Wonderful early season trail run on the OPG land in North Kitsap. Saturday's rain ended and we saw some sunshine, mild weather and trails that were muddy but not too muddy. The fun type. Started off with Mike, we let three or four guys race out and settled into a nice pace leading a group of four or five. That dwindled to a group of three (me, Mike and this guy Miles) who stuck together until the home stretch. We weren't much for conversation, but it was fun to catch up with Miles a bit and have the pack for motivation. Kept a really good, even pace, competative but conservative enough that we had energy for the whole way (and Miles, who's training for Hardrock, did a second loop for 50k). The singletrack there is really windy and hard to get any pace on, but we ran the downhills pretty briskly. We also ran really well on the hills, I was proud of the momentum and consistent pace on all the uphill stretches. Good sign for Chuckanut.
We caught two younger guys and one stuck with us, then did this really strange surge at the one-hour mark, sprinting ahead. We reeled him back in within eight minutes, and taught him a lesson about surging during trail races (this was his first). We dropped him and beat him by 13 minutes. Within 10 minutes of the finish our pack spotted second place. Didn't totally chase, but we had a solid pace and slowly reeled him in. He didn't see us until a water crossing and then knew we had him. Turned a corner with 1/4 or so on a road and I snuck by him by taking a sharp corner and burned it in. Mike tried to hang with me but I outkicked him by 20 seconds or so. Really strong finish, and that snuck me under 2 hours for the race, which was my goal. Two years ago, on a slightly different course in very different weather, I ran 2:04. Overall a really fun morning of running. Maybe the best course markers I've ever seen (probably because they were all scrambled last year.) Good crowd as usual, we hung out for 45 minutes cheering others and talking to folks. I felt beat, but not destroyed in the legs, and got a nice boost of confidence from this one.
brooks cascadia 6 -- 26
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