Good day friends! Well, after the last unsuccessful race outing (in my mind anyway), it’s time to put that in the past and look at another race I took part in. This would be my first long ultra of the season, the 100km Quebec Mega Trail, taking place around Mont Ste Anne in Quebec. The race took place over the July 1st long weekend, so we opted to make a fun weekend of it, hanging out with friends before and after the event. All others were doing shorter distances, but I figured I should still be fine for some post-race […]
Ultra Running
18 posts
My trail running race season had wrapped up. It was time to turn my focus to winter sports. So why then did I find myself on a Thursday night hitting ‘register’ for a 50k trail race in 2 days? Some might say I have an addiction of sorts. They would be correct. The bottom line was that my feet felt good, my legs felt good, and I was looking for that little bit of motivation to keep active going into winter. Plus, the race was taking place at the Ark, which has a soft spot in my heart. All told, […]
As I crested yet another little rise, feeling the many kilometers in my entire body, I could utter only a single word to myself in my internal monologue: “run”. So goes the simple existence of an ultra-runner deep into a long race. In this case, it was the 106km Midnight Moose Ultra, taking place in Gatineau Parc, so near my house, yet so far away mentally. The mantra I trained myself to repeat ad nauseum is simple: “Run where you can, walk where you have to”. This truly is the key to getting through an ultra. You need to simplify, […]
Now that you’ve read all about the lead-up to the big race, it’s time to get into the actual race reporting, isn’t it? First off, let’s clear up the title of this post. As many of you are aware, a month before this trip, I also found myself out west for another race, the aptly-named Sinister 7, which of course you can read all about. Unfortunately, at that race, I ended up with a DNF, but one that I had to wear as a badge of honour in my journey as an ultra runner. The conditions and my own mental […]
I looked down at my watch again and did the math in my head for the thousandth time. I’d lost some time on this leg, but in theory, it was still *possible* that I’d be able to finish my first 100 miler within the 30 hour time limit. However, there were a few problems. First, it was nearing 10pm, and my headlamp was in my transition bag which was another mountainous 8km of singletrack away. In addition, I wasn’t actually sure when I had last ate or drank anything, and my whole body felt ‘off’. And so it came to […]