As my first ever blog, I am going to do a race report of the Silvertip 50 km trail run. As a backgrounder, the Silvertip 50 km is the last race of the BC Montrail ultrarunning series. The start/end point of the run is in Sunshine Valley close to Hope.
The overall conditions of the run were pretty close to perfect. Although the start of the run was a little chilly, the temperature throughout the day was in the upper teens; perfect running weather. The day was mostly sunny.
Although I have done several ultras before, this was only my second 50 km so I wasn’t really sure what my time would be like. I set a goal of 5 hours for myself.
As with most races the start of the race was a little quick. However, given the climbs later in the run I thought this would be a good time to make up some time (famous last words in an ultra!).
As a side note this was the first race I had ever done without a watch. I was a bit rushed when leaving my place in the morning and forgot my watch. I thought this was going to be trouble for me as I usually pass half of my time in an ultra calculating split times, pace times, and projected finishing times. Not this time! I was going to have to adapt!
So for the first portion of the run I made some small talk with some of the other runners to make sure I was running with racers who would be about my pace. I ran for a bit with Henk Van Der Beek, a racer all the ay from England, who said he would be around the 5 hour mark. However, before long, Henk was off and I was running on my own.
At the first turnaround (13km) I was in 4th place with none of the runners too far ahead of me. Henk had gained major ground and was in first place at that point. This was kind of foreign territory for me. Having never come even close to winning a race before, I had never been that close to the leaders that far into a race. I still felt really good so I decided to keep up the pace, and even pick it up a bit on the downhill portions. Before the aid station at 19km I caught up with Matt Sessions. Again, having never been at the front of a race before, catching THE Matt Sessions was a little alarming. “How long can you keep this pace up?
Comments
Silvertip 50k
Hi Geoff,
Congrats on winning Silvertip! As you said, it was a beautiful day to be out on the trails.
My quads were trashed for a few days after as the downhills really took it out of me but I was happy to cruise in as predicted just under 5.
I most likely will be back next year as we are preparing to move to Vancouver in the middle of 2006 if all works out. So hopefully I will see most of you guys out on the trails around NA and BC throughout the time.
Thanks to Rob Lang for the great organisation and thank you all for your friendly and welcoming attitude!
Happy trails,
Henk
Silvertip
Once again congrats Goeff,
I really enjoyed your race review. It was an honour and a pleasure to run with you at Silvertip. You definitely deserved to be up front and the way you ran out there I would have to say you better get used to it. Looking forward to Haney.
Till Then,
Bob Wall
Congrats!
Hey Geoff,
Congrats on your win! Silvertip is a tough course and getting in before guys like Matt Sessions and Rob Wall is a heck of an accomplishment. I'd have loved to give you some grief out there, but you'll have to wait until next year. I hope to write a little story in my blog about how I just messed up my other foot! =;-)
Jackson
Great Race!
I enjoyed reading your first blog entry about your first won race. Congrats on both.
The weather sure cooperated again. Silvertip is such a wonderful race, the landscape, the atmospere...those uphills ;-) and as you mention, the runners. Sounds like you had a good tactic and it worked out.
See you - Sibylle