Rad Run // Issaquah Alps

Seattle has officially moved up to the top of the rankings of my favorite cities to run in after this one.

To really appreciate how awesome this run was I have to go back a little bit. Maybe two years ago I stumbled on Alistar Humphreys, an adventurer, and author from England. He writes a lot about microadventures, this idea of making an adventure out of something small. Instead of having some huge plan and three-day trip, he promotes taking advantage and control of your 5-9 life.

While I have a really cool job, as I often lament here, it can be very difficult to find time for adventures or even just runs beyond the usual seven-mile loop from my front door. Figuring out my own microadventures is motivating in the offseason but a struggle when I don't really have a 5-9 life during the season. It's more like a 7-9 life. With that in mind, I've really tried to take full advantage of these road trips where we are spending an extra day in different cities.

I've always enjoyed getting a chance to run in different places. That's one of the big perks of traveling for my job. I get to travel at least 10 weeks of the year. In the past, I've felt pretty limited in terms of where I could run based on where we stay, but recently - with the help of public transportation and Uber - I've started to branch out a little and look for adventures that are further afield.

This all started in Oakland of all places. Last fall we had a two-day trip to Oakland. Not really being too thrilled to run there, I decided to jump on the train and head to San Francisco to run. An awesome 15-mile run to and across the Golden Gate Bridge and back later and a microadventure running plan was born. I followed that up with a bus ride to Boulder to run up Green Mountain a few weeks later when we were in Denver, which you can see below.



With those to adventure runs under my belt, you can imagine my excitement when I found out five of our trips for this year were going to be multiple days, including a three-day trip to Seattle. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw that I enjoyed the extra day. Sometimes I still just run from the hotel depending on where we are, but when getting ready for this trip I came across an Outside article about the top Five Wild Escapes You Can Access by Public Transportation.

The Second one? Tiger Mountain in the Issaquah Alps.
Seattle has a ridiculously good public transportation system for adventurers, but the best trip you can take might be to Tiger Mountain State Forest. Located in the Issaquah Alps east of the city, Tiger has more than 70 miles of hiking trails, some of which climb more than 2,000 feet to the summit. You can get there from downtown Seattle by catching the Sound Transit 554 bus to the Issaquah park-and-ride lot, then take the paved Rainier and High School Trails to the Tradition Plateau Trailhead, where you’ll find a half-dozen routes up the mountain. The West Tiger #3 Trail is a stunner, offering a five-mile round-trip hike with views of Seattle and Puget Sound at the summit. The bus runs every half-hour during the day, and your one-time fare is $2.75.

I tweaked a few things about this but it served as the basic inspiration for one of the best road-trip runs that I've had in my eight seasons of doing this. I ended up cheating a little and grabbing an Uber from the hotel as it was an hour bus ride compared to a 15-minute drive. A few of these other places I've done public transport adventure runs, the transit has been around 30 minutes which works with my schedule. An hour bus ride would have made the timing tight so I decided to spend a few extra dollars to give myself more time to run.

I had the Uber drop me at Issaquah High School and ran two miles along a couple of different trails to Tiger Mountain. These trails were fantastic. Freshly fallen leaves mixed with the crisp smell of the evergreens was exactly what I needed after waking up a little groggy from the five-hour flight the night before. Any cobwebs were quickly brushed away by the multiple signs I saw warning of cougars and bears. I took a minute to read the do's & don'ts of cougar encounters...you know...just in case.

Once I reached the High Point Trailhead, I followed the West Tiger #3 trail as it snaked its way to the summit over three or so miles. On the way up I crossed back and forth from deciduous to coniferous forest. I was again treated to vibrant yellow leaves, bright evergreens, and the orange hues of a pine needle covered trail. From the base of Tiger Mountain, the trail was mostly double track. It reminded me a lot of the Wagon Train trail that runs from Young Harris College to Brasstown Bald in Georgia. This trail had more steep twisting switchbacks, but both are nice and wide with long sections that vary in pitch from gradual to reach out and touch the ground steep.

The scenery was ripped straight from the forest moon of Endor or maybe First Blood. I felt like any minute I was going to look up and see an AT-ST or an imperial shield generator base. That or I was going to get arrested for vagrancy by Brian Dennehy.

Seriously, tell me there's not an Ewok lurking around in here somewhere.

