2010 Spaghetti Trees Results

After an inauspicious day-before-the-run with the (first!?) Great Windstorm of 2010, 11 brave runners met up without trepidation to brave the always-wild trails of East Sooke Regional Park. Four of them had been up since 4am to carpool from Vancouver, catching the 1st ferry of the day and even managing to watch one of the heats of the Brown Cup at Elk Lake (THE springtime UBC / UVic rowing event) before booting it out to East Sooke. Another Vancouverite drove down from Nanaimo where he was spending the Easter weekend with his family - he took the morning ferry from Horseshoe Bay on the day of the storm and that was the last boat to leave West Vancouver all day! He just had to get to Spaghetti Trees...

We also had a few CFA newbies, who had a bit of trouble registering on the website but foresaw that the run was going to be a good one so they came out & joined in.

And it's a good thing they did! We had a very enthusiastic group at the start including (of course) the golden pig (who still remains formally nameless??). After visits to the outhouse, which one of our hosts had somehow falsely remembered as an actual flush toilet with running water (oops!) and assignments of walkie talkies to various members of the group (Channel 13, 3 - good numbers), we were off. Lysanne's pal Patty agreed to hang out near the parking lot & guard the loot cars. Unfortunately 2 registrants didn't make it to the start – did they get lost? It is a bit out-of-the-way...

Carlos the Jackal volunteered to sweep the 16k leaving the hosts free to run wild from the the start, joined by a speedy Doug McConnell who gave us a run for our money right up until he suddenly turned left and we realized he was doing the 12k (he actually ended up being the only one to do that route for reasons that will be explained below...). He finished close to an hour before anyone else and decided to head back up to Nanaimo - a good 2-hour drive each way! Thanks for coming out, Doug!

A surprise unmanned aid station greeted us a few km into the race with water, a map and Powerbar "goodies", then it was do-o-o-own the Coppermine trail past the creepy old mine entrances to the Coast trail.

Somewhere along the route we realized there are really no "flat" sections, you're either going up (or straight up!) or down (or straight down!) the whole time... which of course, for trail runners, is why we love it. One of the great challenges of this course is keeping your eyes on the trail when there are so many fantastic things to see... including the Spaghetti Trees! Somehow the whole carload of Vancouverites managed to miss them - they'll just have to come back next year & try again!

The weather cooperated swimmingly. After the crazy winds the day before we were concerned that the trails might be a bit more difficult to navigate than before, but while there were definitely a few more downed trees than a few weeks previous, it was all pretty much par for the course in this generally wind-swept land - there are so many ancient windfallen trees everywhere that it's hard to tell when the newer ones fell anyway...

Every so often the walkie-talkies would crackle, keeping the frontrunners in (sort of) communication with the sweep group. We had a great time after the run figuring out what we had actually been saying to one another as opposed to what we heard! Thankfully we didn't end up needing the walkie-talkies for any emergency situations, although we hope in that event we would be able to get the message across to “get to high ground, I really really need to talk to you”.

Teagirl was feeling slow after Cabin Point but Lysanne egged her on by singing silly songs (in direct contravention of Jackal's instructions at the start: “No singing on this run!”) and finding lots of Easter Bunny tails that looked suspiciously like moss.

Elaine & Fergus were steadily motoring along, then “decided” that 16k was just not enough and added a little extra out-&-back to their run – after this they (literally?!) ran into the Jackal's sweep group consisting of everyone else.

Jackal had not-quite-on-purpose managed to prevent anyone in his group from running the 12k (even though many of them had planned to do so!) by saying “No, no, that's not where you turn to do the short route, we just keep on going along here...”; but everyone was quite happy at the end that they did they whole thing.

The Vancouverite Vanpool-of-Fun crazies took about 22 million photos which will be posted to Flickr for all to enjoy.

The rain that had been threatening all day held off until everyone made it back to the parking lot (this actually happens every time the hosts run here; it's as if there's a special signal - “my run is finished, it's ok to rain now!”) where we piled into cars & headed for 17 Mile House pub with the exception of Fergus who had 7 missed calls on his phone... apparently his family hadn't realized the run would take ALL afternoon! So he & Linda headed off to assuage the concerns.

While we drank good beer & ate really good pub grub, prizes were handed out for “best never-done-a-CFA-run-before story” (Elaine), “best performance of the song that was going through your head during the whole run” (Claudia & Reagan), “super-excellent-fantastic sportsmanpersonship” (Carlos the Jackal & Lysanne), “best guarding of cars EVER” (Patty) and “best organizing & implementation of a vanpool from the Lower Mainland” (Kat & Sibylle). Prizes included run-y stuff from Trailrunner mag, Asics, Brooks & Sugoi AND beverages from fantastic Victoria craft breweries Phillips, Swan's & Canoe (the bevvies weren't donated but the brewers deserve props for creating these works of art... we'll work on getting them donated for next year!).

The vanpool had to rush off to catch their 9pm ferry and the islanders stuck around just a little while longer before braving the rainy, windy (and windy... make those 2 words sound different so you understand the meanings!) road back from Sooke to the “real” world. A rather successful day indeed.

If you still haven't seen a Spaghetti Tree, you'll just have to do it again (or come do it for the first time) next year!

Your hosts:
teagirl (Katie) & Lysanne

Photos of the event can be uploaded to Flickr, added to the CFA Flickr group and tagged with SpaghettiTrees, SpaghettiTrees2010 ClubFatAssEvents ClubFatassEvents2010. They will automatically be added to the slideshow linked here: ccc

Video:  Jackal not only guided the city boys and girls expertly, he also produced a video in record time.  Sibylle says hers is in the making...

Feedback:  We welcome and encourage your feedback and comments via the comment form below.  Please also take a moment to fill in this brief post event survey.

Results:

*     Bonus Point for garbage collection
**   Shared Event Host Points
*** membership status