Girls Gone Wildwood

At the start It started with a surprise Christmas gift. Ann informed me that she had payed 50 euros each to put us into the lottery for the smaller sibling of the most famous—and infamous— trail ultra in the world. At 101 km, Courmayeur-Champex Lac-Chamonix (CCC) is a distance we’ve done before, much less daunting than the 170 km of the original Ultra-Trail du Mount Blanc(UTMB) . Best of all, the course is set in the Alps, a circumnavigation through three countries of the tallest mountain in Europe, renowned for outdoor enthusiasts and some of the most beautiful views I’ve only seen in photos. This whimsical gift took a turn about a month later when we discovered that we both got picked in the lottery to run. All of the races we had planned for the year had to be reevaluated. Peterson Ridge 40 miler was still a good way to get our base miles up early, but our big race for the year—the Fat Dog 70 miler—wouldn’t work since it was two weeks before CCC. We cancelled and forfeite...

Hiking TMB in 2013 Every week our friend David has been asking us how our training has been going and if we are still planning on running CCC. We half jokingly respond, "what training?" There were probably only a few times after I went to the ER , that I thought I would have to cancel the whole trip to Europe, but I had more than a few doubts about making it to the starting line of CCC .  But that was several months ago, every week for the past 2+ months I have been adding 3 miles to my weekly long runs and I am up to ~27 miles for this week. Initially my main goal was recovery more than training, but the last few weeks I have been focused on the race and using the time we have before the race in the most efficient manner, without over doing it.

Susan and I have unofficially started to train for the CCC , the little sister race (101k) of the UTMB . (I only say unofficially, because Susan hasn't completed her registration yet.) The last two weeks we have increased our mileage from 20 miles to 27 for our long runs and we have also tried to add in more elevation gain/loss, which can be a challenge in Forest Park. This time of year most of the trails in the Gorge and around Mt. Hood are covered in snow so there aren't a lot of other options for trail running besides Forest Park, which is means we will be getting creative with trying to increase our elevation gain as we increase our milage. One of 4 trails that touch NW 53rd  This week I decided to focus on all the trails that touch NW 53rd and zig zag up and down them and add a climb all the way up Saltzman. When we started the run my legs were already tired, I ran 50 miles the week before, which is probably 15-20 more miles than I have done in awhile. I mentione...