Three Vashon families headed south to California the weekend of Dec. 4 to participate in endurance events and came away with excellent performances to add to their impressive running resumés.

In the beautiful but hilly Marin Headlands, four Islanders ran in the North Face Endurance Challenge races, which took place on the trails and fire roads of the hills just outside San Francisco.

On Saturday, Andrew Peet raced to third place in his age category in the 50-mile race with a time of 11 hours 46 minutes, and David Levant raced the 50k distance (31 miles) in 6 hours 57 minutes to finish in 19th place in his very competitive age group.

In the half marathon race (13.1 miles) held on Sunday, Andrew and David’s teenage sons, Graham Peet, 13, and Sam Levant, 14, raced to first and second place in their age group of 20 and under in 2 hours and 25 mintes, within seconds of each other. Overall, the boys finished in the top half of more than 450 runners on the challenging course, which has a total elevation change of 4,506 feet. Their accomplishment came a mere week after they set personal bests in the Seattle Half Marathon.

Two Islanders traveled to Sacramento to run in the California International Marathon (26.2 miles), a point-to-point race from Folsom Lake to downtown Sacramento. On Sunday, Susan Hesselgrave and Mike Shepherd joined 8,000 other runners in ideal weather conditions to finish in 4:30:44 and 4:46:24, respectively.