I've lost count of how many attempts I've made at breaking 70K for 12 hours..3-5 times is my guess. I've come very very close, but blister problems, Patty-can't-do-math problems, and mental state problems would foil my plans.
The past 2 years I've signed up for Conquer the Canuck 12 hour but stopped after 50K for various reasons. This year I had this race in mind as my "A" race.
I prepared by having chatgpt write a loop by loop fueling plan based on the foods that I brought, and calculating how much time I had to complete each loop.
Race day brought beautiful weather, sunny and under 20 degrees, with dry trails. I made sure to wear my Topo shoes with the wide toe box, because I finally learned my lesson after getting baby toe squish/blisters at every single race in 2024 due to the narrow toe box.
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Lucky #13, being friends with the timer/bib number
assigner has its benefits. |
It was pretty damn cold at the race start, and I wore my hoodie for the first loop, but it got warmer fairly quickly. I was taking it loop by loop, trying not to take any extended walk breaks. Peter paced me loops 5-7, fairly aggressively, considering I still had 7 hours to run. At one point I mused whether I should stop at 70K, if I hit that number early, or run straight through to 12 hours and decided that I wanted to stop at 70K. Peter then asked if I would change my mind if I was in first place and I laughed and said, "well that would never happen!"
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| Almost all of my favourite people. |
I had trouble eating food that I normally love during races, and I was constantly craving fruity, juicy foods. The aid stations had soft pretzels which were amazing! I ran loop 8 with Lori, taking it a little bit easier. I think the compression socks I was wearing were squishing my toes inward, plus I had neglected to cut my toenails and they were smashing against the toe of my shoe. Three more loops to hit my goal - only 18K - so little but yet so far! 70K was actually 11 loops plus 1.25K so during loop 9, I called Audrey to ask if I'd be officially credited with 70K with a partial loop done before time ran out.
The news came in that partial loops were credited only at the end of the race. Then Peter called to tell me that I was 1st AG since around 25K, and that he and Audrey decided not to tell me, in order to not freak me out. This was definitely the right call, because I would have 100% freaked the fuck out. I was of course feeling pretty tired but hearing that I was 1st AG gave my legs new life, and my throbbing toes went a bit numb.
I only slowed to grab an applesauce packet before loop 11 and I was constantly looking to see if any women around my age were coming up behind me.
There was about 40 minutes left when I finished loop 11 and I was going to run hard until time ran out, but the thing about partial loops is that you have to be careful where in the loop you stop, or else you have a long walk back to the start/finish with nothing to show for it. Since the CtC loop is a 4K section, then a 2K section, stopping at 3K was the worst because it was the farthest, and also at the top of a hill. So I walked the last 2K fairly slowly. Thankfully every woman who passed me was in the relay. Maria was at the 2K marker, and she said even if the 2nd AG woman reached that point, I got there first. So I tapped out at officially 70.75K (but 72.3K on my watch). I had accidentally turned my watch off around 28K, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a 6:30 marathon in the back half of the race.
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| Joyfully accepting my 1st AG award hat from Marjolein. |
