works of wanderlust

Category: running & adventure

My sport involves feet and trails and moving one quickly across the other.

  • Race Report: Blackfoot

    Sunday Runday, and I’m moving gingerly around the house this morning in recovery mode after a long, tough race yesterday.

    After a two and a half year wait, and two covid-postponments, the Blackfoot Ultra finally crossed the start line on Saturday. A good proportion of the racers never showed up, obviously fallen out of training or enthusiasm after signing up for a race in 2019, but those who did — including myself — spent hours in the rolling parkland, baking under the spring sun, and plodding out our distances towards the finish line.

    I had signed up for the 25km edition, the ”Baby Ultra”, and just a bit more than a half marathon. Road race distances are a meaningless comparison to trail running distances though. One kilometer in the woods can feel like a nature walk …or mountain climb. The mental focus of watching the terrain and adjusting to the trail is incomparable to running on asphalt in the city, and times can vary wildly based on a thousand factors that don’t even exist in an suburban run.

    The woman who I had been training with for the last few months (specifically for this race) and the last two and a half years (in general) was one of those who did not reach the start line. Even as we were debating carpool options and pickup times and collecting our race packages, she stuffed a covid swab up her nose after some worrisome symptoms and withdrew due to a positive test less than twenty-four hours before the gun. A huge disappointment for her after such a long wait for just this one race.

    I didn’t have any excuse.

    And this would mark the third time I’ve run this race. I knew what I was in for… generally.

    I ate my breakfast, and filled my water bottles and packed my trail running gear into my little black truck. I loaded up a group shelter tent to set up at the finish line and tossed a lawn chair in the back, and then drove for about an hour through and east of the city to a bit of medium-sized provincial parkland wrapped around a cluster of lakes and rolling landscape all traced through with trails and winding paths.

    In the winter this is a popular cross-country skiing area, and the wide paths are groomed by a tractor-sized ski-track groomer that sets paths in the road-width nature path.

    In the summer, the province mows and maintains the trail for cyclists, and hikers and runners, but it is still a rutted, rooted, muddy mess in places.

    The longer editions of the race, those running multiple laps to clock in 50km, 80km or even 100km, had started in some cases before I’d even gotten out of bed and had been running for as much as six hours when I stepped to the start line. Even in our little running crew, about half of our contingent were doing the 50km double lap race, while a few of us tackled the more conservative 25km baby.

    Even so, by 11am when our start time finally kicked in, the day still felt young though the sun was high and the skies were blue and the multiple cups of coffee I’d consumed leading into it all had well-and-good kicked in.

    With an unceremonious countdown from five, a couple hundred of us were off into the woods for our crack at the trails.

    I could detail thousands of bits that still cling to my memory now the next morning. The mud. The sunscreen sweating into my eyes. My running companion chatting away to me and the trees and everyone who we saw. Leaping over roots. Hearing rumours (and later genuine reports) of a bear on the trail. That tree that seemed ready to topple in the breeze, cracking and groaning as we dodged by. The glorious taste of fresh cut watermelon at the aid station. Taking off my shoe 14km in to bandage a small, fresh blister. Swatting away swarms of bugs. Or the hundreds of little micro conversations that were had as we passed or were passed by others.

    It was a slog. A glorious, painful slog filled with three hours of unique experiences.

    Yet, to be clear, I haven’t run more than a half marathon distance of 21km since well before the pandemic started. Twenty five kilometers, and trail kilometers at that, were tough. There are many mighty fit folks, lots of whom passed me as I forced my body up yet another hill, who cranked through multiple times more distance than I did and still looked fresh as the morning dew. I struggled, admittedly. I walked long bits of it willing my legs to achieve a speed faster than a brisk woodland stroll, particularly near the end stretch as the aches and pains and mental fog began to hurt everything about the experience.

    Then we rounded a corner and there was the finish chute, a pathway between the tents and lawnchairs of the spectators and crews leading into the flag marking the finish line, everyone cheering and clapping and one couldn’t help but push just a little bit harder and finish the race strong.

    And suddenly, after two and a half years, the whole thing was just done. I collapsed into my lawnchair and recovered my wits and my breath. Twenty-five kilometers of trail behind me, and for the first time in a very long time, not a single race on my calendar. As I sipped my water, and ate the bison smokie dog they handed me at the finish line, and waited for the other runners in our crew to finish, we chatted and relaxed.

    I don’t know what is next, but I think I’ll rest my legs a few more days before I try and figure that out.

  • Little Lives

    Sunday Runday, and my morning run (though short) was a fast, local race.