As I worked my way up towards the top the trail, the trail split in two - a more direct, and far more sketchy looking, cable trail - and a slightly more technical than the rest of the route single track. I decided to stick to the main trail and pick my way over the single track instead of trying my luck on the cable trail. This splinter trail was almost all loose rock and was much steeper. While it was a straight shot, the main trail looked more fun. This was a good call because just off the side of the main trail there were two view-point pull-offs that provided outstanding views of the mountains that spring up east of Seattle. After another few minutes of climbing, I reached the 2,522-foot summit of West Tiger 3.

Portrait mode is clutch 

The pull-offs on the way up were better viewpoints, as the summit was really just a small clearing with a sign and cairn. I took a short break at the top and exchanged pleasantries with some of the other people that had reached the halfway point of their hike or run. I saw two guys come up to the summit from the opposite end of the clearing and I decided to do a little exploring. My watch read 4.7 miles at the summit, so I figured I needed to get it to five before turning around and heading back down.

I dropped down from the summit and back into deep woods surrounded by towering pines. It nearly went from full daylight to pitch black in about 200 yards as I descended. I came across a sign that read West Tiger #2 -> and decided to see if that summit was within reach. I am notorious for this move by the way. I've gotten a death stare from Amanda more than a few times for saying "I bet it's right around this corner" or "Let's just got a little further and see what's over this rise". I got a little bit of my own medicine, but it paid off as I scrambled my way to the top of an "I'll just get to the top of this then turn around" reaching the top of 2757 foot West Tiger 2. This summit still didn't provide a great view as it had a radio tower perched in the clearing at the top, but it was still cool to say I tagged two summits on the day.

After snapping a couple of pictures I made my way back down to West Tiger 3 where I stopped to chat with a couple of the hikers that I had passed on my way up. I got very jealous of the two guys talking about going skiing the next day. That would be amazing. It was 60 degrees and sunny on these mountain trails and a couple hours to the north or east you can go big mountain skiing. Okay PNW. I get why people are so wild about you now.

After thinking about whether I could get out of meetings on Sunday to go skiing for a few minutes, I started the three-mile descent back to the trailhead. The trail was actually a little bit muddier than I realized on the way up, which made going down a little tense. I wore Saucony Ride 10s, which obviously don't have a ton of grip so I had to ride the breaks a bit in some sections to make sure I stayed on my feet. I ended up paying for that the next couple of days with sore quads, but overall the descent was pretty fun. I opened it up a little on some of the more gradual sections and worked on having quick feet on some of the steeper stuff.

When I reached the base, I spent a couple minutes at the large trail sign trying to decide which route I wanted to take back to the high school. I settled on sticking with the trail that got me there, figuring it would be at least somewhat familiar, which would hopefully diminish my chances of getting lost. I actually really enjoyed these trails. I don't know if I was anxious about making it to the base of Tiger Mountain or worried about getting lost on the way out, but I don't think I fully appreciated the approach trails I took. I made sure to right that wrong on the way back. I would imagine that Issaquah has a good cross country team because the trail access those kids have from their high school is epic.

I followed the Around Lake Trail and Bus Trail (there was an old burnt out bus off to the side) back to the High School trail which, appropriately, led me back to Issaquah High School. After grabbing the water I stashed in the dugout of their softball field, I decided to see if there was somewhere to grab a coffee close by. I settled on Issaquah Coffee Company, about 1.5 miles away. This was a great idea by the way. I hopped on the Rainier Trail, a paved/gravel path that runs through the town. While it wasn't the lush forest of Tiger Mountain it was still a cool little section to run. I passed through the downtown and saw the Issaquah Alps trail headquarters and a historic train depot along the way.

I reached my destination after covering 12 miles and tagging two summits over two hours. I went inside and ordered a Cougar Mountain latte and some cinnamon apple bread while watching a little bit of college football. P.S. - that might be my favorite thing about the west coast, it was like 10:30 a.m. and the college games were into the third quarter. I could completely get on board with prime time games ending at like 8 o'clock too. After enjoying my coffee and pastry, I grabbed an Uber and made my way back to the hotel in time to finish up my credentialing duties and head over to the local high school for practice.

