Bglife 55k

In December the manager at my gym asked me if I would help lead a running group. A girl from a local chiropractors office would help me. And that is how I met Katie.
Katie and I decided to meet early one Saturday before run group and do a trail run. She had never run on real trails before but it only took once and she was hooked. That week she found a 55k trail run on a Saturday at the end of April. She asked if I would join her. I did not want to commit to something so horrendous. I have done one other 50k and it is a memory I try to suppress. I told Katie I would train with her. There are NO women here that like to run on trails the way I do. So even if I didn't want do this race (with only 8 weeks to train) I didn't want to lose this potential new running buddy.
We did our first training run 18 miles on these amazing mountain bike trails way out in the middle of nowheresville WA. It was even better than I thought it would be. We were so evenly matched. We did a 20, 22, 18, and 24 milers and every time I had a blast. We got really lost once and had to shimmy over a tree in the middle of a huge washout to find our way back to a ridge line that looked familiar. After the 22 miler Cory and I decided I might as well do the race since I had put so much into training.
Many people asked how I am able to do suck time intensive training, but you all know the answer. I have the best husband and kids in the world. Plus I wake up REALLY early.
Anyway race week finally arrived and I wasn't even nervous. Usually running anything over about 10 miles in a race makes me really ill. So of course I work myself up for the whole week before and make it even worse. But this time through our training we really concentrated on fueling and hydration and I hadn't been sick yet.
Friday night we picked up Katie and headed to Brooke and Mike's. We visited, ate yummy ice cream and homemade fudge sauce then made our plan for the next morning. What we would put in each drop bag- change of cloths if needed and lots of food. Then we were off to bed.
Cory once again sacrifice and drove us at 5:15 am to the start of our race promising to be back 7 hours later to pick us up. And we were off. I think I push myself a little to hard some (ok most) of the time and Katie reins me in. However at mile 31 when the nausea was so overwhelming Katie was there pulling me along with calming encouraging words.
We ran, we climbed, we slipped and slid (I fell) all over that mountain. Laughing and talking and meeting many amazing people that made us look like weaklings. We ate pb&j's, hard boiled eggs, powerbars and more gels and gus than I like to think about. I took about 15 sodium tablets and drank 3 camelback bladders full of water. There was 4250 feet of elevation gain and a total of 34.5 miles run in 7 h 39 m. And I was happy every step of the way. I'm pretty sure our time would have been 45 minutes faster if there had not been such a ridiculous amount of mud.
And waiting for us as we crossed the finnish line were our amazing husbands, sisters, kids, and other sweet family members.
So that's my story and here are a few pictures...






And us at the top of capital peak mile 18...