Today, while out running, I found a YakTrak. Did you lose one, by chance?
Last week I found one, too. (Dho! Different make and different size.) A few weeks before that, Colin found one, as well! How can you lose one of these and not notice?
As some of you may or may not know I've been training for approximately 8 months for the Yukon Arctic Ultra www.arcticultra.de . Basically since the Vancouver 100 is when I put my mind to this ominous challenge. To be honest I picked it because it freaked the HECK out of me!
Now it's less than 2 weeks before I leave to Whitehorse and I've got a case of bronchitis I'm trying to eradicate.
For those following Ferg's exploits, he has applied to be one of 12 participants in a tribute to Terry Fox's run from St. John's, NFLD to Thunder Bay, Ontario: a marathon a day for 143 days, starting on April 12th, and finishing on Labour Day.
The runners' progress will be covered in a series of CBC television specials, with the CBC working in conjunction with the Terry Fox Foundation.
Running in circles is not necessarily my kind of thing, but when the motley Fools posted the Flash Foolish Gerbil 6 Hour run, proposing a 10km loop 6h run in Pacific Spirit Park, it fit nicely into my plans to run a longish stretch on the Vancouver New Year's Day 50 course. Others seemed to think along the same line, as pre-event saw a flurry of online activity: Rick posted a map, old timers mused about the opportunity and newbies committed to join us for a loop or two.
It all started harmless enough. The sun was shining and I made the decision to go for a longer loop through Capilano Canyon, down Cap Pacific, along Bowser, MacKay Creek and then back home via Mosquito Creek. A modified Night Run loop with a few twists and turns thrown in to get my distance up. There were lots of people on the trails including a lost Japanese tourist, a semi lost group with small children, other Fat Asses (Paul, Action Jackson and Penny) and then the weird ones...
The last couple months allowed me to take part in a couple pretty cool mountain bike adventures. One was an innaugural event, The Chilko Challenge, and another was one of the best mountain bike races around, The Cheakamus Challenge. I have written about them here: http://grahamarcher.blogspot.com/. You can check out each adventure with the links to the right of the page.
This is how the race ended for me and Shannon. Someone from the aids station way up in the Wasatch mountain, mile 28, gave us a ride back back to McDo in the town of Bountiful. We didn't have any money with us and were desperate for a shake. It was a bit of a battle but they finally agreed to let us consume their fine products on credit like any other restaurant. Lucinda picked us up 45 minutes later and that was it for us and the 2008 Wasatch 100 edition.
11:36am: Call my crew, Rob Ruff and discreetly inquire to his whereabouts as we are less than 25 minutes away from the start of Stormy (Squamish Test Of Running Mettle, Yeah!) 100 miler and he is nowhere to be found. 11:54am: All my bottles of gatorade, electrolyte water, flat Pepsi, hydration packs and everything that I'm going to need to get me through the next 27-30 hours of trails are sitting into a plastic milk crate in front of my car.
Well, a few fat asses successfully ran the 2008 Cascade Crest 100 miler. David Crear did exceptionally well and came in 16th overall in 25 :34. Then John and Karl had an Olympic photo finish in 25:50 (if you look at the race results, there is an error). Daniel Probst, Al Harman, Gille Barbeau and others all had a good finish.
So the course record has now been lowered to 6:15:xx! Not by me, I hasten to add. This superhuman accomplishment was achieved by Shawn Nelson, the younger of the two Nelson boys. Both are elite athletes.
