Last night was our second night of hosting the crew base camp for Charlotte Vasarhelyi's bid to break the Bruce Trail solo run record. Yesterday's alarm went off at 4 a.m. but because she was running in Caledon today, I got to sleep in till 4:30 a.m. before getting up to make coffee and toast bagels for the people sleeping on Thermarests in odd corners of our house.
Goose and Turbo took the first shift of pacing, then Baloney ran through Forks of the Credit. Then Ron Gehl and I took over for the afternoon, starting with the climb up Devil's Pulpit on the Niagara Escarpment, then continuing through mostly rocky, muddy terrain to the far side of Terra Cotta Conservation Area. Char ran more today but the humidity and 27C temperature made her a little queasy by mid-afternoon. At the 50K mark, ThreePinJim, her longtime training partner, took over alone in hopes that the injection of new blood might inspire her to put in some extra kilometers in the evening. It worked - she did 72 km today and got most of the way to Milton. Almost 700 km down, about 200 km to go!
If any Milton/Hamilton trail runners have time available during the day on Tues/Wed of this week, write me for ThreePinJim's cell phone. I think he may be overworked in the next couple of days.
It was fun to meet longtime ultrarunner Ron Gehl. There is absolutely *no* mystery as to how his daughter Laurie McGrath became one of the top ultrarunners in North America. Whereas most people might get to know you by asking things like, "How do you know Charlotte?" or "How long have you lived in Caledon?", one of Ron's first questions to me was, "When are you doing a 100-miler?" I laughed and said that I'm working toward my first 50K. He immediately started discussing the race calendar, recommending a good candidate event and talking about the strategy I should use to run four 20K laps. "Wait a minute, Ron - 4 laps would be a 50-miler. I'm just thinking about a 50K." "Oh, don't bother with that. Once you get going, you might as well just do the 50-miler. And then you should do a 100-miler. And here's how you'll prepare for that..." I get the feeling that it would be virtually impossible to grow up in his household and *not* become an ultrarunner!
Kudos to Char for her amazing effort. She will break the record if she finishes by Saturday morning, and with "only" a little over 200 km left, things are looking very, very good.
A special tip of the hat to Baloney and Trav, whose calm, organized, experienced approach to both the base camps and the trail running contributed hugely to the success of Char's last couple of days. ThreePinJim will be the team leader over the next few days and is doing a bang-up job too.
Here are some random photos showing Char and crew, including Laurie McGrath, Goose, Ron, Baloney, ThreePinJim and me.