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Published: July 26th 2015
T minus 2 days: Red-eye flight never gets easy. Still all went fairly smooth. Somehow, rental car from Toronto airport was overpriced and we got it from Kipling Enterprise. This worked out to make a quick visit to my old hood in Mississauga. The first stop was Tim Hortons on Burnhamthorpe. Same one, still there. I used to take refuge here on my walk back home in blizzard. I don’t know how I did it. I’m definitely softer now. Nothing looked different at Queenston Public School and its neighborhood. I still remember the first day we stepped into the administrator’s office. This was the beginning of culture shock and language barrier. Lastrada heights was equally unchanged. And Rathburn! As I was telling V about how the Korean convenience store owners used to talk to my dad in Korean. Then boom, there it was! Like everything froze 20+ years ago…does anything ever changes around here??
In Toronto, first thing first. St Lawrence Market, hands-down. Famous peameal bacon was out of this world and Boston fish & chips was fluffy, yum! With happy tummy, we got situated in our Airbnb arrangement near Kensington Market. From there, pre-race 5k fun run w
Carousel Bakery @ St Lawrence Market
The home of the famous peameal bacon on a bun!Diane Van Deren was a short pleasant walk through U of T. It was good to see Jeff at the packet pickup at North Face store on Bloor St. There were ~8 of us and Diane was super pumped 😊. She is a super human but she was totally personable and gave us a lot of insights. It’s unbelievable how accessible she was. Kudos to her and North Face for this opportunity! Running community rocks! It was a good way to meet other runners too. Jason even invited us to another run later with his friends. We really wished we could have joined him but it was going to be a stretch after the redeye. Diane told us about Whole Foods here and that worked out great to meet both my veggie and V’s meat needs.
T minus 1 day: Despite the redeye flight, I couldn’t sleep until midnight. Must be the jet lag, grrr. This would be the critical night to sleep!
We found breakfast at Average Joe's in Kensington Market. Loved the thick toast. Well, it’s time to get real. We hit the road northward to Blue Mountain resort. During the 2-hr drive, sprinkle became
Peameal bacon on a bun!
Canadian bacon at its best!! down pour, no! I read last year’s half marathon race reports and they all mentioned how the rain the night before made the course super slippery. At least the rain stopped when we got into Collingwood. Hopefully, it’s done raining. Stop the bleeding at least. We grabbed lunch at Sobeys and picnicked at the resort. Event tents weed all set up. Diane was out and about and remembered us!
Because I like to psych myself out (haha), we went to scope out the course. We got a feel for “the grind” which didn’t seem too bad. We had to retreat before hitting the downhill, though, due to mosquito attacks. Note to ourselves – use mosquito repellant tomorrow. We also saw that the first mile was cakey mud. My shoes got heavy and lost all traction. I didn't think it would dry much overnight either. After all, it's humid Midwest. Oh well, I'll just have to suck it.
Evening panel discussion was great. These elites are very real and humble. The 5-pt question of the day was what craziest things that happened to them on the run. And they were all pretty crazy. Yet another Sobeys run and turned
out for the night.
It’s a go time: It wasn’t a good sleep at all but surprisingly, I wasn’t tired. Am I that distressed? I got up at 5am, went through the usual routine, including a mile jog. So far so good. The only thing that wasn’t perfect might have been that I felt dehydrated. In hind sight, I should have made it a point to get a big gulp of coffee. Adjusting to eating on the road sort of screwed up the food circulation...
We got in the resort at ~6:20am. We were able to use the real bathroom at the lodge, yay. Runners were scattered around the starting area with that chill atmosphere of the trail races. You don’t really see people doing strides and leg lifts and stuff, y’know. There was a table with bunch of sunblock, Vaseline and mosquito repellant…impressive, thank you!! Nonchalantly, wave 1 started. In 50sec, count down started for us and we were off! There was a girl who was chowing down bagel as we took off. That’s how chill the trail race starting is 😊.
The exact trail that caked my shoes with mud yesterday had surprisingly dried
up since then. THANK GOD! 1 mile or so flat stretch before “the grind” went well. I felt good and let those speedsters pass. “The grind” sounds more intimidating than it really is. It is definitely runnable…on fresh legs anyway. I had no idea how I’d be for the second time around. The course took a sharp turn for a quick descent on a fire road, which sharply became a long climb. It was exposed steady slope. I saw V jog that thing up and go further and further. Top of the hill was the first aid and I took orange wedges there. Behind the aid station tent was a mini ladder that went over the wire fence. From there was nice single track in the woods. I loved it. It was runnable and beautifully green! After 4 miles of nice ride, we reached the second aid. I took oranges again. This was probably the sign of what was to come. I didn’t want to get behind on nutrition but PB&J was not at all enticing.
