Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Dawn to Dusk 2014

The objective is to run as many daylight miles as possible on the shortest day of the year, Dec 20th 2014.

Sunrise will be at 7:47 am, sunset will be at 4:34 pm.  This leaves a total of 8 hours and 47 minutes of daylight.  My goal for this is always 45 miles.  This year, I’m going to run a series of concentric loops starting and finishing at my house in Dallas, OR.

If you would like to run all or part of it, let me know.  There will be a warm house, a place to stash food/drink etc and I’ll probably put a giant pot of chili on to cook all day if you’re still around for sunset.  I can pretty accurately estimate the start of the first 3 loops, so let me know what you want to run and I can let you know about when to be at the house.
View from the Baskett Butte
 Loop 1, 18.7 miles, will head out Kings Valley Highway, cross 22 hwy and head in to the Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge.  Even though Jeanne and I have seen a cougar here, this isn’t nearly as “wild” as it sounds.  We do have a good chance of seeing some deer, heron, nutria, osprey, maybe bald eagles and if we’re really lucky a ground carp.  Exiting the Baskett Slough area we will cross over 99 hwy down Farmer road, turning right on Greenwood road, cross 22 hwy again then turn right on Rickreall road.  We’ll follow Rickreall road to Ellendale and back in to Dallas to the house.  Loop 1 has a bathroom at the Baskett Butte trailhead at about mile 4.  There is a store with bathrooms in Rickreall at about mile 14, if you don’t mind feeling like you are stealing family treasures by using their bathroom.  6 miles of Loop 1 are on gravel roads the rest are on asphalt.
Baskett Slough Wildlife
 Loop 2, 12.8 miles, starts out the same as Loop 1 but as we exit the Baskett Slough (mile 6) we will turn right on Hwy 99 for 2 miles to Rickreall.  People sometimes get freaked out about running on Hwy 99, it’s fine.  The shoulder is very wide for this entire section.  Once in Rickreall the route back to the house is the same as Loop 1.  The same bathrooms as Loop 1 are now at mile 4 and mile 8.  3 miles on gravel the rest on asphalt.
This would be a good time to mention that loops 1 and 2 combined equal 31.5…...just a touch over 50k for anyone wanting to make sure they hit ultra distance.

Loop 3, 7.8 miles, will head east on Ellendale, turn right at Bowersville road, right again on Miller road and come back via La Creole road to Ellendale.  There are several bathrooms on Ellendale on the way out and bathrooms at the Aquatic Center at mile 6.  1 mile on gravel the rest on asphalt.  Total 39.3

Loop 4, 4.6, is my standard 5 mile run course with a small shortcut.  We head out Kings Valley Hwy for 2 miles, turn right at the Forestry Station on Oak Villa road, then right on Ellendale and back to the house.  1 mile of gravel, the rest asphalt.  Total 43.9

This will hopefully be my minimum mileage.  I have a 2.9 mile loop, a 1.1 mile loop and a .6 mile loop depending on how much time we still have left.