Training Log Archive: Bash

Canadian Death Race Report
(Warning: this is long!)
(Garmin battery died partway through.)

The Canadian Death Race is a 125 km mountain trail run near Grande Cache in northern Alberta. The route travels single track, ATV trails and gravel roads, and crosses over three scenic mountain summits. The race attracts about 370 solo runners and 270 relay teams of 2-5 runners. It was my major racing goal for 2012 and would be my longest run to date by 43 km. In a typical year, fewer than 50% of solo racers finish the race so this was definitely a journey into the unknown. Some of the best runners I know have had DNFs at CDR, and a few others have finished with considerable suffering.

When I first signed up, I divided the 125 km by the overall 24 hour cut-off and thought it sounded possible in theory. But then a few weeks ago, I discovered that the important cut-off was 67 km at 11 hours; we had to finish more than half the race in less than half the time. Now that wouldn’t sound too bad if we were talking about the Bruce Trail in Caledon, but this 67 km included Leg 2, the most technical leg of the course with two mountain summits surrounded by steep ascents and descents. My average pace would plunge there and I’d need to make it up on Legs 1 and 3, which are easier but far from “easy”.

This didn’t suit me well since I’m pretty good at pacing myself consistently but I would need to go out hard and then slow down – the exact thing I try not to do. I’d set a time goal of 22 hours since I would be crazy to aim for the absolute cut-off of 24 hours, so I reviewed the results from the past two years and found median leg times for runners who had finished around 22 hours. Those became my race day targets for each leg, and they were scary. For example, I would need to do the first 19 km leg at my usual 25 km trail race pace. I’d never started an ultra that way and didn’t know if it would work for me. As race day approached, the forecast got hotter and there were reports of unusually boggy conditions due to heavy rains, so conditions would be slow. Lovely.

Sean Roper, Marian Grant (adventure racer from PEI) and I were lucky to share an excellent support crew in Pat Chan, a very experienced adventure racer and volunteer from Edmonton, and Erin Ruttan, my longtime friend from Calgary who has just completed her first half-Ironman. Our group arrived in Grande Cache on Thursday and Friday, did last minute shopping, enjoyed the pre-race pasta dinner and attended the race briefing by “Dr. Death”.







Phil Villeneuve was in town along with three elite Salomon runners – Grant Guise, Julia Boettger and Jeremy Ritcey. (That’s Marcelo on the left, who helped them out.) Great to see Phil and meet these top athletes.





Here they are doing their pre-race course analysis. (These Salomon team pics are Phil’s.)



I seldom sleep well before a race but things were OK until my good hydration woke me at 4 a.m. From that point on, I lay awake in a bedroom filled with wildlife. Not actual bears and cougars, of course - just the 2 m poster boards that I’d seen at the visitor centre. My mind churned. When a bear is silent, I’m supposed to… what was it again? And when it says “woof!”, I should speak and make myself look big? Or was that the cougar? No, I’m supposed to stab the cougar in the nose with my trekking pole – I remember that one.





In the morning, Pat went ahead to TA1 while Erin came to the start with Sean, Marian and me.









The weather was perfect which meant that it would be way too hot later in the day. The forecast was 27C and the heat would magnify in the valley on Leg 3, where we would spend much of the afternoon. There was also the threat of thunderstorms on the climb to Mt. Hamel, which scared me more than the heat since it would be hard to get to safety quickly if a storm arose suddenly.

Erin took this awesome photo of the start area.



After the opening ceremonies, the RCMP led us out and we began to run. Erin got pics of us as we passed by. Here’s Salomon runner Grant Guise from New Zealand, the eventual winner.



And Marian, Sean and me. (Yes, I was already bringing up the rear of our little group.)







The first 5 km is the only part of the course on paved road, then we headed into the forest. This was a crowded section with short, steep climbs and huge mud bogs. Leg 1 may be the shortest but it still isn’t super easy as trails go. It was the only leg where I didn’t use trekking poles, but some other people did and I had to watch that I didn’t get their pole tips in my eyes.


(Photo by Joanna Hall)

I had started about 75% of the way back in the pack, and as I watched my Garmin, I started having panicked flashbacks to my missed cut-off at Speight’s Coast to Coast in New Zealand where I paced myself for an all-day effort rather than sprinting at top intensity for the first 3 km as I should have. I knew that half the solos were not going to finish the Death Race, and in starting back where I did, was my pace was being determined by people who weren’t going to finish? Had I blown it right at the start of another big race? Argghh. Although the photos show that it was beautiful running by the lake, I was too stressed to notice the scenery.


