A running weekend to remember

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown,
for going out, I found, was really going in.
John Muir

I reached the finish tape of my racing and running season this past weekend. It was cobbled together at the last moment but unfolded in festival-esque fashion. It was a weekend full of excitement, celebration and, well, running!

In 2013, I finally began to take steps focusing on my own athletic potential. The past few years I have studied other runners and bolstered my knowledge of the ins and outs, history and context, faces, names and places of ultrarunning. After completing my research, I decided to see if I could put all this book-learnin’ to practice and make something of myself.

I raced on road and trail, from 5K to 115K, through river valleys and across mountain tops. I travelled south to the Santa Monica Mountains outside Los Angeles, west to the Cascade Mountains of British Columbia and into Washington State. I explored mountain passes and peaks across Alberta and raced as quickly as my legs would carry me over roads home in Calgary.

I was ready to reel it in after competing in sixteen events between March 30 and Oct. 5. I raced, on average, every 12 days, including a couple weekends of back-to-back events.

To celebrate the season in a sporting fashion I conjured up one final weekend running extravaganza. The scheduling gods smiled upon me; I found three events that fit perfectly over three days. Friday would see me traverse the snowcapped peaks of Banff in an attempt to repeat a novel route in the Bow Valley. Saturday would have me race one final fast 5K along the parkways of Calgary and Sunday would see me run through an early morning downtown, joining forces with Digital Humanity for a running philanthropy project. To top the weekend off, I found tickets to the Friday night premiere of the mind-bending mountain film Into the Mind by Sheraps Cinema and celebrating budding nuptials of best friends over Saturday and Sunday evenings. Getting through the weekend, it would turn out, was an endurance event itself!

Friday

I had been planning a long mountainous solo attempt since the middle of summer. I had a few routes selected, all of them in the Bow Valley. It was my humble attempt to return, at season’s end, to the mountains of my home to give thanks for all my running. I had my sights set on routes in Canmore but after joining forces with The North Face, I learned of a relatively new route in Banff. My new focus was a solo trip across three iconic summits surrounding Banff, Alta. – Cascade, Rundle and Sulphur. The route has been dubbed the Banff Triple and traverses approximately 70K while climbing and descending over 8900m. My intention was to set the fastest known time (FKT) on the route. In mid-August of this year, Paul Wathan, a Brit who resided in Banff, set the FKT for the Banff Triple in 15 hours and 32 minutes.

I set off into the pre-dawn inky darkness at 5:48 a.m. with my sights set on the far-off summit of Cascade. I had my fill of miles, post-holing, swimming through snow and a mitt full of sprained digits. I saw the sun rise over the crest of Cascade, trail across the autumn sky and drop over the top of Sulphur. I saw few human faces along the way but was led up each trail by scores of animal tracks through snow and was greeted on each summit by a pair of ravens. I made my way back to Calgary, departing the Bow Valley under a full moon sky.

A full account of my Banff Triple FKT attempt will be the focus of next week’s blog article.

Saturday

Saturday saw me rise early once again. Though it was 8:30 a.m. it felt even earlier than my Friday morning wake up at 4:45 a.m. thanks to the day’s affair. Luckily for me I had a new pair of HOKA road shoes (think: pillows underfoot or maybe those crazy shoes the Spice Girls used to wear) to save me from my protesting soles and quads. Instead of tights and down jacket I donned shorts and a tee, one last attempt to cling to summertime running.

I joined the ranks of 700-some runners in the park and found helping hands to pin my bib on for me. Overnight my hands had swelled tremendously and I had to splint and bandage them for the race. After a long line at the porta-potties and some group warm-up to techno music, we sped off along the out-and-back course. The grueling day on Friday couldn’t curtail my bad habit and I found I had sprinted on to lead the group. Maybe, like my blogging compadre, Rob Watson, I could just fade from the front. Well, fade I did, but the strong headwind pushed back the other leaders as well. On the course I felt disconnected as I had no voice to share a welcome to those encouraging along the way. I found no energy to divert from the churning of my legs. Sounding as though I was working through an asthma attack and posting a time 20 per cent slower than my PB, I somehow managed to find my way across the finish tape first. The race was a stark contrast to the solitude, verticality and sheer magnitude of the day prior. If time were my only measure, I was finished before I realized I had started. Unfortunately, for me, my legs and lungs were that backup measure to remind me I had emptied what little remained in the tank.

After a groaning roll on the ground after crossing the line, I dashed home to wash and kilt up. With my family, I headed off for a long night to celebrate our friends’ wedding with dancing, good food and lots of recovery beverages.

Sunday

Unfortunately, Sunday morning’s 7:00 wake-up call was tough to decipher, given all those recovery beverages on Saturday night. I had one final event in my season-ending celebration. I had been contacted by a friend to participate in a running-philanthropy project. Peter Estabrooks has been indulging in an annual habit of layering on clothing to give away before running through town, disrobing as he meanders. He leaves each piece with a note, ‘I’m not lost. I’m yours,’ to be picked up by someone in need of a new jacket, hat or pair of gloves. This time he banded together a group of us and we headed out after a morning coffee, looking like a ragtag pile of mismatched laundry. To be fair, we were matching in that our hands were covered in new socks.

We ran a leisurely route through downtown, stopping in parks, on street corners and in alleyways, stripping in solidarity. By the time we found our way back to the aid station, err, coffee shop, we were a matching group of singlet and split-short sporting runners. Our run was filmed by Digital Humanity in an effort to promote community inspiration and spur individual action through small efforts such as ours.

After warming up over more coffee, a toque and down jacket, I again dashed off to finish my weekend with a deserving dose of relaxing, celebrating again with newlyweds and dreaming about future running festivals.