My Writing and Lost Soul Ultra

I know my writing is not the best but it will get better. I hope you all will check back regularly and see what adventures I have been up to. Feel free to post any comments and ask me any questions on what I have been doing.

Well just to let you know what my next big race will be, it is the Lost Soul Ultra 100 miler in Lethbridge, AB. This is the final race in the Alberta Ultra Series and my final race in completing the Alberta Triple.

I ran the 50k race at Lost Soul a few years ago and it is a well put on race. That year I only did one lap of the course and this year I will be doing it 3 times. It is going to be a tough race this year and I am looking forward to pushing myself to a new limit in my running ability. It will hurt but the satisfaction of finishing will be well worth it and last longer then the pain and discomfort.


Later

J

Hope This Works

Well, over the years I have enjoyed reading other people expiences about there adventures so I thought I would try posting my own. Stay tuned as I will be posting my experience at the Canadian Death Race. What is the Death Race you ask? Well it is a 125km solo trail run over three mountains and 17,000 feet of elevation change in the Canadian Rockies. The race starts and finishes in a small town called Grande Cache, which does a good job of hosting the race. Talk to you all later.

Canadian Death Race 2007

It all started back around Christmas when I thought I would try and complete the Alberta Triple. What is the Alberta Triple you ask, well it is the 3 longer races in the Alberta Ultra Series, which is the Blackfoot 100k, the Canadian Death Race and the Lost Soul 100 mile. I completed the Blackfoot 100k back in May and finished in 18th spot and 15th male. It also turned out to be that Blackfoot turned out to be the Canadian Championships, so I guess I am 18th in Canada right now. Next up was the Death Race in Grande Cache, Alberta.

Running the Death race solo is something that I had wanted to do since 2000 when I ran on a relay team. Having as part of the triple sealed the deal for me and off I went to sign up.

The race was on the August long weekend as it is every year and I headed up on Friday morning with a few friends, 3 of them were running and 1 was coming up for support. Tasha(my wife) and Kael(my son) were coming up later in the day to act as my support, but Tasha had to work all day and I didn't want to get up to Grande Cache that late. I arrived in Grande Cache around 4pm and had chance to have a quick look at each exchange point for the legs. Everyone that I knew up there was either in a hotel room or staying with friends, but not me I was in a tent and around 8:30pm I was regretting not getting a room. It started to rain hard, real hard and rained for most of the night. The race started at 8am and for the hour and a half that I was up before then I kept asking myself why did I sign up for this. Going through my head was the thoughts why didn't I train more, am I ready for this race, will anyone notice if I just head back to bed?

Sure enough at 8am the race started। In the first kilometer or so all the negative thoughts started to drop from my mind and it was just me and the race course, Oh and about 400 other runners.

Leg 1:

Leg 1 was 19km of paved roads, gravel roads and a mix of double and single track trails. I was feeling good, and had a chance to talk with a few other runners. There was not allot of climbing on this leg and was able to finish it in around 1:55 which was 5 minutes under my goal time. At the exchange point I kept running as many other had the opportunity to switch with their relay teammates. The one thing I had to do was put my timing chip into the receiver.

Leg 2:

Getting ready for this leg was easy I only switched hydration packs and headed out, I thought about taking my trekking poles for a few seconds but Tasha convinced me I didn't need them. This leg was going to take me over 2 mountains and 27kms. The trail for the first couple of hours was actually a gravel road that took me up onto Flood Mountain. Just before the summit the trail turned to a single track trail and got steeper, for the most part I had to walk all this up hill. At the top I had to again insert my timing chip in a receiver and headed of down the trail with about a half dozen other runners. I was still feeling good and strong and had not issues, my feet were good the weather was cool and over cast with a bit of rain so my fluid intake was not to bad. The decent off of Flood was a steep on. Lots of tree grabbing and managed to avoid any butt sliding. This section was all single track trail and has a nick name of "The Slug Fest". This trail led us up onto another mountain called Grande Mountain and back onto a gravel road. I managed to meet some new people along this section of that trail and most were running this race as there first ultra. I thought I was bad having only done 2 ultras before. Just after passing through the timing station at the to of Grande there was a split in the quad trail and lots of other runners made the mistake of taking the wrong trail. This last few Km's was a real steep decent down a quad trail and then into the town for the transition to leg 3. It was good to get into the transition area as Tasha was waiting for me with a big pot of Beef-A-Roni. Oh, it was so good.