(Photoscapes by Margaret)

My target for Leg 1 was 2 hours and I was late – 2:07. My time targets only gave me a 1-hour cushion for the cut-off at the end of Leg 3. If I kept this up, I wasn’t going to make it. I learned later that I was in 185th place here in a race that only ended up with 133 finishers. Finishing Leg 1, I tried to be optimistic but I was already thinking about putting a brave face on my defeat. At this point, I would have bet against myself but I would go down fighting.

This photo of the first transition area was taken by Erin Ruttan, who is a part-time professional photographer and graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design. She took a lot of the photos in this report and I carried an iPhone for pics along the trail.





I changed my shoes from Salomon Crossmax to Speedcross, which I used for the rest of the day. I also took trekking poles and fingerless gloves, which I kept until the end of the race. With the help of our excellent support crew, I was in and out in 5 minutes with 2L of eLoad, a Boost and lots of food. The target for Leg 2 was 5 hours in the heat of the day, and it included the most technical stretches of trail in the race. We started climbing Mt. Flood almost immediately. The ascent was relentless, sunny and humid. I’d expected it to be dry but my shoes were caked in mud soon enough.







When we had climbed for awhile, we met a couple of super cheerful volunteers who directed us up onto a nearly invisible track through thick vegetation. It was a slow, steep climb until we finally got above the vegetation into open terrain. Along the way, a number of people pulled off and took a break in the shrubs, gasping for breath. Those of us who were still mobile spent a lot of this section asking, “Are you OK?” “Need anything?”

Then we emerged into the open land near the top of Mt. Flood, and the cool breeze was fantastic.




(Photoscapes by Margaret)



It was beautiful, and some runners stopped to eat and enjoy the view. I was too worried about cut-offs to stop so I just took a few photos and started my descent. After an initial steep downhill on ATV trail, we headed into the Slugfest. Looking at a map, it looks like someone drew a straight line between two trails that needed to be joined in order to create the Death Race course, then they put up some flagging tape and trimmed a few branches. For several kilometers, we marched in single file. Some of the descents were insanely steep and slippery with loose earth and rocks; basically, they were cliffs with dirt on them. Different people attacked them in different ways, and that added to the challenge. There were times when I used my trekking poles and other times when I held them in one hand while I dangled from saplings to get down a slope. There is lots of talk about the steep powerline descent from Mt. Grande but I felt this section was much tougher, partly because it was necessary to negotiate very difficult terrain with so many people around. Racers had spread out more by the time we hit the powerline.

When we had gone down far enough, it was time to start the climb back up to the summit of Mt. Grande. The Slugfest continued for awhile – scrambling up rocks and muck and roots. Finally, we emerged onto a gravel road. I had developed a sudden hatred for my favourite eLoad and was thrilled to hit the emergency aid station where I glugged down a huge amount of pure water. Then I phoned Erin (one of the joys of having cell signal on much of the race course) to tell her that I wanted water in my bladder at the next TA. I stopped at every creek to dump icy water on my head. Other runners were drinking directly from the streams.





We made it to the top of Mt. Grande where we had a terrific view of Grande Cache. This nice photo was “borrowed” from Phil Villeneuve, who ran up the day before.





I could feel the altitude (3,000-7,000’) in the early parts of the race but it became less apparent as time went on – perhaps because there was such a range of other discomforts to distract me. ;) From Grande, the descent was steep, rocky and definitely could have used a few switchbacks! (Phil’s photo. When I saw this view, I was a little too preoccupied to think about photography.)



It didn’t ever feel risky like the descent from Flood but it was very long, rocky and unrelenting, particularly the famous portion along the powerline. I can’t imagine doing it without trekking poles, and I bounced cheerfully past a few people who were struggling. I still felt my quads by the time I got halfway down but the poles took much of the stress off my knees and prevented a few falls.

When we got to town, we had a couple of kilometers through the streets where locals cheered and shouted, “Go Death Racer!” Lots of fun! TA2 was at the start/finish of the race, and I met Erin there. Pat had already moved ahead to meet Sean at the end of Leg 3. My target time for this leg was 5 hours and I came in at 5:04. I was 97th on this leg split so as expected, the mountain legs suited me better than the flat ones where running speed mattered more. Things were looking good for meeting the Leg 3 cut-off but it was too soon to slack off. After another 5-minute TA with delicious fruit, I was off for Leg 3.

