I went for a walk in the park...for 54 km.

Sunday of the labour day weekend I participated in the 54 km "Walk in the Park" trail race in Kamloops. The event was held at Kenna Cartwright park and consisted of running an 18 km loop three times (there was also a 18 km and a 36 km race). During the 54 km there was 8,500 ft elevation gain. Most of the trails were single track with some double track mixed in as well. No sections with particularly technical footing, but the hills were fairly intense.

I stayed with family friends the night before the race. In fact, somehow managed to convince the runner of the house to join me on the run, he's a much faster runner than I having posted a 3:06 marathon time but he maintained that he would run my pace as he hadn't done any serious marathon training for 3 years.

We started out too fast for my liking on the first lap, but away we went. We did the first lap in 1:51. It felt good, the second lap is where pain started to creep into my feet, well just my right foot. I didn't realize it at the time, but during the race the ridge of my shoe was constantly rubbing against the area under the ankle bone of my foot, which made it hurt every time my foot struck the ground (I think thats what happened at least) and the next day I was limping around at work because of this. The second lap was slower 2:11 it didn't feel horrible but I just felt sluggish in general. At the end of the second lap my friend chose to drop out as he was experiencing some cramping that he'd never felt before and didn't want to risk it turning into something worse. I walked the first bit of the third lap (it was all uphill) and then found some energy to kick a little harder once I crested the mountain. I had come in to the end of the second lap just as the 18 km race was starting so I was catching up with some of them as well there was another 50 km racer that I could see. I felt great at this point so I started passing a few people. Then at the 42 km mark I had a massive charlie horse under my left ass cheek. I lost a good 5 minutes clutching my leg and then walked it off for the next 10 minutes. The last lap ended up being a 2:33 for a total 54 km race time of 6:35:22 which got me 7th place. In my three local ultras I've done I've been 7th place every time. If I were religious I would take this trinity of seventh places as some sort of sign.

I think I'm going to stop my short lived trail shoe experiment and go back to just doing all of my running in my asics. They've worked for the last 4 years so I might as well keep on with them. And I need to figure out how to fix my cramping issue that I've had in my last two races. Was a fun race, I'll definitely do it again next year and hopefully prepare better and maybe I can beat 6 hours.

On Sunday I'm running in a 10 km race. Well, I plan on it. I''m going to see how my ankle feels in the next couple of days and we'll see.

Keep on running.

Nazzer