Friends:

John Pearch and James Varner did a great job of organizing this challenging race in the Capitol State Forest this past Saturday. The course is a figure eight loop starting from the staging area of the race. The first loop about
13.5 miles has a lot of nice gradual downhill running and the climbing is not steep.

The next loop is about 17.5 miles and quite challenging. From about 18.5 miles into the course until reaching Capitol Peak at about 26 miles it is mostly up. This climb is long and it more or less kicked my butt. The course has five aid stations with plenty of food and an additional two water only aid stations. The course markings were excellent. There is only about 2 1/2 to 3 miles of logging road, the rest of the course is all trail, often nice soft duff, and other times quite technical with more rocks. The total elevation gain per my Avocet watch was 4,660. Good course!

John Pearch went the extra mile in organizing and did what I never do as a race director, and that is he took the time to go out and round up all kinds of nice prizes. The small group of finishers all won some really nice gear from Vasque, Cloudveil, Ultimate Direction and many others. There was plenty of post race food. This ex-Oregon State University Beaver did a fabulous job of organizing an ultra, and much better than the football team playing football. Maybe OSU should change it's focus on sports.

I have never raced the McDonald Forest 50KM, but this course is more challenging than Chuckanut, probably not quite as hard as the McDonald, but with all the trail running your time would probably would be similar.

See you on the trails.

Clem