    Too often I discount and downplay the value of lacing up for a cause that isn’t just another tick on the tally of my own personal achievements. Yet a five kilometer fundraiser race, as far removed as it is from the epic half marathons and ultra trail races that seem to consume my training calendar these days, is a heartwarming reminder of my sports more enduring legacy in the modern running landscape.

    Some backstory may be relevant here.

    I often write and talk about my ”little run club” but the truth is that prior to the pandemic we were a crew that was often forty or fifty members strong. The last two years have whittled us down to less than half that number, and only time will tell if some of the folks who drifted away will return. Two years is a long time.

    Between those who remain and those who have gone away, some of have been running together for well over a decade. Also, needless to say, some of our membership are not the young thirty, forty and fifty year olds that we were when we met and started running all those years ago. As years have ticked by many of our crew have transitioned from a running crew to a walking club, still keeping themselves woven in as part of the social fabric of this club. No matter, though, we all meet back at the same parking lot for chats and coffees. A decade or more and people have had rich lives swirled around this little sport, changing jobs, growing their family, moving too and fro, and even passing on.

    Fair to report that not everything is good news when years pass and people change and stuff happens.

    The story, as best as I know it, goes something like this. About four years ago, one of those aforementioned runners-turned walkers-became a grandmother, and as happy as that occasion should have been, it was shrouded with bad news about a huge complication: that her new grandson had a congenital heart defect and would require a transplant.

    Daughter-slash-mother, a runner like grandmother, turned her grief into motivation and started an annual fundraising race. “Fundraiser for free-health-care Canada?” you ask. Well, there are plenty of costs outside of hospital bills that families need to account for, and our health care system has limited funds to contribute to things like research and family supports and outreach.

    Those efforts, as announced as we stood at the start line for this morning’s edition of the 5k family fun race, runners bunched in around kids on bikes and tots holding their parents hands, has raised a quarter million dollars for the cause since its inception.

    Now my friend’s grandson has spent a lot of time in hospital and will likely never be a kid free to adventure and play without restraint, and certainly may never be seen sprinting to the finish line at the lead of the race that he inspired. Instead, we all put our personal training plans aside and dash through the course for whatever bit of hope for a cure and support for that family that such an effort inspires.

    Rich lives and a decade of running with the same small group tangles your lives together in a way that leads you to prioritize your actions and your thoughts.

    I’ll be running a much longer race next weekend, a slogging ultramarathon through the rolling lakelands east of the city and for no other reason than to say I can do such things. But something tells me that even years from now I’ll remember little five klick runs for the good of little lives just as fondly as the big races.

  • The Mystery of Big Island (Part Three)

    It’s been nearly a year and a whole long winter of impassable trails through the river valley since I posted an update about the work being done to turn a small bit of land with a big local history into a small provincial park.

    The last time we thought about that effort on this site, a small group of us had gone off on a short adventure run to test our prospects of finding a runnable trail between my house and the bit of natural space clinging to the edge of the river.

    What we found instead was a dead end. And a furthering of the mystery behind this bit of future park where it seemed our odds of future adventure were good, if not simple to find.

    You can read about the first two parts of that adventure here on this blog in The Mystery of Big Island Part One and Part Two.

    The mystery seemed as if it would continue to allude us with no more media coverage and limited ability to drop into a snow-filled river valley for our own fact-finding-fun prior to May. My aim was to start up my investigations once again this summer with some alternative entry options and perhaps drag along a friend or five to continue our search for elusive access to Big Island.

    And then I was meandering through Twitter this morning only to discover this (politically charged) tweet of how one of our local, bumbling politicians had accidently (really?) posted a confidential planning map with some clear intentions for the ongoing work around Big Island.

    https://twitter.com/SeanDunn10/status/1526506339882569728

    (Screenshot of the tweet archived here.)

    The little grey blot in the middle of the sea of appropriately-coloured blue land marks the Big Island proper with some surrounding farmlands clearly marked for possible buyout or annexation or something relating to creating a protected public zone around this little natural treasure.

    I’ve been studying maps of this exact area, trying to understand if there is a good place to park and find access into the valley .

    Clearly if I have a government sticker on my truck (which I do not) parking near to and descending upon this bit of land wouldn’t be a problem. Looking at the tweeted photos it’s clear that if a politician can clamber down into the area in his work clothes, a handful of runners with trail gear must be able to find a way too.

    Of course, this accidental leak implies that multiple people are thinking much bigger than I am about this little future park. I’m working on a video about a different river valley park and some time I spent there recently, but seeing this information has made me even more determined to bring some friends and a camera back on another summer adventure, an adventure to uncover the mystery of Big Island… preferably before they plow a road there and everyone figures it out.

