In June 2023, I ran the Bighorn 100 in Wyoming. It’s a classic race in the remote Bighorn Mountains and one that I’d had my eye on for a while. I had been working with my coach Adam Campbell for some time and I was hoping to have a competitive day. Unfortunately I made poor training and life decisions in the months leading up to the race that set me up for failure. This led to both a disappointing result and some serious burnout problems that lasted the rest of the year.
It’s taken me a while to write this one. For months after the race, I was too burnt out to want to relive it. But there are plenty...
I spent a lot of time on the couch in 2023. After a hectic spring, I was burnt out and needed to rest. I kept busy during the day, but evenings were for relaxing and Anne and I watched a lot of TV together. The majority was stuff I’d seen before (Seinfeld and X-Files), but we also watched 1883 and Big Little Lies, and both were standouts. 1883 was particularly good and surprised us given that we didn’t care all that much for Yellowstone. I watched the first season of The Last of Us, which was very good at the beginning, but I lost interest towards the end. The zombies went from scary to silly.
Last fall and winter were busy times for me. In September, I drove Betsy across Canada in time for the WAM 100. In the weeks following the race, Derek and I spent three weeks together exploring Vancouver and the surrounding areas all while diagnosing a transmission issue in the van. At the end of this period, I arranged for Betsy to have her transmission rebuilt while Derek and I moved all my belongings down to Arizona in his truck and trailer. Between November and February, Anne and I split our time between Montreal and Southern California. To top it off, I drove a fixed Betsy down the west coast from Vancouver to Laguna Niguel, CA for Christmas. It was tiring.
I signed up for the Whistler Alpine Meadows (WAM) 100 miler in the spring. The event had returned from a two year Covid hiatus was now a Hardrock 100 qualifier. With almost 9000m (29k feet) of vertical gain, this wasn’t entirely a surprise. Even though I would be in Montreal for the summer — and would have to train — I knew the course well from the 110km race in 2019.
Being a tough, steep race, requiring both strong hiking and running skills, WAM was my kind of race. Plus, it would be an excuse to return to Whistler, somewhere that has become rather special to me in recent years. Anne and lived in the village for 6 weeks...
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...