I wrapped up a full day in Seattle with a trip up to Washington to see the Huskies take on Utah in what turned out to be an epic PAC-12 matchup. My next couple of days of running in Bellevue weren't quite as exciting as Saturday's Rad Run, but I'm still a big fan of running there. I was treated to a fantastic view of Mt. Rainier, so that was cool.

Like said, Seattle has definitely vaulted its way toward the top of the rankings for my favorite cities to run in. I'm really glad I decided to make the trip to Issaquah for this run. It was well worth the $40 I spent on Ubers.

Here's what the full run looked like on Strava:

Just in case you are wondering, here are my top NFL cities to run in.
1 - Seattle (obvi)
2 - Denver/Boulder
3 - San Francisco (Really Oakland since the 49ers are like an hour away now)
4 - London*
5 - LA - We stayed in Santa Monica

Honorable Mention - Houston - Shut up. Don't even say it...28...to...you son of a...Seriously though, I had a rental car and ran at Memorial Park every day. Everything else was concrete but Memorial Park was cool.

*We stayed at a place called the Grove in Herefordshire. It was freaking amazing. Bridle trails everywhere. One day I ran for an hour before realizing I needed to turn around. If you take London out then LA would be fourth and Chicago would be fifth.

#Microadventure - Lula Lake Land Trust

I talked a little bit about this in my race recap from River Gorge, but here's the video I promised. I brought my Go Pro along for the trip to Chattanooga and used it to get some cool video of Amanda and I checking out the park.

*Shot with my Go Pro Hero 4 Silver & 3-way mount 
**Edited with Adobe Premiere

A Weekend Away: Asheville, NC

I'm a little behind on my 2015 recap & 2016 plans but Amanda and I decided to get an early jump on our adventures with a trip to Asheville, N.C. last weekend. That's the freshest thing in my mind so here we go.

I've wanted to check out Asheville for a while now but for one reason or another had never made the journey up there. With the cyclocross national championships at the Biltmore Estate, it seemed like a perfect time make the trip. It ended up being a little closer than I thought it was going to be, just under three hours. Amanda and I jumped in the car early on Saturday morning and drove up through north Georgia into North Carolina and then east to Asheville. We drove over Tallulah Gorge in some crazy fog (probably should have taken a picture) which was super creepy early in the morning. That was my favorite part of the drive. Amanda's was the fact that each tiny town we drove through had it's one unique, and ridiculously named, Mexican restaurant.

Our first stop was downtown. We actually made pretty quick work of the downtown area. We walked around and checked out all the small shops. It was impressive to see how invested in local businesses and arts the city was. I think we saw three different independent book stores, which was definitely different since we live in the definition of suburban sprawl.

After walking around for a bit and grabbing lunch we headed to the Blue Ridge Parkway. We took a short drive on the parkway and stopped by the Visitor Center to check out the Mountains to Sea Trail. The Visitor Center really cool. It had an interactive map of the entire 469-mile roadway and a bunch of other informational stuff. It seems like it would be an interesting drive, especially during the fall when all the leaves change. The Mountains to Sea Trail runs right past the visitor center and features a short loop trail. The weather was pretty nice so we decided to check it out. The trail was about a mile and a half with a mile of it traveling on the Mountains to Sea trail.

After checking out the visitor center and the trails we headed over to the Highland brewery try a few adult beverages. Breweries are what Asheville is really known for and Highland seemed to be the most popular. We ended up spending a couple hours there and tried a couple different brews. We had a few other breweries circled on the map, but we ended up deciding to save those for another day. Amanda settled on the Leggo my Lager, one of their seasonal/specialty brews. I enjoyed the Highland IPA and the Gaelic Ale. One of the best parts about the Highland brewery, and this is super dorky but fitting for this blog, was that they had a running shirt in their shop. It said 'Run Your Ale Off' which is silly but it had the Highland logo on the back so I pulled the trigger.

Because we are 100 years old we headed to the hotel and ended up getting take out and watching football. We're not really about that nightlife, life. The positive side of not doing much at night was that I got up early to get a run in before we went to the Biltmore. I scoped out a few spots to run and ended up settling on the Bent Creek Experimental Forest. The forest is part of Pisgah National Forest and features a seemingly endless maze of trails and gravel roads. I didn't have a ton of time, I figured I would give myself an hour to explore some trails but I wanted to make sure I didn't get lost and didn't leave Amanda stranded at the hotel by herself without coffee for too long.