    Stay tuned for Part Four…

  • Stewards of the Trails

    While volunteering as a course marshal at a local trail race yesterday, I stood in the same spot in the woods for nearly three and a half hours. Much of that time was spent clapping and cheering and directing racers away from a detour where the path had naturally washed out near the river bank. But a lot of the rest of that time was me incidentally and casually investigating the condition of the local trails.

    The Inspiration

    A few weeks ago I watched a mini-documentary video by Beau Miles called Run the Rock, wherein the filmmaker stepped out his front door in his running kit, loaded his wheelbarrow up with tools, and ran about ten klicks out to a remote trail to dig up a rock. The story is told much more thoroughly by Miles in the video but the short version is simply that after a friend tripped over an obstacle on their running path it only seemed right that someone go remove the obstacle.

    He did just that.

    The nine minute video runs the viewer through the story and motivation behind what turns out to be a kind of drive towards the moral stewardship of the spaces we share.

    Miles ran the equivalent of a half marathon, out and back to where a small boulder was protruding from the path, and on the return trip he not only lugged the same boulder clear of the woods but did so knowing that he had done a bit of work to make the trail a safer place for himself, his friends and anyone who used it.

    The Parallel

    Standing in the woods for three and a half hours yesterday, minding a curve in the path where the intersection of five distinct trails (one of which had been part of the race course until it was washed out by rain last season) gave me a lot of opportunity to inspect the place thoroughly.

    In roughly six square meters of trail intersection there was:

    … an official survey brass marker the circumference of a tennis ball protruding nearly ten centimeters from the dirt in the middle of one of the paths

    … the shards and remains of at least two broken bottles, crunched to bits the size resembling loose change scattered into the dust

    … a pothole at the edge of, but still on, one of the paths large enough to place a car tire inside and clearly awkward enough to trip anyone who wasn’t paying attention as they strolled by

    The park itself is a bit of reclaimed semi-industrial land that now lies fairly embedded in the southwest suburbs of the city. Remnants of strip mining that ended at least fifty years ago are shrouded like ancient ruins in young tree cover and meandering paths that sometimes lead past chunks of concrete footings. The area is now an off-leash dog park, boat launch, and recreation area snaked through with bike paths, hiking trails and open spaces (great for hosting trail races.)

    It’s also well-used and only lightly serviced.

    All of which means that if one stops to stare at one’s feet for any length of time it’s going to become obvious that the trail conditions in some of the highest traffic areas are lagging.

    The Solution

    The answer, if there actually is one, is probably something to do with personal responsibility.

    To be fair to the overall condition of the park, the spot where I was stood for the better part of my morning was not only a convergence of many trails and a highly travelled part of the deep trails of the park, but a particularly nice lookout and vantage point high up on the banks of the river looking north. In other words, a lot of people go this way and stop here for a rest or a photo.

    Yet, that seems all the more reason that such a spot should be made safer.

    Dogs could cut their paws on the broken glass.

    Anyone could stumble in the pothole.

    A cyclist who hit the protruding survey marker could easily find themselves ass over tea kettle and tumbling down a steep riverbank.

    If only someone could find, say, a Friday afternoon later this week when he had the day off work to wander out there with a pair of gloves, a trash bag and maybe even a shovel.

    I may need to check the weather forecast to see if that someone is me.

  • Marshalling Report: Five Peaks

    Sunday Runday and rather than lacing up to run this morning, I instead bundled up warm and packed my lawn-chair down to the local dog park where I’d signed up to volunteer to help out with the sixteen kilometre-long 5 Peaks Trail Race.

    The 5 Peaks series is a race that I’ve tackled myself multiple times in the past, particularly the edition of it that happens to run through the trails of the dog park that is a five minute drive from my house.

    This year, with a couple friends opting to run it and a couple others choosing to do their part for the local running scene and volunteer, I sided with the volunteer crew and held down a station about three kilometers into the course (and at the top of a grueling hill) waving runners around a detour and cheering them on by clapping until my hands were numb.

    I admit I don’t volunteer often enough… though that frequency is greater than zero.

    As simple as it is, even a little race like this one for a few hundred people took (according to the thank you email that came to my inbox this evening) seventy five volunteers, each working about six hours to make the race come to life.

    I’ve plodded through many courses myself and waved and thanked hundreds (if not thousands) of volunteers who’ve stood beside intersections or manned water stations or handed out swag or helped me find parking for my vehicle.

    It makes me realize that in a year where I’m still a little less than keen to run a heap of actual races, it might make a lot of sense to find ways to participate without sneakers and a bib and to bring that volunteer frequency number up a lot higher in relation to my finisher medal count.

    It’s about keeping the sport strong and vibrant.

    It’s about giving back to something that has given me a lot over the years.

    And it’s a warm and fuzzy feeling all around, too.