Kicking the 2018 Season Off with a BANG!

What an incredible adventure yesterday turned out to be!! 🌅 The day started out with miraculous sunrise on the road and ended with a win 🏆and highs of ☀️52 degrees! Wallace Falls Trail Race did not disappoint!!💥 With the 💦Wallace River (the upper, middle and lower falls) to our right keeping us distracted while climbing the Woody Trail, we hardly even noticed the increasing amounts of ICE and ❄️SNOW as we continued our ascent to the top!! *insert sarcasm here* 😅

Once to the top of the Woody Trail, we turned left and followed 👣 a single track route above the Valley overlooking Snohomish County and all of the surrounding areas all the way out and to the bay. We had just beautiful, sweeping ,180 degree views. As I continued through between 2-4 feet of snow around Wallace and Jay 🎣 lakes to the turnaround... Then descended back down the Greg Ball Trail to the finish. 🏁 For the 22.5 Milers *me,* we ran this route twice, gaining roughly 4,500 ft of elevation.

I had a bit of trouble with the final 6 miles, as I have been battling calf and IT band issues on my right leg (in which I had a previous hip surgery and 3 ankle surgeries correcting) for the past couple of months. On the final decent, this issue really got the best of me when I normally would be just flying toward a grateful finish. However, I was in a lot of pain and unable to move very fast at all. But I did what I could and hobbled along as fast as I could go trying to keep a decent pace. I could see a couple of racers gaining on me from that point on (coming down the trails from above) and I kept them at bay, pushing as hard as I could until the end. Boy was it a nail~biter to the finish! before finally finishing with a time of 4:12: and some change! ☀️

The sun was was shining, the park was 😍beautifully stunning and coming in @ 1st Female (2nd Overall) was a wonderful bonus to an already monumentally TOUGH race day!! A *huge* ThaNk YoU to @bg_nelson and @wanderbigger for putting on such an ExCeLLeNT race on such a challenging course *with an extra challenge via Mother ❄️ Nature* added! 😂 Now to rest, recoup, beg a friend for a leg massage and prep for the Chuckanut 50 in just 2 short weeks!!