Race Report: The End [of the Beginning]

Like most things in life, everything is temporary.  
And like it is for most runners, distance running is just a crutch that you don't need forever.

This is the story of the confluence of these two concepts.

obligatory year end 2023-by-the-numbers-and-other-stuff note: "body glitter will give you a second wind, trust me"

(a little context for my new readers this year: for the last couple of years i've been aggregating unused thoughts that didn't make it into my race reports into a year-end catharsis.  most of these are ideas or discussions i had in a potentially-hallucinogenic stupor around mi75, but some of these are thoughts i had in a definitely-drunken stupor 13h into an aid station shift. 

like 2021, it was difficult this year with only one race on the docket....but unlike 2021, so many more crewing hours and way too many aid station shifts outside of Alberta.)

Race Report: 切ない/Setsunai

Full disclosure - this report is long.  

But so was this race, so........🤷

obligatory year end 2022-by-the-numbers-and-other-stuff note: stilettos and broken bottles

can you believe I've never been on Cascade Mountain before?  it's amazing what you can miss when you keep staring off into the distance and trying to escape your present.  or something like that.  (but seriously, i've never seen banff/minnewanka from this perspective and this was trippy as fuck.)

Race Report: "And then fucking taco shorts comes out of nowhere"

Despite dragging my ass around the world on many various adventures throughout the years, I had amazingly never been anywhere in Canada east of Toronto (technically Montreal if we are counting layovers).  Then one day, this scrappy ULCC airline started flying out to St. John's from Calgary for roughly half of what I would pay on a mainline, so I checked with what my bud out there was up to for September long.  He said he was out of town running the Steep 50k in Corner Brook, so I signed up for the 100k of that iteration to tag along with him.  

Yes, you've read this story before.

Me, MEL'NIE! and Tim before the race

Race Report: Stellar Nucleosynthesis

Seven years ago, shortly after signing up for my first 100 miler, I signed up for a hilarious 120miler race just to see what happens after the 160k mark.  (I'm almost certain that this decision was also affected by my consumption of alcohol.)  That race was also a Hardrock qualifier, and after enduring that race I embarked on a multi-year saga to make my way into this "post-graduate" race.  I figured that by the time I made it through the lottery, my teeth would have been sufficiently sharpened enough to be able to make it through this endurance run (not a race!) in the San Juans.  

I made it into the 2019 version, which was canceled by high snow depth, but then was deferred to 2020, which was canceled by a pandemic, and then deferred myself to 2022 in light of onerous travel and training opportunity restrictions during the 2021 race.  I didn't count on getting into Western for 2022 as well, but with fears that I was losing my edge with nagging discomfort here and there with the progression of time, ('aging out', i guess), I elected to bag the two races in the same season.  (and also three weeks apart.)

This is how that story ends.

Race Report: The Zone of Optimal Confusion

Back in 2012, when I was feeling bored with my time after having just moved out on my own, I ended up hanging out with a few random internet strangers and colleagues who got me into trail running.  These folks were terrible influences on my life - I had trouble keeping up with geezers on 6km runs and lacked the appropriate gear for this new sport, which cost my wallet dearly.  But slowly and methodically - my weekly volume increased along with my endurance and capacity to take no shit from my legs.  Folks told me that with enough practice, I could get to participating in these highly esteemed lottery-entered races full of cursing and minced oaths.  

Then on one fateful day prior to the 2014 Canadian Death Race, my entire corporate team realized it took place over the August long weekend and backed out, leaving me to run the entire thing by myself.  I had told myself I had no business chasing after Western States Endurance Run (WSER) tickets because it seemed like an overly onerous endeavor, so the only reason I was running this race was because my company had effectively comped my entry.  The race management saw my name on every leg, ported over my relay entry to solo and I ran it a few weeks after pushing my max race distance to 50k at the Calgary Marathon.  It was messy as fuck and I don't remember much of it, but I got my first ticket to WSER at that race because I made the cutoff by half an hour.  

I learned you could hang on to your tickets and double them by running qualifiers in successive years as long as you kept it consecutive, and alas - this is how that story finally ends.