Leg 3:

This leg started out real rough, within the first couple of hundred meter I realized I had eaten to much. The Beef-A-Roni was good and maybe a little to good as my stomach was hurten. I knew the feeling would eventually go away, it was just a matter of time. The good part was the first 3-4 km's was mostly uphill so I would have been walking no matter what. I forced fluid down which was a good thing because I was a little dehydrated at this point.

I was a little surprised at how difficult I found this leg. It was another 19km leg and I was a half hour slower then the first leg. The last 10k or so was good for me as I was able to get food and fluid down and have no issues from it.



Leg 4:

This was going to be the big test for me. The leg is 38kms long with over 6500 feet of elevation change. Right from the start this leg was going to be harder then I thought. It starts with about 2kms along the shoulder of the highway and then has about 10k of climbing. This climb beat me up, chewed me up and then spit me up. To get through the first 12k took me about 2 1/2 hours. I must have been dehydrated because I was sucking back the water like it was going out of style. Near the top of the climb I was getting worried about how much I was drinking and thought I might run out, at one point I contemplated drinking out of a creek. What stopped me was all the mining in the area and I didn't know what minerals might have made there way into the water. So I pushed on.

At the top I had to check in with a timing station after running/hobbling out to the end of the ridge to retrieve a flag. Then the punishing down hill began. It was about 9k to the aid station and I needed to get there fast as I was getting low on water. During this section my left shin and foot started to bother me. I had no problems going up hill it just hurt going down and a little on the flat. For what seamed like forever I ran and hiked my way towards that aid station and when I finally arrived I was so happy because I had run out of water a few hundred meters back.

From the aid station I made a 5k loop, for the first 2.1k it was down hill and my leg was not happy before coming back up and through the aid station. Leaving the station was both good and bad, it was the last bit before getting to the transition to leg 5 which was good but it was mostly down hill, which was bad. The down hill lasted for about 7 painful kilometers and then went along the shoulder of the highway for about 2k.

It was good to get into the aid station and have Tasha waiting for me. I was feeling a little low as this leg had taken me about an hour longer then I had planned for and my leg was hurting.



Leg 5:


It was about midnight when I headed out onto this leg of the race. I was now feeling good and strong but that changed rather quickly as the trail started to climb right away. Happily it didn't last long and I was able to start running some of the flatter sections of the trail. When I was in the aid station I had a can of Beaver Buzz and boy was it working. I felt totally awake and had energy to spare. It was not long until I caught and passed a couple of solo runners and then then caught up to a couple of other soloists. It was nice to have the company so I stayed behind them when one of the guys I passed caught up to us, so there was now 4 of us together. For a while I thought about passing them and heading of down the trail alone but at this point I felt I should make my personal cut off of 4am, 20 hours of racing. So the four of us stayed together and basically did a power walk and it seamed like we were making good time. The river crossing seamed to take a while to get to because we could hear the jet boat ferrying people across for about 3kms.


The boat ride was quick and I didn't want it to end because there was a nice soft seat in the boat and I was sitting on it. However I knew it had to end so reluctantly I got up and headed of down the trail. Within a couple of kms we started to climb and surprising it climbed for a while, I was even shocked that the 4 of us passed a couple of relay runners. This trail I had run in the day light back in 2000 and knew it had some beautiful view from the ridge but tonight I would not get to see any of them, it was 2 in the morning and rather dark. When we came out onto a gravel road we knew we were close. There was only a few kms to go and the down side was it was all up him, and onward we walked. It was not long until we started to see a few houses in the trees and then we came out onto a paved road. Now we knew it was going to finish under my 20 hour goal. About 500 meters before the finish Tasha was there smiling and taking a few pictures. I had made it, I crossed the finish line at approximately 19 hours and 33 minutes.




Finished:


The feeling of finishing under my goal time was great. I was now 1 race away from finishing my seasonal goal of completing the Alberta Triple and knew that it was well with in my grasp. Being that it was about 3:30am there was nothing open and I was staving, I wanted food and lots of it. Since there was nothing open my only other option was to head to the tent for some sleep. I think it was around 4am when I managed to put my head down on my folded up down vest to get some shut eye. It did not take long for my alarm clock(Kael) to wake up, so up I got around 8am and looking at the day a little differently. I had pushed myself a little farther then I have in the past and was still standing and feeling good.


Later

J