The third leg is considered to be one of the easier ones because it is mostly downhill or flat after an initial steep climb through the landfill. (Hello? Bears?) However, it was insanely hot because much of it was in a valley along a river, and the trail had lots of ruts, loose rocks and mud. I didn’t find it easy but once again, that’s because I felt obliged to push harder than I wanted to go. Because of the mottled light and the rough trail, this is a section where people often get injured in falls so it required good concentration. Sean saw a bear on this section and I felt like there could be a bear around every bend. Fortunately, there were other runners around most of the time so it wasn’t a big deal. It was around this time that I started to notice a big difference between the relay runners and the solos. The solos were all dirtier, and some of us were really dragging. As we suffered, the relay runners would come tripping cheerfully by in their clean, shiny running outfits with big smiles and neat hair and hearty cries of “Good work!” as they left us in their happy dust.



Finally, the technical trail emerged onto a gravel road, then we crossed the river and ran along the highway to the TA. I had been doing math with my Garmin for the entire leg, and by 5:30 p.m., I finally allowed myself to believe that I was going to make the 7 p.m. cut-off so I did a little walk-run for the last 5 km, figuring that I should start conserving energy for the second half of the race. I felt the worst on Leg 3 of the entire race – a little light-headed in the heat. Really blah. I am so glad that I did so much training in the heat back in Ontario since I’m sure I would have felt much worse. I seriously wondered if I had blown all my energy too soon in my attempt to meet the cut-off. I promised myself to never do another ultrarun where early cut-offs would stress me out. I got into TA3 at 6:13 p.m. in plenty of time for the 7 p.m. cut-off. I was 105th on the leg split, so I guess I was running better than I felt.

Ursula, who was the female winner last year, had told me that she had taken a 15-minute break at TA3 for a hot meal, so that was in my plans as well. By the time I ate, lubed my feet, taped a blistered finger, changed my socks and shirt and grabbed food, drink and headlamps for the longest leg, I’d been in the TA for 25 minutes. I could have been quicker but all this TLC gave me a new lease on life. I headed up toward Mt. Hamel feeling fantastic physically and mentally.





It was a 10 km climb where the first part was on rocky ATV trails and the final part was on gravel roads. I ran any little downhills and passed a number of people who were starting to flag.


(Photoscapes by Margaret)

Unfortunately, I saw Marian in this section, cramping and feeling terrible. When we emerged from the trees, we could see the little hut on the Hamel summit but we still had a long climb to get there. The last part of the climb was beautiful in the evening light, and the other racers were chatty and happy now that we’d survived the worst of the race course.



The top of Hamel came sooner than expected. We had to run downhill along the mountain ridge on a rocky trail for about 400-500 m to get a flag and return it to the volunteers at the summit.

The perspective in this photo from the highway doesn’t make it clear that the hut is on the summit but this is what Hamel looks like from the bottom. We ran to the clifftop on the right.



You could not wipe the smile off my face. It was 9 p.m. and I had until 8 a.m. to finish the last 45 km. There would be more climbing but this was the final mountain summit.





I texted Richard and Erin as I started my descent. I learned the sad news that Pat had taken Marian to our hotel after I’d seen her. I gritted my teeth, flung out my poles and pounded my quads – ouch, ouch, ouch. I stopped to put on my headlamp before it was necessary since I was often alone now. I used Richard’s ‘BentBlaster for the first time and it was awesome. Super bright, lightweight and it worked all night on a very bright medium setting.

We had more climbing to get to the Ambler Loop, and we crossed the biggest bog of the race. There were some spooky sections around there. I pushed a little harder in hopes of catching up with people but whenever I did, I would eventually get restless and feel like I should push a little more. I spent awhile with Bob Nicol who was running Legs 1 and 4 in bare feet. Not barefoot-style shoes - actual bare feet. He loved the mud puddles!

The Ambler Loop is a 5 km downhill-uphill loop that racers do on the descent from Hamel. There is an aid station at the start and end of the loop, and it is the one place on the course where we could send a drop bag. I had been regretting that I didn’t eat any of the peaches I’d brought so I was over the moon to find little cups of peaches on the table. I did much of the Ambler Loop with a fellow wearing Vibram Five Fingers. He was happy with them but slipped on the sides of the big bogs so I was happy with my more aggressive tread.

