Love
Ultras
After my first experience with an Ultra race, I am hooked! The following is my account of the 2013 Fernie Ultra 50 miler.
Heading into the race, my longest distance run was 43km, and longest run time was just over 7 hours. By all accounts I was very underprepared heading into the race, and as such decided to treat it more as a training run with aid stations. This gave me a great chance to try out my nutrition plan, and learn about any training changes I need to make (apparently there are a lot).
Because this was the inaugural year of the race, it was anyones guess as to how difficult the course would be, and based on the course profile and training runs to date, I roughly estimated that if I really pushed, I could finish it off averaging somewhere around 6 min/km leaving me with a total time of around 8 hours. I (and everyone else I've talked to) hugely underestimated the course, and I didn't expect the technical nature of the trails along the way. The eventual winning time of 9:20 is a testament to that.
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| Where's Waldo |
Leg 1 Fernie Resort to Island Lake Lodge: 13km, 563m ascent, 269m descent
Staying true to my middle distance background, at the gun I fell into the lead pack, feeling comfortable with the 5:00-5:30 min/km that everyone was running. There were ~12 of us cruising close together enjoying some of the cat-track at Fernie Resort and we quickly passed the lead bike who was supposed to get us out to where the single track started. As a result of not paying attention and following feet, we ended up off course just over 4km into the race. The cat-track we were on petered out and we continued on with the bushes geting more and more dense until finally someone stopped and we all grouped up to figure out the best course of action. After confirming that none of us brought course maps, nobody was a local, and none of us had any idea where we were going, we decided to turn around. Everyone was still in good spirits, joking the whole way back. Eventually we hit the junction we had missed, which was marked by a solitary piece of flagging and were back on track and trying to play catch up. As this point, a few of the guys really started hammering trying to get back to the front of the race. Myself and a few others made the smart call to tone it down a bit, and slowly work our way past the rest of the field. I hit the first aid station in 1:39, 10 minutes back of the leaders having passed most of the runners who hadn't made the detour with us. At this point I was feeling great, and made a quick stop at the aid station to refill my water, and grab a bit of food.
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| Working my way up through the field after getting lost |
