Dear Reader,

As many of you know there is this little NYC Marathon next weekend and I am scheduled to run it, you will also know that I ran the Redwoods marathon 2 weeks ago today using a very new age training technique focused on rest time and a month long taper period. Yesterday I went out with NAN!, who chooses to use a much more conventional training method, to run the Douglas Fir Trail on a slow hour long run.

I figured it would be good to get in a couple trots before the big run in NYC, and Douglas Fir is a pretty nice trail to spend a little time. The run out on the trail was good but at the end when we were to turn around my IT bands and therefore knees were aching quite a bit. The last half of the ‘run’ was mostly walked as I could simply not run it hurt too much and 5 minutes of stretching would resulting in about 5 minutes of painful running, only too have to walk again.

The other problem that has arose this week is a blister on my left foot, which while large did not hurt. It has since drained and dried and it is now quite painful to put pressure on it. I think I can get over this one for the run or just grin and bear it, I will have to see what I can do about the knees though as that won’t work.

So finishing this race is now in doubt but I promise that I will be at the starting line of the marathon and I will try and I won’t stop till it hurts so much I cry .

Here’s to new age training and back to back marathons on that technique in 3 weeks.

Just thought I would give a quick boring post update, seeing as how Geoff has been slacking and NAN! is not likely to post for another month ; Andy seems to have been scared away by the spam, or he is suffering still from his ‘friends’ sores. Dave on the other hand has a neat story posted.

Well I’m back in Calgary, after a quick day trip to Toronto on Monday, tomorrow is Canmore and last night and tonight I will be at the office till well past midnight. I’m back for Friday night which I mistakenly confused for the start of the Banff Mountain Film Festival. I was wrong.

I go to Chicago on Monday for the week for a conference, and then to NYC.

I am 11 days from my next marathon - no surprise that I have not run at all since the last one. I think I will try to get a little 2 hour trot in in Chicago and I will then not run until the NYC marathon.

I found out today that you can track my progress as I run. I hope to be able to geek out enough and have the emails go directly to the blog and post how things are going. My race number apparently is 17436.

Back to work now.

Just spent the last few days up in the Lake Tahoe area, for those of you that were under the same false impression that this is a nice part of the world. The town of South Lake Tahoe reminds me of Salmon Arm, enough said.

We did escape the toilet and spent Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday morning back in Desolation Wilderness, Desolation describes it and it was awesome. Quiet, lack of humans, open space and some really funny laughs - including Peanut Butter and Honey sandwich party at 5 am, 12 hour sleeps, and a hike/non-hike day.

The body is slowly recovering but the thought of having to run another marathon in 16 days makes me want to hide under the bed. So Dave as far as an estimate of finishing time, I’ll wait till the thought of running it doesn’t make me want to cry.

We’re roughing it now at the Hyatt in downtown San Fran after sleeping in the dirt and a disgusting Econ Lodge, getting ready to go out for NAN!’s birthday.

Why ‘NAN!’ ?
Dave asked me why I type NAN! and if I am meant to be screaming it when I say it. That is not the case at all. Back in the pilgrim days when Nancy, my sister Cristina and I were roommates at 2544 we were goofing off one afternoon in the summer and I asked Nancy how she spelt Nan, she quickly came back in the witty way she can and said:
“En - Ah - En; all capitals, exclamation”.

…. and ever since then it’s been NAN!. (Sometime I get lazy and just type Nan though.)

Just a quick trip update:

Drove up the coast highway over the weekend making our way up to Eureka and Humboldt Redwoods Park.

Nan and I cheat and stayed in a hotel the night before the marathon. As neither of us felt particularly trained and didn’t expect much from the race we had a great nights sleep and headed to the park for the race.

As previously mentioned I have not completed a long run (more than 2 hours) in 5 weeks, and I could count the long runs I have completed on one hand - one half marathon in July, one 20 k run, and two 30 k runs. Probably not ideal.

Nan had not completed any runs longer than 21 k or so.

The run went like this for me:

• First 5 k, legs sore, stiff, and the balls of my feet feel like they are poking through my skin.
• 5 k to 21 k - feel pretty good. Course is pretty flat - came across NAN! and was able to confirm that she was 3rd female overall at that point. Knowing NAN! generally saves energy for the end I was hoping she could pull a win out
• 22 k to 31 k, it is all up hill - I am starting to feel tired - I start to sing and grunt out loud and act like a crazy person but am still enjoying myself
• 31 k to 39 k life is not good at all but I’m bearing with it
• 39 k to 42 k - I see hell. I have completely lost it, I must have looked scary and mad as the 6 people cheering looked frighted of me and didn’t say much. IT WAS AWFUL! I wanted to just stop and cry, I didn’t but I wanted to

I finished in 3:45 and change. Which is way better than I expected given the intense training schedule, and below the 4 hours someone asked me to finish in.

