8 Starters - 8 Finishers (none of whom are looking at the correct camera... very appropriate to this event!)
(comment from teagirl's husband: WHAT THE HE** ARE YOU WEARING!? Sigh. Good grief. Can't let you out in public...)
Report:
Ah, the lovely sound of rain, rain, rain...
No way! Nuh-uh! Not on our Spaghetti Trees!!
East Sooke Regional Park worked its magic yet again with a brilliantly sunny day beginning about 10 minutes after the start time for Spaghetti Trees 2011. It drizzled in the morning (and on & off all day in Victoria & Vancouver!) but as soon as the clock struck noon and the Spaghettiers got going, Mr. Sun shone down on us on the south-west coast of Vancouver Island for hours & hours (...& hours...!).
One of our fearless leaders was unfortunately unable to come out this year because she had her hands all over the hot bodies of the national swim team - in a purely registered-massage-therapist clinical sense, of course!
The two brave gals from Vancouver made it *just* in time from the 9am ferry. After some issues with self-timers & cameras, we managed to get at least one sort-of OK starter photo! We got going at 12:04; lucky Sibylle got to do an extra few hundred metres up & down & up again locating the dropped-in-the-parking-lot walkie-talkie, and then it was off to the races. Teagirl stayed behind to wait for a possible cyclist from Vancouver, WA (yikes, that's a long way to ride a bike!), and then she eventually gave up & snuck away to do her sneaky Spaghetti Trees trick-or-treating...
The token male & his harem (!) (one of whom found out about Spag Trees in TrailRunner mag, then googled it & signed up! Hooray for print media & teh interwebs!) managed to find their way to the scary copper mines, past a "surprise" aid station & out to the stunningly beautiful open-ocean vistas. They soon learned that one of the most challenging things on this run (and there are many challenges on this run!!) is keeping your eyes on the trail when there is so much gosh-darn jaw-dropping beauty around every corner. The sunlight on the ocean, the sound of the crashing waves, the eagles, the ravens... not to mention, of course, the Spaghetti Trees!
The Vancouver gals didn't quite find their way, making up their own custom course, sort of backwards, sort of sideways; you know, whatever, man! They found the second surprise aid station just as it came into being & made good use of portable technology to take a picture of the "you are here" map-in-a-ziploc, then continued on toward the scary old (haunted??) fishing cabin.
Teagirl meandered through the sunlit forest, braving encounters with bulldozers, giant puddles & large (& very small) barking dogs. Plenty of time for a cup of tea & a purchase of frozen Galloping Goose sausages ("Boerewors" & "Loukanikos") for dinner from "Bill's Food & Feed" in the Middle Of Nowhere, East Sooke.
Eventually it felt like time to take down the aid stations... unfortunately, #2 was removed a bit prematurely so Jackal & The Gals didn't get any water, bananas, oranges, Mike & Ikes, Hershey's Caramel Kisses (mmm, caramel) or "chocolate-covered graham crunch thingies" before heading along the Interior & Babbington Hill trails back to Anderson Cove - but they were still laughing / crying about the hotly contested "stay STRAIGHT" instruction, and before they knew it they were barrelling down the last steep section of trail into the parking lot where hot tea (of course!) and more nibblies awaited them. Teagirl & Jackal finally made radio contact about 5 minutes before we all ended up in the same place...
We started to get cold pretty fast since the lovely sun was heading quickly lower in the west, so we stuffed our mouths, left a note for Sibylle & Pat (who had adamantly told us, "Don't wait for us"... we made a plan that if we hadn't heard *anything* from them by 6pm we'd alert the necessary authorities) & headed to the fantastic 17 Mile House Pub who had been holding a table for us for over an hour... oops! It's ok, it wasn't actually busy!
We had a great time chatting with our Antipodean waitress & getting to know the mostly new-to-CFA runners & their significant others who joined us at the pub. Wonderful beery & trail-runner-y prizes were distributed with much laughter (Kathleen's rendition of Cat Stevens' "Miles From Nowhere" & Elaine's "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" stand out in my memory). Sibylle & Pat showed up just before 5p so we could rest easy knowing they were safe & on their way to catch the 7p ferry which apparently they did in plenty of time. The rest of us enjoyed yummy pub grub & pints of fresh ale before heading out into the sunshine... which, about 10 minutes later, turned into one of the heaviest downpours I have ever seen!
But that's how it goes at Spaghetti Trees...
Maybe next year you'll experience the magic too!? We look forward to seeing you there!
Check out Carlos the Jackal & Sibylle's videos of the event:
Your hosts:
Teagirl (Katie) & Lysanne (absentee hostess-avec-le-mostest)
Photos of the event can be uploaded to Flickr, added to the CFA Flickr group and tagged with SpaghettiTrees, SpaghettiTrees2011 ClubFatAssEvents ClubFatassEvents2011. Instructions on how to add them via Flickr are here. They will automatically be added to the slideshow linked below:
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.
Thanks to 17 Mile House Pub, Sooke for holding our table; TrailRunner mag for the two free subscriptions; The Jackal & Action Jackson for fueling teagirl's Need for Beer (p.s. it has been / will be shared with husbind CarGuy & Lysanne + Her Handsome Man); Frontrunners Victoria, The Running Room @ Millstream & Discovery Coffee, Oak Bay for hosting our lovely hand-drawn-on-construction-paper posters.
Results:
So, the GPS says the "Long Run" is 16km... but it does take a REALLY long time to run it... so we all kind of feel like it must be more. But then again, there is a LOT of up & down. So maybe it is "technically" only 16km. But seriously. This is a LONG run. A long, gorgeous, fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime if it's a spectacular sunny day in early spring, run...
Don't miss out!
First Name
Last Name
City
Distance
Points
Time
Elaine
Galbraith
Victoria
20km
2
3:52
The
Jackal
Victoria
20km
2+1*
3:52
lisa
hoffner
victoria
20km
2
3:52
Kathleen
Birney
Victoria
20km
2
3:52
Katie
Longworth
Victoria
custom + tea break!
2+2**
Valerie
Bell
Victoria
20km
2
3:52
Sibylle
Tinsel
North Vancouver
Creative Custom
2+1*
4:37
Patricia
Barry
Vancouver
Creative Custom
2
4:37
Deana
(can't remember her last name right now!)
Vancouver, WA
30km bike + Short Run
x
DNS
* Bonus Point for garbage collection
** Host Points
*** membership status
Pat and I had a splendid day. Only regret was that we couldn't hang out in the pub.
We didn't really get lost, did we. We just did a creative custom in reverse. We really wanted to see the group around Carlos again, so we needed to go in reverse...my write up is at: http://www.clubfatass.com/blog/sibylle/harvesting-spaghetti-trees My video might be awhile...
Comments
You are too funny, Katie!
Pat and I had a splendid day. Only regret was that we couldn't hang out in the pub.
We didn't really get lost, did we. We just did a creative custom in reverse. We really wanted to see the group around Carlos again, so we needed to go in reverse...my write up is at: http://www.clubfatass.com/blog/sibylle/harvesting-spaghetti-trees My video might be awhile...