Yours Truly 50K, Malcolm Knapp UBC Research Forest

In many ways, the Yours Truly 50k is similar to Club Fat Ass events.

There's no external aid, no course markings, leave no trace, you pack it in-you pack it out. And it's free, sweeeet. It's just you and several other like-minded individuals out for a nice long run in the great outdoors, followed by a well-deserved beverage of your choice re-hashing tales from the trail.

Oh yes, there's one other similarity - you're alone on a fire road trying to puzzle out the directions wondering "Was I supposed to turn right, then left?"

Well, the feeling in my fingers has finally returned so here's my report.

Got to the start just before 8am and rechecked all my gear, the briefing said prepare for snow so I had on my boy Capri tights under my mountain bike shorts, Gilles Barbeau made me reconsider the short tights in favour of full length ones. Good call, Gilles!

Nothing formal about the start, sign in with Rob, get your map with enclosed ziplock baggie and head out. Hooked up with Karl Jensen, Ron Adams and Gilles as they were going to be doing the 50k, as the majority of the group took the trail to the right at the first junction, we started the climb to Loon Lake. We set a slow steady pace, but Gilles had some digestion issues early on and dropped back with Karl for company. Ron and I continued up and we chatted a bit about American River 50 miler, which he had written a report about.

Noted that my heart rate was going a little high as we were running a steady clip uphill so I backed off when we hit the snow portion of the trail. It was about an hour into the run, when Rob Lang, who was taking pictures of those going the other way, passed me. Fifteen minutes later I met with some of the front runners, Matt Sessions and Carlos, Mike Wardas (where's my ladle?) and then the rest of the shorthaulers. I took a snowball right in the kisser thanks to Elke. It was fun slogging through the snow as the powder was so fresh I was tempted to take my camelback off and go snowboarding on some of the descents.

Passed Amanda and Debbie going down as they were going up and then I finally hit the trail again. Ron was way ahead of me and during our conversation he clued me in on this aspect, you could be behind or in front of someone by three hundred metres and before you know it, you could pass someone or be passed. It was around this time that Karl and Gilles caught up to me. D'Oh! Actually, this was a good thing as my hamstring was starting to tighten up and Karl had some Tylenol in his pack, I took one and saved the other for later. As I walked to let the pill take effect, Karl and Gilles continued down. Five minutes later, I was running pain free and kept the two in relative sight until the second to last junction. This was, at this point, the funniest part of the run. Judging by the map I had to cross a bridge, keeping right alongside F road, past E and then onto K road, I must have taken a bit longer to navigate this section than I thought as I was running down K because I saw a helicopter coming my way over the clear cut. "Oh my God! They've called Search and Rescue and I still have another lap to go!" But the helicopter continued up and away and I wasn't sure if I had hallucinated the whole experience, the only thing I knew was I better get to my car as soon as possible.

Ran back to the car at 3:01, saw Gilles and Karl as they were changing and getting refuelled. They had arrived there two minutes earlier and were surprised to see me there so fast. Spent 10 minutes at my "aid station" opting for a complete change of clothes, took off my bike shorts shell (this would come back to haunt me in the later stages) for less weight, drank two cups of chicken noodle soup and poured the remainder into a water bottle, dropped the camelback, opting for handhelds and a waist pack. Fresh pair of gloves, warm toque and a PBJ sandwich and it is time for round 2!

This time I opted to go the reverse way as I could retrace my steps and hopefully catch K&G.
Noted it was just before 12pm as I made the slow climb up K in the steady rain. The chicken soup warmed my hands on the way up but was cooling down rapidly so I inhaled it, mmmm.....salt. Unfortunately that was my only source of external heat as the steady rain soon became steady snow, the gloves I was wearing were soaked reducing my hands to stiff claws. The handhelds were soon tucked into my jacket pockets and my hands were tucked into my sleeves. I did quite a bit of walking in this section for 12 km around Katherine, Eunice and finally Gwendoline Lakes. It was very slow going as I saw the 50K runners bound easily down the hill as I trudged up it. The lead guy warned me that there was a lot of snow up ahead, since I had ran that part before I kept my comments to myself, but I wasn't quite prepared for the enormity of it all. Practically most of the tracks had been wiped away by the snowfall or at the very least been filled in again. Some of the trail markers were covered by snow and no amount of shaking the post did anything to dislodge it. I was a little concerned about my fluid intake (after having the soup, I drank very little from my bottles) but I wasn't cramping so I continued on. I wasn't moving very fast, walked the uphills, ran the downhills, tried to find some kind of footing on the flats, maybe next year I'll bring crampons.

I was still finding a way to stay positive, reminding myself that I'm doing this for training, time on my feet, that this was making me mentally and physically tougher. "Hey, if I can slog through this in the wind and the snow," I reasoned, "running 50 miles on a bike path in the California sun should be a breeze!" I hit the marathon point of the run at 6:10 (42.2Km) and remembered thinking, Great, I'm also out of the snow, it should be clear sailing downhill to the finish!

That's when I hit the slush.

As the temperature started to get warmer, the snow became freezing rain and the ground was one big puddle. I think I took 10 steps running and then had to walk 5 minutes to get circulation back into my toes. At my lowest point I was trying to remember an episode of Survivorman: The Canadian Forest, seeing if I had the supplies to construct a shelter and possibly start a fire using the map for kindling. Suck it up, Princess, I thought, everybody's waiting for you at the finish. (Not true, but how was I to know?) There's no way you're spending the night here, you're not going to re-enact the scene from Alive.

Buoyed by these somewhat less than stellar thoughts, I ran down the rest of the way and made it back to my car (one of two in the previously full parking lot) in 7:12. I was one hour slower on the second loop and possibly a little hypothermic. I spent twenty minutes defrosting in my car before making it to the Black Sheep Pub where the waitress informed me that all the runners had left an hour earlier. Niiiiiiiiiice.

All in all, a good training run, the first half of the course was spectacular, the second half, not so much. I DNF'd (did nothing fatal) and was back running trails on Tuesday. I slept in on Sunday.