NAN! did great, she beat her time in Athens and was the fast woman at this years Humboldt Redwoods marathon. She’s awesome.

Now 3 weeks of rest and I run the NYC marathon - I’m guessing it is going to be a different kind of experience. This run was 200 people, surrounded by massive Sequoia Redwood trees, and for the last half of the race I was basically completely alone and just enjoying the world. I think I finished 50th overall, maybe in NYC I’ll finish in the top 20,000 - there are 50,000 people running.

Check NAN!’s blog out for a brief update of her experience.

NOTE: This is really long I really don’t expect anyone to really want to read it all, it was done more as a historical record for myself

Well I had hoped to do a backpacking trip with a few folks and enjoy sleeping in a tent, lugging my house around on my back for the weekend and just going back to a really simple existence before heading back to New York.

Well due to my poor organization, communication, and planning it ended up just being NAN! and I. This was mostly my fault and my inability to plan and work with others properly as I tried to get stuff done at the office and deal with other personal items.

Shrinking the group to just NAN and I opened up the possibilities quite a bit:

1. No planning what so ever would be required as we would just leave with a car full of ’stuff'’ Friday after work - which could be early or late
2. The return time and date could be extremely vague - in this case I had a flight to NYC Monday morning so that would be the latest we could get back to town
3. We are used to each others ‘quirks’ and regardless of what we picked and how things ended it we would be able to deal with the each other and still have a good time
4. We could pick something that other folks might not find as ‘fun’

In a random passing thought the Skyline Trail came mind as a possibility, I had heard it was a great backpacking trip and reasonably long. Upon finding out more informtion it was a 45 km point to point trail. Given that my time was looking super compressed I proposed to NAN that we try do it in one push; I wasn’t sure what this meant, one day? one day and night? no idea, but I did know that if possible I could use more time in Calgary on the weekend to get ready to head to NYC.

I had no idea where the Skyline trail was initially but figured out that it was by Jasper. NAN! was initially unconvinced that we should try to do it in a day so she decided to poll some independent folks, and I decided to try and figure out what the snow conditions were like on the trail as the snow line in the mountains was already looking quite low.

NAN! was able to obtain independent verification that the trail should be possible in a day, not that anyone she talked to had tried to do it in a day. My investigation into the snow conditions was equally ’scientific’, I called the parks office and they left me a message saying the trail was in good condition with boot high (20 cm) snow. That was enough for both of us to be convinced that it was the right thing to try.

After some quick purchases on Friday during our lunch break and after work we load the mountain Camry up with gear, with little to no organization. We loaded the car wit all things useful for being in the bush; tent, couple sleeping bags, and some bins full of useful little items such as knifes, tape, stoves, pots, laces, water filters, candles, matches, fuel, first aid kit, etc. While we wouldn’t need much of what we threw in the car for the hike we still had to sleep, eat and such before the hike and after the hike. The next stop was Safeway to pick up the food we would need for the hike.

By the time we were heading out of Calgary it was 8:30 pm, so much for getting out of town early. The only other time in my adult life that I have been up to the Jasper area was last year when NAN! and I went out to do the Berg Lake hike around the back side of Mt. Robson. I was shocked by how much more raw and untouched the environment up by Jasper was compared to the Banff and Lake Louise area - not sure how true this actually is. Either way we were both excited to get back into the area and get on with our ‘long’ hike.

We figured that we would arrive where ever it was we were going around 1 am or so. We also realized that all we knew was that the hike was in Jasper National park and on the drive up we likely needed to figure out where the trailhead was, where the trail ended where the turn for the road was, which road it was on, and ummm… well just about everything except which national park it was in. Unlike some previous trips where all the beta we had was a few second hand sentences, we have 2 topo maps; which was too detailed for our current knowledge, a guide book; which didn’t have great info other than the road we needed to be on and some rough maps. This was enough info to get us to right general area we figured. The drive up was awesome, the weather was super good, we were able to make really good time (read: speeding) and it was awesome to catch up with NAN!.

As we approached Jasper we seen the sign for our turn and that little nagging frustrating feeling that your going to be driving around in the dark at 1 am lost looking for an open gas station or anything that would help you get un-lost quickly disappeared. Things seemed to be going quite well, until Smokey found me. I was pulled over by an RCMP at about 12:15 am, I had no idea what the speed limit on the road was, nor did I have a clue what speed I was going - only that I was still speeding up when I passed him. With my tail between my legs I rolled down my window apologized and provided him the required documents. He asked if I knew my speed, I was honest and said I was unsure of either my speed or the speed limit and that we were just heading out from Calgary for a hike. He let me know that I was going 103 km/hr in a 70 zone - F*CK! I think that 30 km/hr above the speed limit is the magic number where you can lose your license if they really want to take it. As he was running my plates and writing up my ticket NAN and I sat in the car still trying to figure out where we would sleep that night, where the trail was and looking at the clock realizing that time was ticking if we were to get started early on the hike. Our friendly cop came back and let me know that the road we were on was a wildlife corridor and he really didn’t want to get called to an accident with a Camry and a bull elk - I agreed and held my breath for the punishment about to me unleashed.

