philrunshills

20 days until Survival of the Fittest. Part of the Coast Mountain Trail Series, it’s an 18km trail race just outside of Squamish that includes over 1000m of ascent, all on the mountain bike network above Quest University. I recently met Gary Robbins, the race director for the series (and also for the Squamish 50) and pro ultrarunner, who encouraged me to sign up and see how I measure up to the top guys. I don’t think there will be a huge amount of depth to the competition, but it will be a challenge to keep pace with the frontrunners and I’m excited to see how I deal with a little race day pressure. Already feeling the nerves just thinking about it!

Today I joined a couple of fellow runners for an outing that included most of the climbing part of survival, so I got to become familiar with what I’ll be tackling in three weeks. I have to say I’m pretty excited to race up those trails, which consist of a reasonably mellow grade that I’ll be able to run at a decent pace, and I’m hoping my descending skills will be good enough to keep me toward the front of the race. Anyways, it was really nice to join Josh and Sam today, who both have experience with ultras and have lots to share. We had a really good time, running a more mellow pace since they’re focusing a lot on big miles and each ran over 100km on trails this week. When you’re doing that many hours you really have to know how to pace yourself! I think we ended at about 25kms with over 1200m of ascent (My garmin had some satellite issues at the beginning so I don’t have the full run logged). All in all it was a just great to get out there with such fine folk. The community around trail running is really welcoming and I’m lucky to have already met quite a few people who can show me new trails, give me advice, and take me on awesome Sunday morning adventures! It’s always a good feeling when I’m out training and can take the time to appreciate how fortunate I am to be in such a beautiful place with such inspiring people. The next steps come so much easier afterwards.

On a whole other note, I am figuring out the best way for me to take photos while training since I don’t currently own a digital camera or a phone with decent camera hardware. Some of these places are so breathtaking I feel bad not sharing with you! I got thinking that an iphone could be my best option since I like to bring my phone anyways in case I need to call for help, so that would be less cumbersome than a digi cam, and then I could totally instagram some of that shit! Sooo it seems I might be the proud owner of an iphone very soon…

Part of the challenge of trail running for me right now is that I have to travel either to North Vancouver or farther in order to get to some nice challenging terrain. Generally these days that involves hopping on my bike for at least 15k, running for a few hours, and then riding home. Needless to say that can be quite tiring and sometimes I just want to put my shoes on and start running out my door. Today I had planned on riding to the North Shore for a run in the mountains, but I was feeling a little lazy, made worse by the prospect of riding in the rain, so I decided to just go for a run from home. I haven’t spent much time around Stanley Park, and only recently was made aware of the network of nicely groomed trails, so I decided today was a good one for an urban trail run. Running on pavement and hard pack for long distances tends to hurt the old knees a little, so I like to keep these trainings a little bit shorter and make sure I maintain a good pace. So I decided I’d try to hit 30k in under 2 hours and told Sus if I made it that she’d have to give me a kiss. Just a little motivation to run harder ya know! I also knew there was some pizza and cake waiting for me at home which may have helped…

Anyways, here are the run stats.