Ottawa 12 Hour Race Report

The current OUTRace Ultra series leader Stephen Bridson lives about 10 minutes up the road.  "Up", in Creemore parlance is north.  Towards Stayner.  Fortunately, Stephen does not live in Stayner because although Stayner is much larger than Creemore, for some intangible reason, Creemorites look down on Stayner.  Not quite the Dog River / Wullerton situation, but although Creemore is tiny, it has flair, panache and some other descriptor I have never understood...  Never jokingly suggest that Creemore is a suburb of Stayner.

It makes sense for Lee Anne, Stephen and I to car-pool to a race in Ottawa.  It is a long drive and the fuel savings alone make taking only one car worth it.  Stephen was second place in the 24 hour race with a distance of about 168K (I think) while Lee Anne was first female in the 12 hour with just over 80K.  Almost everyone had trouble with the heat.  It was supposed to be a high of 24C, but I'm sure it reached closer to 27, not factoring in the humidity.  Many people were suffering during the afternoon, with no cloud cover or shade.  I claimed to those far and near that the reason I was faring badly was because my knees were not happy running on the asphalt, which is quite true.  They are causing me much grief today, but the main reason for my less than exemplary distance is that I was under trained.  Since Conquer the Canuck, I have had severe difficulty running long.  My 28K DNF at Limberlost was the only run over 20K in the past 7 weeks.  Apparently, running 5 ultras in 7 weeks causes some longer term issues!

I managed a measly 50K in 12 hours.  Actually, I took a break after reaching the ultra distance (about 43K) in a tortoise-slow 9.5 hours, then walked 4 laps to peg the 50K.  Laps were 1.8793K, which was a long enough distance to avoid getting nauseous going around in circles, but a good distance for reaching the aid station at short intervals.

I am simply not recovered yet.  As mentioned above, walking is painful today, although if you run for 10+ hours, then drive the next day for 6+ hours, conceivably, you will be stiff and sore...  But I would like to have a word with the recovery gods.  I'm interested in their time table for my recovery.  I am not overly pleased with how long this is taking.  I want results, damnit.

The race actually went smoothly, which is probably to be expected given that I never opened it up.  I gelled every 3 laps (about every 5.6379K) and carried a bottle with Nuun on my waist belt.  I actually stayed with Lee Anne for the first 8 hours.  I think this was more because Lee Anne was struggling early in the day, than my running faster than normal.  At one point I caught up to Lee Anne and mentioned that she should not take so many walking breaks.  Her reply was that she was struggling.  I paused for a few seconds before replying because I think the last time Lee Anne declared she was struggling, was during her first marathon in 2000...  I immediately changed gears and told her to start taking more walking breaks.  It was noticeably hot.

My knees and general condition simply deteriorated over the first 6 hours.  I added walking breaks early (only 3 hours in) as I expected to be in trouble due to my lack of conditioning.  Although others were complaining of stomach issues, I fared relatively well, for such a hot day.  A significant exception to the lower mileage covered by most of the runners was Paul Chenery, who broke the 60-64 men's 24 hour Canadian record.  While most had at least one low point during the afternoon or early evening, Paul was more like a metronome - churning out the laps like clockwork.  Well done Paul!

I now have a large break, as we will be walking the Coast to Coast trail in England in August and September, returning a bit too late to make it to Haliburton.  The C2C walk starts in St. Bees on England's west coast and finishes in Robin Hood's Bay, about 309K later.

Have fun at Hali and I hope to see you at Horror Trail.


Cheers!