Hears Different Drummer

Thursday, June 7, 2018

South Fork aka 1000 puddles trail hike 2018

My husband and I have hiked this several times, and I'm always happy when we decide to do it again. As I stated in This post written in June of last year (2017), the 1000 puddles is a misnomer and an unfair name for this beautiful trail. I assume that the name could be fitting if it were hiked in the wet season or after a big rain, but as many times as we've hiked it I've never seen it live up to it's (old) name. I call it the South Fork trail instead, a much less judgmental name. The trail only had a few and I mean very small sections of mud, the rest was dry and very passable. However, there were a LOT of stinging nettles along the trail. My husband brought his trusty machete and whacked away as we walked along.

Every once in awhile there was a section with less vegetation, but not much. Most of it was thickly lined with Stinging nettles and Salmon berry bushes.

More nettle whacking.

We enjoyed snacking on the Salmon berries along the trail.

Vine Maple "helicopters".

Each time we walk through the clearing at about the 2 mile mark, I am impressed with how much the trees are growing. It won't be long until it will be thick forest the entire trail.

We saw lots of Elk prints along with the horse tracks. There were lots of Elk trails crossing back and forth along the hiking trail.

Elk print on the left, Horse on the right

Cavanaugh Creek to be crossed.

We decided to hike straight after we got across the creek. In the past we took the left turn at the junction and had lunch at the picnic table at the top of the hill.

I always like the clearing in the photo below.

We chatted with some horse riders as we made our way along this "new" to us part of the trail.

We stopped near this area of the trail for lunch before heading back. Such a pretty corridor.

Crossing Cavanaugh creek.

The last section of the trail stays near the bank on the South fork of the Nooksack.

Always a great place to hike - The South Fork trail!

Garmin stats:

total miles - 7.5 miles

total ascent - 571 feet

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

North Olympic Discovery Marathon results 2018

I posted my past Marathon information on Saturday's Picture of the week post, but I'll share it again in this post.

"There was a time when I could run faster. There was a time when I was asleep to life. There was a time that I woke up and said "I am alive"!

There was a time I couldn't finish a Marathon under the finish cutoff time, so I created my own event. There was a time I believed I could finish under the cutoff time.

That time is now."

My husband had put together a training plan this year that was for our Spartan races and for running The North Olympic Discovery NODM Marathon (him) a half marathon (me). At the end of our long run weekends after I had finished my half marathon training distance he would continue until he had his marathon training distance done. On his 18 mile training day, I was supposed to go only 16 miles, but I thought "I'm going to keep running with him". I had no trouble with the distance, so he suggested that I switch my race entry from the half marathon to the full marathon. The race director for the marathon was very easy to work with and with no trouble at all I was entered into the Marathon Walk (early start 6 am). Since it had been so long since I'd done an official marathon, I really didn't know if I could make the cut off time, that's why we signed up for the early start time. The Marathon run start was an hour and a half later than us, with a 5 1/2 hour cut off time. I hoped that I would be able to finish under the early start cutoff time of 7 1/2 hours.

Packet pickup day was Saturday, a nice day as you can see in the photo below.

We met the shuttle bus in Port Angeles at 5:15 am for our ride to the start at the 7 Cedars Casino. Our plan was to run 7 minutes and walk 3 minute intervals as much as we could. We weren't going to be strict with this schedule. We walked most of the long ups and tried to run all of the downhills along the route. That worked out really well for me. I felt good the whole time.

Our official start photo.

The weather was nice and cool with a bit of humidity, the trail was pretty much protected from the weather with the big nice trees along the trail. There was a good wind and some rain as we headed towards the finish area. The last section of the route is out in the open and along the sea. Very pretty, and deceptive. We could see the finish area, but it was in reality quite a long distance yet.

Our Official finish photo.