Blogs

Beautiful blue sky and snowy trails all around. The tempeture to start is about 3 degrees as we wait 15 minutes, but to no avail, we have a no show (the sanest of the group no doubt). Off we hop down the trail, Peter and I, wondering if this is a mistake, should we be on skiis or shoeshoes, to late we've started this run called the Spring Bunny Hop. It's got to be spring somewhere but not here,usally here the trails are pretty much bare this time of year but as we find out we're in deep, up to 24 inches of snow, that's above my knee.

As I sit here typing away wondering how many endurance junkies out there will show up to run on approximatly 24 inches of hard packed snow and ice in Ontario in April. I ran for an hour Wednesday to see what the trails where like, I've run on worse. The trail is somewhat like the mountian madness run in 2006, a little more ice out here, and the snow is a little more forgiving when you step off the trail, still deep though. As I write this my training partner and now fat asser Peter is on his way to verify the trails.

Short notice I know but one of my buddies is planning to do "IT" (Juan De Fuca Marine Trail) again this Saturday.  He has a plan but we are all tied up with the DV this W/E.

If anyone wants to go this Saturday, this is Randy Duncan's original link. http://pih.bc.ca/chat/ReadMessage.php?nMessageID=117656

I thought some of you might be interested in a movie playing at the Scotiabank Theatre (formerly Paramount) on Burrard Street next week. Spirit of The Marathon is playing for one night only, on April 9th.

I came today across the website of this 100 miler run on the Cascade mountains; maybe for others here (read: fools) this run is old news.
And if this race is not yet part of ultra folklore, I'm sure it's fast on its way there.

100 ("+"...) miles, No flagging, no t-shirt, no pacers, no aid stations, "you receive nothing from anyone", no stashing, and to top it all off properly - "if someone figures out what they think is a cool way to use the above rules to their advantage over their fellow runners, I reserve the right to disqualify them."

Nice. Just got back from a run around False Creek after being away for the better part of two weeks in Costa Rica. Now, I’d didn’t expect the run to feel great as, while away, I only managed to get one run in – that being about 35 minutes of getting my butt kicked in 35 C degree heat with probably somewhere around 90% humidity (a run though a tropical rain forest – who’d have thought?). So, when I headed out around False Creek, I was hoping to just get the legs and lungs working again. No great expectations.

Easter W/E, and I'm still kind of injured! The Diez Vistas 50K is three weeks away and I am sticking to my ten hours a week training. Hoping for an improvement in the wet weather, and feeling more willing to do doubles, will make those ten less painful to get! I need new trail shoes... Almost eight hours on the clock so far, with 90 minutes on Tuesday 90 minutes on Thursday, 195 yesterday,60 with Graeme and 24 with Ms. J today... Tomorrow will be an easy 90 giving me about ten hours. Roll on the good weather and some quality doubles.

Well, the time has come for 5 club fat ass members to run the Coyote2Moon 100 Miler: Karl Jensen, John Machray, Chad Hyson, Al Harman and Gilles Barbeau are all crazy enough to be running this spectacular race.

On Saturday, I toed the line at Chuckanut 50k in Bellingham with lowered expectations, because last Saturday, for reasons which I'm still unclear of, I participated in the Quad Qruncher with all the other Fools. 7 loops of a 10km course plus 1 km of purposeful misdirection equals really tired and sore legs.

I mean, who would willingly subject themselves to a 50km race in less than ideal conditions, and then have a brutal 100 miler race the next week? Well, I got my answer when I saw Gilles Barbeau huddled in the warming hut, apparently he didn't get the memo the other Fools got.

It was like a reunion of BC and CFA Ultrarunners, there were 72 registered Canadians, I think only 66 showed up. I joked with Neil Ambrose and Carolyn King that I only ran the QQ so I wouldn't start out too fast and blow up in the last 10k. (Who knew how prophetic that would be!)