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!)

My training partner and now fellow fat asser, Peter McQuillan skied half the course of the Spring Bunny Hop today to find there is a base of at least 2 feet of snow and 19 days to melt it. For Ontario this is unusually for this time of year. Normally I am able to run these trails year around, but this year we've been skiing a solid two months, I don't know if my running shoes still fit. Tomorrow I guess I have go back to road running.(dirt roads that is.) Is anybody interested in x-country skiing it? That might be the only way around. We're still expecting more snow.

So, we made it through! Huge thanks to Brad Holmes.(CFA member) Seven of us started six of us did the whole thing,he did an out and back from BOTH ends plus all the driving! Jeff,Bob,Ludo,Carolyn,Stas,Brad and I, set off as planned at 7:30 from China Beach. Not knowing what to expect, we were happy to see most of the classic trail,plus some creative blowdown bypassing, plus a huge amount of bonus mud! The weather couldn't have been better, and hats off to Jeff for making the tidal calculations, so vital on this trail.

As the rising sun cast it's warm glow over Fromme Mountain and the final minutes ticked down to the start of the spring running of Mountain Highway Madness, I paused to ponder one of life's great mysteries. This run has been on the 3rd Sunday in March at 7:30 in the morning for seven (7) years. The date and times are on the event website in at least 2 places. "How is it that 7 people didn't get the start time right?!"

No matter. Mountain Highway Madness is a fun Club Fat Ass run where nobody really cares how fast or far you run, so why should they care when you start?

Penny, Melissa and Mike were the first to show up. My understanding is that they were jogging around the start line wondering where everyone was at 7:30 on Saturday morning. The weather was fine and there was excellent company, so the fat ass pathfinders set off a day early. Read their reports on the course here.

At 7:00 on a Sunday morning, the streets of North Vancouver are usually deserted but the last paved section of Mountain Highway was buzzing with trail runners when I arrived. The start area looked like that of a "real" running race, as Danielle from Kintec had set up a tent and a bounteous spread of trail chow.

The starting field was quite diverse. At the one end, Ryne Melcher, Rea and Stephen Blyth, who had completed the Chuckanut 50K run the day before and who aimed to run at least 4 laps (60K) today. At the other end, 2 elementary school runners, a young Japanese language student who had never run in his life and myself, the shadow of a runner complete with torn calf and a couple of broken ribs from a skiing wipeout.

We set off promptly at 7:30. Four registered runners, keeners I knew planned to start, were nowhere to be seen. The pack quickly broke into 3 groups: fast, solid and raspberry (those who were out for less than a full 15K lap.)

The spring Mountain Highway Madness (there's also a fall version held in September) is always a bit of a lottery when it comes to conditions. Over the past 7 years we've experienced sunny, warm days with not a trace of snow. We've had snow on almost the entire course (I did it in snowshoes one year!) and we've had monsoon rains the whole day.

Today, the weather was clear and temperatures fresh. There were patches of snow even at the start. From about the 3rd switchback (3K), however, the snow was deep and crusty. Heavier runners postholed to their knees with every stride and there was precious little of a path to follow. Passing runners whinced at Ran Katzman's bloodied shins. Multi-time Mountain Highway Madness finisher Glen Pace called them, "the toughest conditions ever".

As I made my way back down, the 4 missing runners passed by me. "For some reason I thought the start was at 7:45," said Ron Adams. Graham Archer later came by to see how far he could get on his mountain bike while Rick Arikado showed up 3 hours after the start!

John Machray had a PW (personal worst) a week before his Coyote 2 Moon 100-miler, but claims to have passed a kidney stone. Desmond ran home. Instead of doing her second lap, Laddie went to the coffee shop and brought back some warm java for Danielle and something for the finisher draw securing a bonus point for Club spirit.

Many thanks to Kintec and Danielle for the great aid station and prizes, Laddie for her generosity and Kelly at the Mosquito Creek for the cool pint.  Thanks also to TrailRunner Magazine, who provided two annual TR subsriptions.  They just arrived in the mail - a day to late for the awards - and were given to our out-of-towners Lorie and Barry, as the farthest travelled and longest on the course.

Ean Jackson
Host of the Mountain Highway Madness

PS If you participated in the run (yesterday or today!), please take a moment to fill out the Club's Post Event Survey. You can also leave your comments, impressions from the run and feedback via the comment link below (you need to be signed in for that) or in your CFA blog.

Here are more photos. You can add yours to this slideshow by following these instructions.

My buddy Steve Deller sent me this link yesterday. A new 60K trail that has probably never been run. http://www.wildcoastmagazine.com/NorthCoastTrail.htm

First bagger bragging rights are special.  Anyone interested in bagging this with me?

I've hiked the Cape Scott trail. It's flat as a pancake. The beach is awesome... I found a really cool blue glass Japanese fish float there.

The shirt feedback has been great. Glad you like them.

Photo left: A little Ontario FA testing his dads new CFA shirt.

Vanessa Fors has invested a lot of time and love to source the fabric, an innovative material called Chitosante. She also designed the shirts and oversaw the production from beginning to end, answering a lot of anxious questions form your Chief Executive Fat Ass, measuring (thanks to our models Ean and John) and recalculating shrinkage during the screening process. I was amazed how Vanessa, noticing the large chest of one of our members, went back to the drawing table to make sure XL would be wide enough in the chest. Thanks, Vanessa! These shirts are a labour of love. Credits also go to Jess Marshall, who designed the labels and provided the screening artwork and to Michele Sherstan, who spent an evening with me packaging shirts and addressing envelopes.

Why, go out and buy skis that are guaranteed to get you even deeper into the pow, of course!

It's been quite a few years since I hit a telephone pole in a dual slalom race in Park City, Utah, and broke 7 ribs. I'd almost forgotten how much it hurts to laugh with a messed-up rib cage. If I've not seen you on the trails lately, now you know why. Shit happens in 3s. Next what?