It's hard to see all the trails, but I promise there were a ton. I parked at the Hardtimes Trail head and started out linking a couple of the forest service roads until I came across a trail that looked interesting and dipped into the woods. I linked together a few different trails and ended up popping out at the Lake Powhatan Recreational area, which is link a state park. From there I kept exploring the rolling hills. I ran across a local Sunday morning trail running group a few times. This is kind of funny because I was just running out and back but they kept popping up in different places because of the number of trail crossings. It was probably a good idea to try and limit the number of trails I used. It would have been easy to get turned around without a map.

My favorite parts of the run were the rhododendron tunnels. I ran through two or three sections where they bent over the trail and completely closed it in. Despite the fact that I forgot my Nathan pack, I decided to just suck it up and carry my phone and I am glad that I did. I got a couple of really cool pictures of the tunnels.

I ended up running 3.5 miles out, mainly on the Homestead trail, Pine Tree Loop, and Deerfield Loop, then headed back to the car. When I got back to the car, the lot had filled up with runners, bikers, and hikers. I talked to one guy that was heading out for a hike and he gave me a couple of pointers that I filed away for next time. He told me he was heading out on a seven or eight mile loop that climbs up Grassy Knob, a 3000+ foot mountain on the southeastern edge of the park. He also told me about a race called the Shut In Ridge run that follows the Shut In trail 18 miles up to Mount Pisgah. It sounded like a cool race, but that's a long way and it takes place in November, so probably not a realistic one for me. Still thought, it sounds like a badass race. Apparently it's called the Shut In trail or Shut In Ridge because of the rhododendron tunnels, so the scenery is probably pretty cool.

After finishing up my run, I drove back to the hotel to shower and gather up all of our stuff for the day. It turned out to be a little bit of a nicer day than we anticipated, so we headed back to downtown Asheville to get coffee and breakfast. Amanda has officially turned me into a coffee guy. I still prefer a good cup of tea, but I'm all about finding cool coffee shops now too. I feel a little bit like an impressionable youth. Coffee just seems so cool! I want in! Anyway, we went to High Five coffee, which is (according to Gear Patrol) one of the best coffee shops in America. It was expensive as balls. That's all I really got out of it. The coffee I had was solid, but for my money I'll take Mean Mug in Chattanooga or Jittery Joe's in Athens over them any day (or the Honey Dew on 114 in Danvers back home).

After grabbing a coffee we decided to try and find something to eat. That's when we ran across a true gem, Vortex Doughnuts (I still always spell it Donut on the first go around). This place was fantastic. I wanted to eat one of everything. Amanda and I both went with cinnamon & sugar with nutella dark chocolate. Amazing. One of the best doughnuts I've ever had and I am a man who loves a good doughnut. I need to sample more at a place like this, but I'm taking a page out of Phil Gaimon's book and starting to cook up a top 5 doughnuts list.

I'm a traditionalist, so you can keep your cronuts and reeses peanut butter filled diabetes bombs. Without putting them in any order (that comes later) I would say my top doughnuts would be the Maple Bar (TopPot - Seattle, Wash.), Maple Vanilla swirl (Dutch Monkey Donuts - Cumming, Ga.), Sugar Raised (Downy Flake - Nantucket, Mass.), Carmel Apple Fritter/Red Velvet (Sublime Doughnuts - Atlanta, Ga.), Honey Dew (Honey Dew Donuts), Chocolate Glazed (Dunkin Donuts), and the Cinnamon & Sugar Nutella swirl above (Vortex Doughnuts - Asheville, NC. I have some work to do, but that's a start.

To work off a little bit of the sugar high, we walked around downtown a little more an stumbled on Diamond Brand Outdoors which was a cool little outdoor outfitter store. We always love checking places like that out. I'm a sucker for a sticker to throw on my water bottle or something like that and those places always seem to be the best place for that. They had a sweet pair of mitten/gloves that I really wanted but they didn't have them in men's...bummer. After checking out Diamond Brand we made our way to the Biltmore to catch the women's and men's elite CX races.

