Beacon Rock 25k

I was feeling really low after my DNF at Sun Mountain. I didn't want to run at all. I was thinking of going to Echo Valley with my friend Mary and was basically set to hit "buy" when my other friend Liz pinged me. 

That's how I ended up at the Beacon Rock 25k. 

I didn't know what to expect from this race, I hadn't been practicing a lot of elevation gain and this race has almost 4,000 ft in the 25k. So I planned to just hike/run it. This race had a very generous time cutoff, so I wasn't really worried at all. I took my trekking poles with and used them on all of the uphills. I couldn't believe how great my legs felt after! I wasn't sore much at all, just my shoulders from the poles. 

I was getting ready the morning of the race and found Emily and Sean hanging out under their nice dry tent. So I joined them for a while before the race, just hanging out and having a good time not knowing that Emily was about the same pace as me and that Sean had planned to run with her. (So cute) 

After a while we finally decided to head to the start line, and jaunted off into the misty rain. Sean, Emily and I ended up actually running a good portion of the race together. I'd say about 2/3 of it, which made the race so much more fun. 

The three big highlights from this race: I was close to Glenn Tachiyama, I could hear Sean and Emily having fun taking photos but couldn't see them. I approached on very rocky section of the trail and boom, face planted. All of a sudden I hear, "Are you alright?" I look up to see Glenn's head popping over the edge of the mountain cliff. "Yes, I just need a minute..." I made it up to Glenn and the first thing he said was "I saw your head bobbing along and all over a sudden it disappeared!" At least he didn't take a photo of my fail. 

The second was seeing Emily and Sean cross the finish line together. I met up with them just before the finish and powered up to finish just ahead of them. I was able to capture their finish on video and it was so worth it. :) 

The third was finally getting my high five from James Varner. James is the owner of Rainshadow Running and he gives high fives to all of the finishers as they cross the finish line. This was the first race I was able to complete! I missed the Deception Pass 50k due to an injury, missed Gorge Waterfalls 50k because of work and DNFed at Sun Mountain. But I made it!
Thank you again Liz, I needed a good race. This really picked me back up and got me going again. :) 

Keep on Running!