Lost Lake 50k route and Buntzen

So, yes, I went down to Chuckanut again and ran some of the race route but with a small twist this time: I did the race route of the Lost Lake 50k. The website touts an elevation gain of 8000' and it didn't disappoint (unless you're asking my quads). The worst part was the Pine and Cedar Lake trail that I'd never gone on before which involves a steep descent of 1.6 miles and 1500'. When you reach the parking lot at the bottom, you turn around and go straight back up again. Call me stubborn but it didn't occur to me until I could actually see the parking lot at the bottom that I could have turned around anywhere on this trail and avoided the painful uphill on the way back. Like I said: stubborn.
My plan for this run was to a) do 6 hours, b) get to know the Lost Lake route so I could do it again, and c) get a lot of climbing in the legs at my snail pace to build up those muscles for the races to come. I ended up doing 5:10 for the day, I figured out the route nicely, and definitely got the climbing in. I realised how accurate my Garmin was by following the direction and distance signs for trails and it was pretty much bang on every time.

So today I went to Buntzen Lake to go around there and do the Diez trail as another attempt to hammer my legs. I got there kinda early, 5:30, to find the gates don't open up until 8am. 8am!! "Fitness doesn't sleep in", I cried out. Of course you think you could park on the streets anywhere within a half-mile radius of the gates? Not a chance. I guess when the parking lots are full the locals don't like the out-of-towners abandoning their cars in front of their houses to walk to the beach. I literally parked a half-mile away and started my run from there.
You ever start a run and you haven't even gone twenty minutes and your guts start telling you that you better find a bathroom soon? Well it happened to me today. Luckily there are bathrooms right near the lake. Unluckily they were as locked as the gates. No problem, I thought, I can keep running until 8 when they open up and use them then. Wrong. I started scouting places I could go and which sort of leaves looked the most attractive in lieu of paper. Luckily I got to the north end of the lake and encountered some outhouses that were unlocked and stocked with real paper. Whew.
I did over two and a half hours(running)before going up the Diez trail which was good to do tired because it made it plain for anyone to see (and luckily there wasn't anyone around) that I am woefully underprepared for UTMB at this point. Hopefully I should be able to these trails a few more times before the end of August, and with poles. Ended up with 5:20 and almost 30 miles. The last "luckily" was that my car was still there when I went to leave to go home!