The next section was the muddiest of all. Even then, it wasn’t that bad. This is also where I missed the turn. I
dragged V with me 😞. It had red “wrong way” sign but I thought Bob said not to pay attention to “wrong way” at the briefing the night before. Luckily, people behind us caught us and got us back on track. We probably went ¼ mile out. By the time I got to the next aid, I had lost V and 2 others on a rolling windy single track. Maybe it was too rooty for me? Whatever the reason, I just didn’t wanna kill myself yet. I took yet more orange wedges and off we went into the big loop on the far end of the course. All I can remember from this section was long exposed fire road climb. How ugly are thou! The aid on top of the hill marked half way, ~3hrs into the run. Sun was beating down on us. I never poured water on myself but it prompted me to. It was that scorching!
At half way mark, I was more beat than I wanted to be. But let’s see what the next section brings. We were rewarded with nice woodsy single track again, yay! Maybe because it was cooler here, I found energy
in me to keep up with V more or less. Back to familiar aid station. Still, oranges were the only thing that looked good. It had been hours but I couldn’t imagine eating bread. Next section was the out-n-back stretch…well not exactly. Far from it actually. The return course took detours down into exposed grassy ski slope just so we can climb up the same slope!! There were 3 of these back to back. These were so uncalled for, especially in this heat. Although I was able to climb with poise and strength, after all of that, my legs were totally shot. Top of the last hill was the other side of the earlier aid station. Again I gabbled more orange wedges and gulped cold water to face the next challenge.
Once we stepped into the woods, the course took a sharp left and down. This was the nose dive on the course profile. I never dreamed of going this section fast so it didn’t crush me. I just took my time taking slippery stairs. Smooth stones were laid down as the footing of the steps, giving zero traction. Stepping off to the slippery mud was even a better
option. Eventually, the course spit us out of the woods near the start area. We got checked and took a breather at an aid station. Honestly, I was pretty done at that point. My legs were shot and on a verge of cramping. 10k remains on the course we’ve gone before. In this heat, I had nothing to look forward to or any reason to get back out there. That was my low point…round one. Little did I know that there’ll be another wave.
If V wasn’t there at that aid, I don’t know if I had continued. Thank you V for being there and reminding me that it’s ok to be in a dark place. V was in good spirit and looked light. I regained strength during the mile stretch before “the grind”. I didn’t think I’d be able to even jog. As expected, “the grind” was the grind the second time. But I could still jog flatter stretch. A couple miles of “the grind” seemed forever. The saving grace was that I knew once I get through this, I’d only have 3 or so miles to the finish. 3 miles! That’s it!! That was really the only
thing carrying me forward. Let’s do this!! Once I got to that point, I was squeezing my energy and was able to keep up with a marathon runner, who was on their first round on this path. Yes! I eventually got to the turn-around, woot woot! I’m so close!! Wait, not so fast...read on.
I made sure I could see the ribbons ahead. This stretch had runners going in all directions that I didn’t question where I was until the on-coming traffic seemed rather thin. Luckily, one of the guys I ran into was a 50k sweeper. He didn’t know where I was supposed to go but confirmed that he hadn't seen other runners ahead of me. He radio’ed Bob and confirmed that I had to turn around with him. Eventually, we met a 50k runner. I had gone ~1 extra mile 😞. It's not detrimental but yeah I wanted to cry. I know I climbed an extra hill and I had 3 more to go. Doomed. I haven’t felt this low since when I hugged a tree for a minute to take a nap on UTMF 90k last year. And here I was in dark spot #2.
I got out of this funk with my usual logic; what other option do I have except to get to the finish? It would be silly not to reach the finish line at this point. Besides, stop here and then what? I had time and I was moving forward. I had no excuse. Although my spirit was able to still move me well on the downhills, I was barely moving forward on the ups. I was so close to bending in half. After reaching the last hilltop aid, I knew I was home free. Just get through that slippery downhill! I felt smooth taking those stairs. I squeezed whatever was left in me and ran the last stretch to the finish. This is it! This is IT!!
As I’m writing this, I realized how I went in with a wrong mind. Did I think it was going to be easy? No. But I was looking for comfort…definitely losing my mental edge. Note to self: read this before future ultras and be ready to face the worst. It was made brutal by the element I wasn’t prepared for – heat & humidity. But that’s the name of the game. I
Exposed
p/c Ultraracephoto think I got behind on hydration and I didn't do a good job keeping myself cool. I felt dehydrated rest of the day and the day after. On the way out of Collingwood, a large iced coffee from Timmy Hortons went down like nothing and I was so happy with a loaded Greek salad from Toronto’s Greektown. Louis meat market on Danforth, a hole-in-a-wall. I busted out efharisto and the lady responded, yay! Success :D.
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Tot: 0.45s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 21; qc: 73; dbt: 0.0939s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
