Anthony Lee

What an unbelievable day of racing at the Smith Rock Ascent 50K. Even though this race was a training run for me, I still wanted to push myself against the many fast local Bend runners. It was very exciting toeing the line and standing next to people I look up to in the sport.  The race started just after 8am and it was a hot start as we shot out like rockets. Our first mile was 5:49. Thinking to myself,  I'll either blow up or today is going to be very special . A group of four, Ryan Bak (Nike Trail), Ian Sharman (Altra), Thomas Morgan (Footzone Bend) and myself all were all together for the first few miles. Ryan then decides to use his marathon speed to break away on the first climb up the Summit Trail leaving Thomas slightly ahead of me while Ian backed off the pace.   Running by effort, I felt comfortable early on and I just shuffled easily up the climbs, but I was a bit worried with Ian behind me since he can catch people that make the mistake of...

The day before the race, I went out for a nice shake out run and not surprised living in the Pacific Northwest, it's raining and blowing winds up to 40mph. I think to myself, "Of course this weather is happening to me, the last 4 races I've run have been terrible weather races, but I'm so damn lucky to be running in my backyard (the Gorge)." This past winter in Washington/Oregon it has been one of the worst but finally after 6 months of training in brutal weather, I was ready to tackle the many trails I train on. Since we had all our bad weather (snow, record rainfall, tons of wind), I didn't once set foot on the Gorge 100K course since about October 2016 (also when registration for the race opened up). Not ideal but I had a general knowledge of the course's topography and layout. The Course: Course profile The Gorge Waterfalls 100k is an out-and-back 62 mile, ~12,000ft of gain race that runs along the Gorge #400 Trail, passing 7-8 amazing w...