncing is what I did on the way up.  The trail quickly turn into a single file trail then leveled off along a ridge.  That portion of the course reminded me a lot of the scenic ridge trail at Chuckanut.  Some drop off came dangerously close to the trail and looked straight down to the valley below.  By the time the runners hit that ridge the group had spread and we were settling in our paces.  I was going strong.  The ridge trail was technical but     after a five to ten minutes run along the ridge the trail joined service road 1000, a combination of rocks and compacted dirt and gravel, yielding quite a nasty uneven surface.  SR 1000 climbs hard towards the top of Alger, so that was the hard climb part of the course.  On the first loop though the climb seemed very manageable, alternating running / walking every ten to 15 seconds I managed a good pace up ... about ten min/mile an average.  On my mind though was the tumbling down from the top.  When we saw the first 5k-iers shooting down SR 1000 it was quite a sight, but didn't get the worry about the uneven surface out of my mind.  One step on the wrong rock at that speed and the whole race would turn really ugly really fast!  The change in altitude for that portion was 1060 feet (not taking the little ups and downs and the way there), the total distance from start to the top is roughly 2.2 miles, so it was a very pleasant climb, and came with a bonus ... This view:

I actually kept running a few feet towards what looked like another ridge trail until I realized I was at the turn around already ... So, I turned around and started heading down ... I kinda let the mountain take me over and went from there ... Keeping an eye ahead figuring out where my strike was gonna hit ... I hit 11.9 mph on the way down which was pretty awesome.  I tried adjust my body posture the best I could to absorb impact.  I adjusted the angle my foot hit the ground to lessen the force back into my body by pointing my foot down a little more.  It seemed to work pretty good.

At the bottom of the run SR 1000 makes a tight turn back into the ridge trail.  I hit the turn pretty hard.  I felt at home on the trail ridge.  The trail is very similar to the Mulkiteo Jap Gulch running grounds, so the runs in the Gulch with Bob and the others from ESNW are bearing fruit in this race.  At the ridge we hit another fork that takes you towards the lake along a somewhat more open but still technical path, then meet up with the trail head.  Loop 1, complete, 52 minutes !  Here is a map of the loop, from BTRS website:

Loop 2 was a redux of loop 1 in the sense that physically I was still going strong.  On the climb I felt the need to lengthen the run/walk interval a little so my cadence there was about 20 seconds, I maintained a good enough pace that I wasn't walking but neither was I tiring my legs so much ... I made a point to keep running though, considering this race as much training as, well a race.  I remember the first climbs on the Chuckanut which I hiked.  Not sure how much time I would had saved in the first half of Chuckanut by alternating run/walk ... My GPS watch alternated between 12 to 20 min/mile pace so I think it is more about how time you can prevent loosing up the hill rather than how time you can save ... The save time part comes when you rush downhill.  The rush downhill the second time around was still pretty fast but I could definitely feel my body ran down by the first.  Shoulders, back felt sore.  Turning into the ridge trail felt like delight after the murderous rush down.

Comes loop 3 there was definitly a change how my body felt.  The run/walk cadence had lengthen to about 30 seconds but still had pretty good 'bouts trotting up the road ... the second half the roads I couldn't help thinking though that somehow the road had gotten longer and stepper ... At every turn I expected the top but when I made the turn all I could see was more road up ...  On loop 3 I tried remembering how good the run down crystal road felt after reaching the top of the Chinscrapper.  It wasn't quite the same feeling here, my leg hurt and I could feel my left Achilles tendon wanting to act out ... Which I controlled by retracting my foot some ... So maybe extending my foot out on the way down wasn't as great an idea I though it was lol ... Now back on the rridge trail I felt the entire race had been pretty fast so far.  The course on the ridge trail was still fast but I payed extra attention to roots and other obstacles knowing I was probably dragging my foot some by now.  I only caught a root once so ... pretty good.  I continued down the woods after the fork ... Lake on sight, knowing the trail head was only half mile away I picked the pace up a little, banked the last turn in and voila !

My unofficial finish is 2 hours 53 minutes which works out around about 11 min/mile :)  In conclusion, this was a tough race, but I had a lot of fun running it.  I see myself returning to Alger Alp for training purposes.  I may venture out from the top to that ridge trail and see what else there to run there ....  But for now I will celebrate Marguarita in hand!

GPS Nav for Trail Runs

I have acquired a Garmin ForeTrex 401 recently.  The reason, I have been wanting to have a map device independent of my Iphone.  The ForeTrex 401 is really a GPS navigator similar to the GPS watches, with a navigation screen.

Garmin ForeTrex 401

It is geared toward general outdoors, including JumpMaster for skydivers ... But we are not going to there.  I liked the fact it had a screen, to me it made it easy to carry a map on the palm of my hand on my runs.  The Garmin comes with an optional heart rate monitor.  I tried to use it with my BoxFlex chest sensor unfortunately the Garmin did not read its signal.

Anyway, the reason I got it is for the map feature.  So I spent some time this evening figuring the GPS.  I picked the Tolt Pipeline trail to run on tomorrow.  I used Google Earth to map the route over the trail.  Google Earth creates a .KML file readable in Google Maps or "tracks".

I saved the Google Map files as .KMZ to import it in Garmin's BaseCamp.

Tolt Pipeline Trail Map

Garmin's BaseCamp allow the user to add waypoints to the route.  When ready I uploaded the final route with the waypoint to the ForeRunner via USB.  The tracks and the waypoints are there.

Tomorrow I will get dropped off at one end of the trail and run it back.  In addition to this being my first ten miler since the Birch Bay marathon, I will test-run the ForeTrex too.