Canadian Death Race

Now that I've completed my first ultra I'm suppose to write a long and detailed report about my race, right? Isn't that what us ultra runners do?

Okay, let's see,
Um, well at first I felt good.
And then I felt really good.
And then I felt just plain ol' good again.
That lasted for a while.
And then I started feeling bad.
And then I did feel bad.
This only seemed to last for a while
because I started to feel good again
This lasted until a mile before the finish
Where I bonked.
But luckily,
in my pocket
I found some m&m's.
And then I finished feeling good again.
Somebody gave me a beer and then I felt great.

Here is a graph of my race on Saturday:

But for really this time...

That was fun.

It was meditative, calming, beautiful, lonely, exciting, painful, slow, and so many other things.

I found the course fascinating for reasons entirely different than what is advertised - running through the city dump, through a coal processing plant facility, scrambling through what is known as "slugfest" - miles of torn-up trails through a boggy, northern rockies forest.

My mom and I drove the 1750miles from Grande Cache to Woody Creek in two days. I got on my motorcycle the next morning and rode 400miles on my motorcycle to Salt Lake City for the Trail Runner Uphill challenge. I finished 2nd to Matt Byrne by .01miles. Rode 400 miles back.

Elephant legs... with all the great advice i received before the race, nobody seemed to mention the probability that I might come down with a bad case of elephant legs following the race.

Pikes is two weeks away. Trans Rockies immediately after where I'll be lining up with my Teammate Anna Frost. That's gonna be a hoot.

Here's some photos:

stuck in construction traffic, mom, enjoying a roadside snack

exhausted shoes - morning after

prayers for the death racers...

after 12 solid hours of running, i got edged out for third place in the teams.

Here's a story in the Aspen Daily News by Chad Abraham about the race.

And finally, for no particular reason - a panorama of the Athabasca Glacier off the highway headed up to Grande Cache.