The Biltmore area was really cool. Clearly they had a historic ordnance in play because all the buildings in the area were built with Victorian looking decor. We grabbed our wristbands for the race and scoped out the area before heading into the Biltmore Estate. The wristbands were a really creative touch. They served as your ticket and I was expecting something like you'd get a club for a concert, or what you get at a stadium when they are checking your bag. You know, the paper strip with adhesive that sticks to your skin and tears your flesh off then you try to take it off. Instead, they gave us rubber wristbands that said Asheville CX 2016 on them (like a livestrong bracelet). I'm a yokel, so I thought that was awesome. Made the admission fee feel a little better since you got a souvenir with it.

We drove onto the Estate and were in awe of how big it was. After making our way to one of the many, many parking lots, we jumped on a shuttle bus that took us to Antler Hill Village where the race course was. Two things about how big the Biltmore is, one - we never actually saw the house - and two - Antler Hill Village was three miles from the front gate. That place is absolutely massive. We bundled up once we got off the bus because the temperature was rapidly dropping. That changed our plans from checking out the course to making a bee line for the food tent. Chili & pizza rolls where huge. We filled up and more importantly warmed up, then made our way to the course to watch the women's race. We wanted to check out the VW tent and sponsor expo but ended up skipping it in favor of watching the race. The expo area had died down a little bit by the start of the race anyway.  

The women's race was a fun one to watch. We got to see Katie F'n Compton win something like her 12 straight national title. She was chased the whole way by Georgia Gould and Kaitlin Antonneau, but it was all Compton. We walked around the course trying to find a good spot. We checked out the barriers and the barn then settled on heckle hill, a viciously steep climb that pretty much had to be run up. It was a good spot because people weren't flying by. I was determined to find a perfect spot for the men's race so with a couple laps to go we started to move again, making our way back towards the finish. Out of nowhere I hear people yelling 'Hey stop!'. After a few shouts I realize that Amanda has stopped, so I look back at her then over at the people that are yelling. To my surprise, I see Ted King trying to find a trail through the woods to come over to where we are.

"Is that an Untapped Maple hat?"
"Yes. Yes it is."
"Did you buy it on the internet?"
"Yes. Yes I did."
"Well, I'm Ted King!"

I forget the rest of the exchange because I was trying not to "fanboy" and embarrass Amanda. Ted was super cool. He was really stoked to see someone wearing the hat so he gave me an Untapped Waffle and we took the picture above. He ended up posting it on the Untapped Instagram and on his blog IAmTedKing. I am definitely killing it at the pro cycling events. At road nationals we got to hangout with Tim Johnson and ride the GRC Beetle and at CX nationals we met Ted King.

After spending a couple minutes with my new best friend we ended up finding a great spot for the men's race. We were right next to the giant flyover and were in position to see the race come by four times each lap. The main event definitely lived up to the billing. After some early fireworks, Jeremy Powers took over at the front and it morphed into a three-man race between him, Stephen Hyde, and Logan Owen. A couple laps in Owen hit out with a big attack but Powers and Hyde pulled him back in and from there the trio battled back and forth until Powers finally broke free with two (maybe three) laps to go. He was relentless. It was really impressive to see him power away and see just how fast these guys go.

We ended up moving around a little after about 30 minutes because it was getting cold. It actually started snowing (flurries but still). We moved to a spot were we could see the finishing straight, a wicked off-camber corner and then where the riders came out of my favorite feature, the barn.

While the heavy hitters up front were the main attraction, the race for the rest of the podium was exciting too. It was cool to see a bunch of the guys I'd see on Behind the Barriers racing up close. It was really cool to see Anthony Clark out there too. He's an interesting dude, definitely an inspirational story and someone who shows that you can do some pretty incredible stuff. I was really happy to hear that he got selected for the Worlds team. For more on this dude check out this video.

Sorry for the detour. Once the race hit the final lap we made our way to the finish in time to see Jeremy Powers seal his fourth national title. We stuck around to see the top three finish then made our way to the bus. This was a great plan. We got to the car and made our way out of the estate fairly quickly then jumped on the highway and headed back to Georgia. Our original plan was to stop in Greenville and grab dinner but we made pretty good time getting out of Asheville, so we drove straight back to the house and settled on pizza and beers at home.

Asheville turned out to be a great trip and a city I'd like to head back to sometime. I think overall I prefer Chattanooga but I'd like to do a little more exploring in Asheville, and hit a few more breweries. I've been pretty enthralled with the idea of microadventures lately and this was a great way to kick off the 2016 slate of them.