“It’s your lucky day - I am out of paper for tickets tonight so if you can just slow down that would be great. Have a safe night!”

I just said thank-you and asked if he knew where the nearest campsite was as we were heading to the Skyline trail and wanted to get some sleep, may as well get some info from a local while I have one captive. Bad news - No campground close by as they were mostly closed at this time of year, we would have to back track or go into town and pay $160 for a place to sleep. Having just avoided a much larger charge we headed to town to get a bed.

We asked around for the cheapest place in town, got a room for $147 with tax (ouch, who knew Jasper was so expensive). By the time we got to the room and crashed it was after 1 am. We set the alarm for 6 am and called for a wake up call at the same time. If we were organized we would get up, eat some breakfast and be on the trail for sunrise (7:30) or before. Well the devices that were to get us up did indeed go off, and got turned off just about as quickly. It was about 7:30 by the time we actually left the hotel.

On the way out of the hotel we swung by a gas station to grab a coffee and see if the attendant might know something about where we needed to go, particularly the trail end. After some discussions that morning we decided that the trail would likely take us 14 hours if things went well and we didn’t get off trail, it could take much longer and we didn’t expect it to be much faster. This would have us finishing the trail sometime in the middle of the night by headlamp, at which point we would have no car, no food, no shelter, etc.. The idea of shivering in the ditch till the morning was not super appealing so we figured we would stash the tent somewhere at the end of the trail with our sleeping bags and we could then set it up in the bush somewhere to sleep in. Setting up a tent in a random spot in a national park is not generally a thing I would do but this was a bit of a special case and I could live with it. At this point we were pretty excited to just get started and time was ticking.

Well finding the trail end was not as straight forward as we thought we looked in a couple places that were wrong and ended up flagging down the warden as he drove by to get the real location of the trail end. Once we got there, we realized there was a hostel just up the road and had a ‘eureka’ moment, we could leave the tent and sleeping bags there. If we got back in time we would try to sleep in the hostel but worst case we would have our tent and sleeping bags in a place that was easy to find. Now to drive to the trailhead!

After driving for about 30-40 minutes we arrived at Malinge Lake and the trailhead. at this point it was 9:20 am. We were way late and contemplating skipping breakfast but realized that would be a dumb idea. The next 20 minutes were a quiet, focused and mechanical. Being with someone that your comfortable with and have spent a fair amount of time getting ready to do trips with worked really well here. There was clearly a bit of stress as we didn’t know what we had just signed up for, we didn’t know if the snow conditions were going to make it hard to trail find, if the weather would hold or any of the other things that your mind can do as it races along before these types of events; we also were confident things would be okay. I put the water on to boil, got my clothes ready, and helped NAN who was leading the food appropriations for the day. We would take some extra food ‘just in case’ and only take enough clothes that we would have a shell for wind and a couple extra layers for the torso in case it got colder - the other extra clothes pieces would be gator, gloves, and a toque.

Getting ready for the day; notice the boiling water and excess amounts of meat on the sandwiches:

Or packs weighed very little, perhaps 10 lbs without the water, which would help us avoid fatigue as well as not slowing us down with additional weight.

{Intermission 1}

We started hiking at 9:40 am. Only 2+ hours later than we intended - which almost ensured in my mind that we would be stuck hiking by headlamp in about 11 hours, at which point I was sure I would be really tired. The day was as perfect a day as you could ask for, it was in the low teens, little wind, very few clouds and seemingly quite a stable system. The trail started with a nice gradual climb up and over little shovel pass, our pace was really steady and quick at about 4-5 km per hour.

Just getting started; not a bad backdrop:

We had lunch after a couple of hours of hiking as we got over the first pass (Little Shovel Pass), which also put us above the tree line where we would spend the next 20 odd kilometers. Lunch was a quick but relaxing event. At this point NAN already had developed blisters and we had another 35 kilometers to go. After confirming that she wanted to continue on, knowing that meant if it got really shitty it would mean a longer back track.

Eating lunch; notice the mud on the pants… it’s only going to get worse!

