This is a quick report from last weekend. On Saturday, I took place in the 5th running of the Full/Half Monty Trail Race. This is a very low key Club Fat Ass event. The event takes place at Gowlland-Tod Provincial Park starting at the McKenzie Bight entrance and the course follows the main trail south through the park, going over Jocelyn and Homes Peaks. The course turns around at Cabeb Pike and traces the same course back to McKenzie Bight. Total distance is close to 25km round trip and includes a good amount of climbing and lots of moderate difficultly technical terrain all on single track. For those who like trail running, this is a really great place to run. The Half Monty does one out and back, the Full does it twice to make 50km.
I had run this exact course a couple of times in the past and this time I just wanted to run it as a race to see what time I could get. So far the event has not attracted any elite level runners so the course records of around 2:30 was readily attainable. The conditions were hot and I suffered a bit on the way up to Jocelyn Peak although I was still moving pretty well. I managed to recover somewhat on my day down to Cabeb Pike and I cooled my self down with water, which the race organizer, Carlos Castillo, was kind enough to leave at the turn around. I felt good on the way back, but on the final climb back up to Jocelyn, it was tough to keep the legs moving. I was able to run all of the course though which I was happy about. Despite some fatigue in the last few km, I moved well to the finish, posting a time of 1:56:57 which I quite please with as it was over 2min faster than my previous best time. It was too bad there were not a few more runners out as that would have made the event a bit more exiting, but I think everyone enjoyed the challenging terrain and great views. Carlos has a short write up here.
On Sunday, Sonja and I got up at 5am to join over 30 other Prairie Inn Harriers on a running trip over to Hurricane Ridge on the Washington Olympic Peninsula. The main run too place between Deer Park and Observation Point (about 12km) . Some people (including myself) also added another hour+ on some other trails. The vista were spectacular as is evidenced by these photos.
You can see the rest of my photos here. I spent most of my time running with Jeff Hunt who kept moving well really well for the entire day. Jeff has a great write up on his blog so please have a look there if you are interested in more details about our trip. I didn't know how the legs would hold out after the 2 hours of punishment I gave them the day before, but they felt pretty decent. Fatigue did catch up to me after about 1.5 hours though and the final climb that Jeff and I did was pretty tough. After a quick stop at Hurricane Ridge itself, we returned to Port Angeles for a late lunch/early dinner before heading back to Victoria. Thanks to Bob Reid for organizing the event - it would not have happened without him! All in all it was a great running weekend for me, with nearly 50km of challenging trail running completed.
1 comment:
maybe since no "elite" runners have tried the short course, Half Monty, you should step up and do the Full Monty.
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