This wasn’t supposed to be my first 100 miler. For years I’d intended to run the Fat Dog 120, a 120 miler. I’ve never learned the history of the extra distance, but being one of the best known races in BC, I’ve wanted to run it ever since I got into ultrarunning. It’s special to me because it ends in Manning Park, a place I’d visited as kid, done numerous training runs as an adult, and is home to the northern terminus of the PCT. After a strong year of training throughout 2019, I registered to run Fat Dog in August 2020.
I ended 2019 feeling more excited about ultrarunning than I’d ever been. I was looking forward to...
After my DNF at the Squamish 50k, I was hungry to race again. My failure in Squamish was a combination of poor training decisions, challenging conditions, and some bad luck. Despite the disappointing result, however, my body was feeling strong and I was eager to apply that fitness to another race. I knew wanted to run something in early 2022, but the question was where.
In late October, Anne and I were preparing for our 6 month road trip of the USA. Our first stop was going to be in Wyoming, but we knew we would be staying with my parents in California over Christmas. After exploring the race possibilities in the SoCal area, I decided the Sean O’Brien...
The Covid era has not been kind to my running. After almost two years without races, I finally got back in the game and ran the Squamish 50k in October 2021. It’s taken me a while to write the race for a few reasons. Even though I’ve been on some amazing adventures over the last two years, I’ve felt like I’ve been in hibernation mode from a social/online perspective. Many of my other recent adventures also remain undocumented which is a shame. But while this blog may have fallen by the way side, but it has not been forgotten. I’m getting back on the wagon a race report of my DNF at the Squamish 50k.
In mid-March, when the threat of Covid hit Canada and the United States, public gatherings and events were cancelled in droves. In the sports world, it began with the professional leagues — NBA, NHL and so on — eventually trickling down to smaller events like trail and ultra races. Many of us in the ultra world were eager to follow The Barkley Marathons, a March staple that never fails to add to the lore of endurance running. Sometimes these are of stories of success, but more often than not, they are stories of spectacular failure. I was particularly excited for Gary Robbins to return for a fourth crack at the race, and to see whether Belgian FKTer, Karel Sabbe,...
“What are you doing to us, Gary!?” These were the first words that left my mouth as I crossed the finish line. “We’re just making you stronger, one race at a time,” Gary replied as I accepted his congratulatory hug. 17 hours and 43 minutes earlier I’d set off in the middle of the night, along with 100 or so others, on the second annual running of Gary Robbin’s 110km mountain race in Whistler, BC. This was my longest pure race to date and by far the most challenging.
Whistler Alpine Meadows — “WAM” for short — included five races: an ascent race, a 25k, 55k, 110k (ish) and 160k (ish) and each promised a “true mountain running experience”....
