Earlier in the week, I thought that this was going to be a nice dry trail run, but of coarse, it started raining with mixed sleet at 5:30 in the morning, so here we go with another miserable day in the forest. The plan was for Kris and I help with the parking and do the sweep. I decided to also run the first loop so I wouldn't have to stand around for 4 hours. I left shortly after the start and was immediately stuck behind a slow pace line which actually felt good at the time. I still managed to catch up with Alexa and ran with her for about the first 1/2 hour until Mat showed up(he got a late start waiting for the bathroom). Mat and I picked up the pace and stuck with a couple other runners for the rest of the first loop. We did the first loop in about a hour and a half which was a good time for all the dinking around we did. It felt great stopping after that first loop and hanging out by the super warm burn barrel. Other runners started dropping like flies after the first loop but most that completed the second loop were especially happy to be done. I noticed that a lot of runners indicated at the start that they were doing the 34 miler, but many had a change of heart after 17 due to the cold rain and muddy footing. It was great watching Mat and Rob finishing their first Capitol Forest Ultra in good times and good spirits, but we had to leave before Alexa finished. Kris and I started the sweep at noon, right after three runners left the camp. We quickly caught up with them and continued on a comfortable pace. However, after 100+ runners, the bottom loop trail was a muddy mess. It took about 2 hours to complete the loop and I was pooped and had a blister on my heel. Fortunately, Dave was tired from timekeeping and offered sweep the second loop with Kris, so I got to change my cloths, get some food and hang out at my favorite burn barrel. It really didn't stop raining until the last of the runners finished, and when the sweeps arrived, we had half the camp packed up. We managed to clean everything up and get out of there by 5:10 and it was still light out! All in all a good run and a good day.