Sun Mountain 50K or My One-Week Training Plan

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our amazing race photo

I was on a flight back from Hawaii when I got a text from my Bellingham running buddy, Laura.
She was thinking about signing up for the Sun Mountain 50K. It was a week out.
My first thought was basically, why not, what could possibly go wrong? So that was that.

For the record, here's my full training plan.

  • Day 1: get the text on a plane, say yes before I can think it through.

  • Days 2 through 6: nothing. No extra miles, no tapering (hard to taper off nothing)

Then race week showed up, and I was in the van, headed to Winthrop the long way,
since Highway 20 still wasn't open.

campsite view from the van

A lot of the racers camped right at the start/finish line, and I was one of them.
It's always a good scene the night before a race. This time, that meant catching up with my coach
Alicia and a folks from the Bellingham Trail Running Club (BTRC) before we'd even
started running.


Laura and all the flowers

Laura and I never actually talked about whether we'd run together. We've run together enough
times to know we're about the same pace, but neither of us said it out loud at the start.
Then the gun went off, we got separated almost immediately, and I waited for her at a
turnoff a little ways in. She told me I didn't have to wait for her. I said not a problem, let's just
see what happens.
What happened is we ran the whole 50K together. Start to finish. Easily the best part of the race.
I'll be honest, the course isn't my favorite of the Rainshadow races I've done.
There's a lot of road in it, out past Moccasin Lake Ranch, along the Twisp River Valley,
before the climb up onto Sun Mountain. Not my favorite surface for a day with close to 5,000 feet
of climbing. But the views up top and out over Patterson Mountain were great, and the
wildflowers were fully in bloom.
Me & the flowers

Then there's the after-party. Nobody does it like Rainshadow. Big cluster of Bellingham people,
an obscene amount of good wood-fired pizza, hours of just hanging out.
Laura set a PR for the 50km distance, too, which made the day even better.
Megan, Laura and me post race

We got an amazing race photo of the two of us, too. (see the photo at the top of the post)

Despite this not being one of my favorite races, I might do it again because of the
pre & post race vibe with so many great folks.
The Bellingham crew hanging out post race

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