At the aid station, I put a litre of water into my bladder, then we had about 7 km of downhill running on a gravel road. I ran into George Duffy from Whitecourt, BC, whom I’d met on the climb to Hamel and we took turns pushing each other whenever our interest in downhill running waned. “Sure it hurts, but this is as easy as it’s going to get for the rest of the race. We can’t waste it.”

When we hit the ATV trail along the highway, we walked the last 2 km to the TA. We were going to finish within the cut-off unless a mountain lion ate us. Yay.


(Photo by Erin)

When I set my original targets, I was supposed to arrive at TA4 at 1:40 a.m. I got there at 1:37 and did a happy dance. I was 69th on the Hamel leg split with a time of 7:24. As I got food and drink for the final stretch, Pat and Erin told me that Sean wasn’t feeling well but was pushing to the finish to get his UTMB points. Good on him!



It wasn’t until I saw Erin’s photos that I noticed how much Sean was wearing at this TA compared to me. I stayed warm for the entire race but it looks like Sean got cold since he wasn’t running at his usual pace.



I’d seen George head out before me and wanted to catch him. The first part of the Leg 5 trail is eerie singletrack. Perfect bear country. I was alone for quite awhile and banged my trekking poles together and against trees as I went by. Eventually, a guy named Steve Acorn from Edson joined me and we kept up a decent pace until we met George. Awesome – I wouldn’t have to be alone in the dark for the rest of the race since George and I had been maintaining a similar pace. The three of us were doing a walk-run although we walked every uphill.

At one point, the trail goes right through two big rocks – the Crack of Doom. Phil took this scenic photo in daylight.



It looks much more ominous at night when we were there! (Photo by Dave Pilgrim)



After almost 2 hours, we reached the boat where we needed to give the Grim Reaper our Death Race coin in order to get a ride across the river. Even though I’d checked it several times, naturally when I reached into the zipper pocket, I couldn’t find the damned thing. I didn’t want to run 110 km only to DNF! I emptied things out one at a time and found it tucked into the bottom corner. We rode across, then had a big jump from the boat onto slippery rocks.

The last section of Leg 5 includes 1,000’ of climbing out of the river valley which started immediately. It was steep and tiring but we pushed hard because we knew we were almost there – about 13-14 km left. I thought I was chatting with George until the guy behind me in the dark said, “No, I’m Steve.” Then he passed me, and I was alone and couldn’t see anyone else’s light behind me. Crap. So I ended up walk-running the rest of the way alone in the dark, banging my trekking poles and thinking non-wildlife thoughts.



It actually wasn’t that bad and there was nothing else to do but keep going. I would occasionally catch up with other runners but I didn’t stay with them. At the race briefing, we’d been warned that we would hear bear bangers on Leg 5 because the park wardens would be trying to clear out bears since they like the area near the river. Sean heard some but I didn’t; I guess they care more about the good runners than the rest of us! ;)

During this last section of trail, I started to run a little more in hopes of hitting my target, and when we emerged onto the uphill gravel road leading into town, I aimed for 50 m walk/run. I was amazed that my body didn’t hurt any more than it did at the 40 km mark of Run for the Toad. Three cheers for trekking poles!

I came out into a subdivision at 21:32. No problem – I could get anywhere in town in 28 minutes. I ran up to the intersection where a volunteer took my number and radioed it in to the finish. There was a pylon directly across the road beside a walkway that led up a hill. I asked the other volunteer (or maybe she was unofficial, given what happened) if I needed to go up that hill. “Yes, up that hill and follow the sidewalk to the finish line.” I went up. It seemed weird that there were no markings but I could hear the loudspeaker and I was on a sidewalk. I ran a couple of blocks and hit a street with no markings. The loudspeaker was quieter. This wasn’t right.

I returned to the walkway and asked a passing man who pointed me to a different sidewalk inside a fenced area. I ran a short distance in here and met a woman who cheered me on. It still didn’t feel right. “Is this the way the other racers have been coming?” “No,” she said, “they go along the road. But don’t worry about it – you’re almost at the finish and this sidewalk will take you there.” Rats. I turned around and went back down the walkway to the intersection with the volunteers. As I looked further down the road, I could see pylons along that sidewalk. Oh well. I wasted almost 10 minutes on my little detour and got passed by a few people.

