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.
