High Divide September 29, 2007

Brandee and I took off for the Olympic peninsula on Friday in hopes of escaping the city for a while in exchange for a nice relaxing time out on the peninsula. So we set out and the plan was to do the high divide loop on Saturday. 35oo' gain, 18 miles. Wow, I thought this was supposed to be relaxing. With an early morning breakfast at the B&B we were on our way. With a beautiful day the day before, we were hoping for the same on Saturday. Too bad it wasn't so. Cloud cover prevailed and I think it was a good thing, the precipitation that we had was frozen, and as such we didn't get wet. You can see the wind blown ice on the trees.... at least it made for some nice scenery, if the colors weren't enough. We made good time throughout since there was little point in stopping since we would have frozen (we weren't expecting sub freezing temperatures). With that said, we ended up hiking on a beautiful ridge that was full of fall colors. For most of the time we were below the clouds (as opposed to in them or above them) so we had those spectacular colors, but never did get glimpses of the mountains. Half way through we took a wrong turn and ended up going down to a lake. I think we just wanted a longer hike with extra elevation. It was a good excursion because we ran across a couple of bears foraging on the huckleberries in prep for their long winter and some more colors. All in all we actually went 20 miles and 44300' with our various detours. Beautiful hike but I would have loved to have seen the bailey range and Mt Olympus. I guess we'll have to wait for another sunny day.

Leavenworth half marathon/ octoberfest

So I've always wanted to run 2 marathons (anyone can just do one) but I hate running. Good friends from soccer Mike and Dana were planning to run the leavenworth half marathon that coincidentally coincided with octoberfest so they convinced me to tag along for a fun filled weekend! I, without thinking said of course and decided to try my luck running a long distance race.

So the race was spectacular, a relatively easy course (i.e. limited hills) set in beautiful leavenworth (mountain village at low elevation) on a gorgeous fall day. I don't know how I did it (I had trained for all of "a week") but I felt great - I am sure it helped having Mike push and pace me at the beginning, not to mention his company. Anyway, it seemed like we got faster as the race progressed and both set personal bests - sub 100 minutes! of course, mine was my best by definition. I was happy just finishing my first race, and then very pleasantly surprised with the times. Is the seattle marathon next?

For the rest of the weekend we tried to mask the pain with a lot of beer. Of course there was plenty of both. We had a great time with great people drinking the merry night away! Thanks for organizing Mike and Dana! Sorry no pics, but if I find one, I'll post.....