2009 Seymour Super Fun Run Report - Midwest U.S. Style!

My wife, Lauren, works on the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday – every year. It’s a bit of a bummer, but that’s the way it goes. This year, like usual, I was faced with deciding what to do with my 4-day weekend. It’s typically a choice of: (A) driving from my home in St. Louis, MO to visit my mother in Arkansas, or (B) staying in the St. Louis area to spend the holiday with my Dad & his side of the family.

This year I created option (C) – fly to Vancouver to spend some time with friends and participate in the Club Fat Ass Seymour Super Fun Run! “Super Fun” is not a misnomer, although it’s a little less that fully descript in terms of this year’s event. It was rainy & very wet. This is exactly what I expected so I wasn’t surprised or disappointed in the least bit!

A whole host of characters (and believe me, CFA events are always FULL of characters) showed up for the run. 2009 featured a relatively large contingent of U.S. participants. In fact, 4 of the 15 runners were from the States: Me, from Kirkwood, MO and 3 others from Seattle, WA. Canadians and States folks alike, We all met at Bean Around the World Coffee near the base of Seymour Mountain in North Vancouver to start the run at about 8:30am.  

Event host, Mike Wardas, explained the course and the format: 27k beginning with a long climb up “Old Buck” trail. As we jogged off from Bean Around the World Coffee runners were immediately met by this “hill”. According to my GPS watch we started at 323ft of elevation. In the subsequent 3 miles of SSFR we gained over 1,600ft! It was a well-groomed trail and run-able for the front-runners. I ran most of it, but there were some sections where I was just too out of breath to run, so I shuffled up the steepest parts.  

Since this is a loop course there would inevitably be a downhill to offset the climb up Old Buck. SSFR chooses “Ned’s Atomic Dust Bin” as the route back down. Ned’s is a supremely crazy & highly technical downhill mountain bike course. It was practically a river due to the rain that “blessed us” all morning during SSFR this year. To say that I “ran” down Ned’s would be misleading. I think it’s more accurate to say I was in a controlled fall! Fortunately for me, fellow runners Wayne Guest & Desmond Mott were ahead of me on the way down to show me how it’s done. To my own surprise I didn’t fall once on Ned’s or any other portion of SSFR yesterday.  

After Ned’s the course leveled out a bit, but that’s only by North Shore/North Vancouver standards. By Missouri standards this course was a monster all the way! The “rolling hills” coming in were between 100ft & 850ft in elevation – AMAZING. Sections of the last half of SSFR share portions of the famed Knee Knackering North Shore Trail Run (the Knee Knacker, as it’s best known) on the Baden-Powell trail. It’s beautiful.  

For the last 30% of the race I ran along with Ean “Action” Jackson & Desmond Mott. It was a good thing I did because these fellas know the trail! There is such an abundance of trails on Seymour mountain that there’s no way I would have found my way, even with the handy instructions so kindly provided to me by Sibylle Tinsel (thank you Sibylle!).  

After 3 ½ hours (happily) soaking in the rain, mud & general slop we had made our way back to Bean Around the World. I did feel as though I had been around the world by that point. Some impressive times were thrown down by some of the local participants, most notably Ran Katzman’s 2hr 45min dash around the course, and Wayne Guest’s highly respectable 2hr 52min effort. Well done to them, and to all of the participants. In fact, my new friend Reagan White complete his first run of this distance. Wow, Reagan, tough run to pick for your first run over 25k – good job!  

I think all had good fun and I enjoyed catching up with CFA’er Craig Moore & others at the finisher celebration over a cup of joe.  

Thanks Mike & CFA for hosting the event!   Great to see you all out there, and I hope to be back soon for another run through the woods with you.  

Cheers everyone,

Jason Eads