Wild West Half Marathon and 10K

On somewhat short notice, a slightly changed lineup of Team Library Dorks headed up to the Donner Summit this Sunday morning for the Wild West Half Marathon and 10K. We made it through the road construction just fine, and made it to The Summit restaurant with about half an hour to spare. Registration was pretty low-key, there being a total of about 30 people there for the two races. Amber and Dave were attacking the 10K, and Abbey and I wanted to put some miles down on the half.



After getting all set up, we lined up for a photo - Since Chris is on the IR list, we were lucky to have Abbey along - a Library Dork from Carson City. (Thanks to Beau for taking the photo - it was nice to meet him, his son and and his wife, who has commented here before, and whose name I'm having trouble remembering because I'm a terrible person.)



We all lined up and got a race briefing from "Big Al" - despite his pretty detailed instructions, we weren't familiar with the area and were not terribly confident of the route.



We headed out, and were able to follow people for quite awhile. Along the pavement, up a dirt road heading toward, apparently, Kidd Lake and a campground. A bunch of cars passed us on this road, kicking up some dust. We got to the campground, and couldn't make sense of the chalk markings - were they telling the half marathoners to turn around? We hadn't seen a mark telling the 10K runners to head back. So Abbey, I and another runner took a lap through the campground before realizing that we were in fact supposed to have turned around. Oh, well. Here's what the map looked like -



On the way back down the dirt road, we saw the chalk markings that told the 10K runners to turn back, which we probably missed because of the cars. But we made it back to the pavement, and made the right turn at an aid station to head along the railroad tracks. Some decent shade for awhile here, and in the shade were - Frogs!



This was just a single one, but not too much farther on, we found a whole flock (herd?) of them. We did a kind of crazy tiptoe dance as we made our way through this:



That was just silly enough to get us up to the turnaround, where we got to turn around for some refreshing downhill.



Some interesting math told us we weren't going to be near finishing in two hours, so we took it a little easy back in. At any rate, our time ended up being a PR for Abbey, so I let her fly in and tried to get a picture. Came out a little blurry, but oh well.



After a quick water and cool down (and a battery jump) we headed off to one of our classic Truckee post-race lunch spots, Fifty Fifty Brewing. Their beer list seemed a little short at the moment, but we loaded up on sandwiches, salads and pizza, and had some of the best service we've had there.

Thanks to Abbey for driving - I was sure nodding off on the way home. Thanks for everyone for putting on a fun little race, and thanks to everyone for reading...

Oh, and check out Jean Pommier's blog post about running this (and winning the half) with his son. And a few pictures of our team, too...