1st half preview of the White River 50

I was thinking about doing the White River 50. It's a 50 mile race near Mt Rainier, with abou t 8700 ft in elevation gain. It's in 2 weeks. They posted the route online, I also went to the Seattle Running Company and bought the maps for the area. The race director works there, and he highlighted the route on my map for me. The race is divided into 2 pretty much equal halves with the first half climbing more.

This morning, I set out to preview the first half. This would be a 23.5 mile solo trail run with a heck of a lot of climbing. It starts with a lazy 3 or 4 miles and then heads straight up. Once up, the trail pops out onto cliff tops every now and then for some killer views. Later on, there are some nice alpine meadows. The high part was over 6,000 ft in elevation which had me sucking air and very tired. I walked quite a bit.

Coming back down was alot of downhill, hard on the knees. The last few miles, I was ready to not be running.

Steph had Bill all to herself today, it sounds like they had a great time.
Bill is propping himself up all the time now, quite the mover.