Maybe it was a good thing because I think I was going to bawl my eyes out at the finish line, but instead I just laughed, shook my head and rolled my eyes at my inability to stay on a marked trail.

Here I am crossing the finish line at such high speed that I am blurry. ;)



I was 69th on the last leg even with my navigational stupidity and finished in 21:45, first in my age group, 15th of 81 women and 70th of 369 overall. (I haven’t yet reviewed the results but they include people who registered but did not start.) As usual, about half the solos did not finish; there were a lot of issues with heat and missed cut-offs due to unusually wet trail conditions.

Congrats to Sean for sticking it out to the finish when his body rebelled and to Marian for hanging in there as long as she did in spite of the pain. Huge thanks to Pat and Erin who made it much, much, much more feasible to do this thing solo. I would also like to thank my Salomon Skin Pack, Honey Stinger energy chews, the ‘BentBlaster light, Black Diamond trekking poles, Leukotape, and my Salomon compression calf sleeves, Speedcross shoes and XR shorts. :)

At the awards ceremony, all solo finishers from past years were invited up, then the new solos went by and got a high five from everyone.



Salomon runners Grant and Jeremy placed 1-2 and Julia was 1st woman. A great day for our team.



And that makes 7 UTMB points for Sean and me! The lottery opens in December. We’ve done everything we can control and from now on, it’s all luck. Naturally, this deserved a DQ celebration.

Event: Canadian Death Race
 

The Death Race starts at 8 a.m. Alberta time Saturday morning and the course closes at 8 a.m. on Sunday. If anyone is interested in following along, there is supposed to be live coverage in the form of "Raw Results" from our SI timing cards. I'm Bib #156. [updated] STORM's number is #374.

http://canadiandeathrace.com/node/100

If anyone checks on it, it would be great if you could add a comment here since I suspect the raw SI data may be a little awkward. I'm going to tell my parents to check Attackpoint.

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone! :)

It's feeling real! Dinner with Pat Chan (support crew) and Marian Grant (one of the other runners supported by our crew). Philly Cheesesteak and the elite Salomon runners ate in the same restaurant so we had a chance to say hello to them.

Big thanks to FB for the 6:30 am ride to the airport. Grande Cache, here I come!

Omigod, there are a bunch of people waiting for the flight from Edmonton to Grande Prairie who are obviously Death Racers, and they are all 6' tall and 150 lb of pure muscle - and that's just the women! I really doubt anyone would pick me out in a crowd and say, "There's only one reason *that* woman would be heading to Grande Prairie!" But I have no doubt about these folks. Yikes.

Easy, humid run in Palgrave West. Small niggles in both knees from recent silly injuries. Hope they don't magnify over a distance.

The Life section of today's Globe and Mail has a cover story on Women in the Canadian Death Race. As expected, the 15-minute interview with the reporter was condensed to about 30 seconds of material - not selecting the comments I would have chosen (as reporters never do) but it's fine - nothing too embarrassing! The only inaccuracy is the quote about Coca Cola. Normally I can't stand it, which is why we never have it around our house, but it tastes surprisingly good in a race.

My pic is only in the print version, which most of us don't get so I'll include it here. (It's cropped in the paper.)



Here's the article.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fit...

As is typical of every Globe and Mail article, the online reader comments are 80% negative. Some don't like the gender-specific focus of the article, while others believe that "extreme" endurance events are really stupid.

"why don't they just run blindfolded against red lights at most of the major intersections in large canadian cities?"

One guy with the online nickname "I am God" took exception to my comment about eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches (one item on a long list that I mentioned to the reporter but of course he only selected a couple of things).

"Peanut butter and banana sandwiches? Are you kidding? You realize you are running 3 marathons right?"

I couldn't help myself... I replied to him in the forum.

"I sure do! :) I have done adventure races that last up to 4 days non-stop so I have lots of experience with planning how much fuel I need and what goes down well during a hard effort like that. I'll eat many other foods in addition to the examples included in the article - gels, salted nuts, chips, Honey Stinger electrolyte chews, coffee, Boost, fruit, sports drinks and some pasta before the long night leg. I'm always interested in new ideas though... What foods have worked best for you in long races like this? ~ Barb"

P.S. Note that the phrase "you arsehole" is implied in the first sentence of my reply even though it's not explicitly written. :)