12 Summits

Saturday 2/20/2010
12 Summits

When you live in Washington or for that matter what is considered the Northwest, you are living in one of the United States ultra running Meccas. The Seattle area and Washington has produced some of the legends of the sport and currently has some of the elite, national runners. When you live in an area like this, there are some well known training runs. One of these training runs is the 12 summits. The 12 summits is actually the 6 summits of Tiger Mountain, but it is an out and back so your total summits in a day is 12. The distance in 34 miles and the elevation gain is 10,500 feet. It was a training run I read about it 16 months ago and told myself I wanted to do it. When my friend said a group was doing the 12, I was in. I describe the run simply as; climb up and run down, then repeat 11 times. It was a very grueling 8 hours and 11 minutes. One of the greatest things about this 12 summits experience was the day we picked to run. It was a beautiful, blue bird, sunny day. We saw Mt. Rainer, the Olympics, and the Capital peaks near Olympia. It was a great day for running and I can not think of a better way to have spent the day. I must admit, the 12 summits pushed me to places I haven't felt since my first 50 miler, which was my very first race over 18 miles in length. On the nice side, I am not as sore, nor as tired as I was after that race. Well, I will probably never be considered one of Washington's elite Ultra runners, but I can at least understand what it feels like to train like one of them. Ever time I complete training run like this I have more and more respect for those that have the physical and mental ability to run ultras and for those that do it competitively. They are also a supportive and pleasant group to associate with as well.