NAN! enjoying the view (she was actually forced to look directly at the sun so I could get the shot I wanted )

As we entered the snow-bowl the sun was high in the sky and it was likely in the mid teens and a perfect day with perfect company. The snow-bowl had boot high snow on it, but it did not slow us down or cause any problems, the problem was caused by the sun and its heat. As I would find out later the snowbowl is usually a bog even in a dry summer. Well, we have not had a dry summer and the snow and thaw cycle that happens at this time of year made for a mud bog. Trying to rush through the mud knowing that we had a long day ahead of us was frustrating at best - it added unwanted weight to our boots and while trying to walk quickly it wasted the last 1/3 of your stride as you slipped.

NAN! slogging through the mud:

During the walk through the mud my right ankle decided that it would seize up and stop bending, a decidedly uncomfortable event. I didn’t twist on this hike but I think the previous week on a run I rolled it on a rock a bit - I’m not sure if this caused it or why but it would be my little burden and now NAN! and I would have something we could each talk about.

As we walked along we started to gain elevation and came over Big Shovel Pass and the mud disappeared. There isn’t much exciting to report on about walking in the high alpine 20 km into a hike on a stunning day other than it was exactly what the doctor ordered. We were over 4 hours in and at this point had not run into any other humans. Just NAN!, I and the mud, snow and mountains.

Heading over to Big Shovel pass (I think):

The next milestone would be “The Notch” which was right after Curator lake and camp site. This would mark the high point of the trail, and the 3 pass we would have gone over. More importantly it also marked the point were turning back was the same distance as continuing on, aka the middle of the trail.

As we were approaching the notch we heard a screaming/howling sound from the distance. NAN! and I tried to figure it out as we walked along, not having seen anyone it was strange that this would have been a group of people. As we came up a little further on the trail we seen the noise maker. It was a large gorgeous wolf that was almost completely black - he made himself scarce to quickly for us to get a picture.

We each made a guess as to how long it would take to get to this point, I guessed 4.5 hours, NAN! guessed 5.5, we made it in 5 - so we both won. Once again the weather was awesome! It was now almost 3 o’clock and we both felt great still, with out little ailments coming and going at different times. As you can tell by some of the pictures, we were both in a pretty good mood at this point. We shared a couple summit treats and progressed along.

Standing (read: resting) in front a nice little lake (read: pond):

NAN! on the up to the Notch:

Happy to be at the top:

A couple happy folks, it was a bit windy up there.. can you tell:

Summit treats; yummie:

This would be the only time that we would see anyone hiking on the trail, we passed a couple who were doing the trail in a more traditional way and were carrying large packs for a multi-day trip. It must have been a bit odd for them to see us at the middle of the trail with so little and probably frustrating as they would have each just lugged 40 lbs up over the pass. It was at this point that NAN! and I realized that while sounding sexy to do the trail in one day, we were not sure that it was any easier than doing it over 2 days as carrying all that weight is quite tiresome… we would refrain from a conclusion until we were much closer to the end.

The next part of the hike was quite a treat, we stayed basically as high as the pass and skipped along the edge of the mountain, gained and ridge to the top of a peak and then dropped down. This was a stunning walk to put it mildly. Once again fortune smiled upon us as the weather continued to hold, even the wind was quite mild.

Walking along the ridge:

NAN! in full on military marching mode:

As you walk along the ridge it become evident very quickly that this trail would be punishing in bad weather, if there were low clouds or a storm I’m guessing it could get scary and uncomfortable in a hurry. This was not something that we would need to worry about.

We dropped down into the valley after being up on the ridge and headed towards chain lakes. The snow on the trail here actually was quite helpful as we were able to go quicker than we would have had it not been present. The day was starting to feel longer, but we were in good spirits. As the sun started to go down NAN! fine eye for pictures spotted the opportunity for a couple neat photos.

Growing shadows:

Running in the snow - still feel good almost 30 km in:

Last little bit of a crest before we start heading down:

We stopped for supper around 6 or so. At this point we had 12-15K left on the trail and had been at it for about 7.5 hours. Things were feeling good. Once we arrived at the campground we sat at a picnic table and ate a nice supper of sandwiches, pepperoni stick, apples and oranges. There were a few folks at this campground who were settling in for the night and we were able to visit with.

After the short eating break we proceeded for the last push. By this point stopping meant that starting hurt and the joints and feet were quite sore, but after 15 minutes the endorphins made the hurt go away.

Puffy eyes at this point (click on the pic and look at the large version if your brave), but we are still in great spirits:

We thought the trail would slowly head down towards the end and out climbing was done for the day, such would not be the case. We climbed for another 5K to basically get to the top of the tree line at which point we hit the final stretch home.

Well everything was looking great, it looked like we would be done just before the sun was going to set, we were sore but very functional and it was only 9 hours into the hike so we would finish faster than we expected. We got ahead of ourselves! The last 8 k was on hard packed rocked trail, which was not forgiving at all. We both managed to achieve the feeling of the balls of your feet poking through the bottom of your foot to the point where it felt like you were stepping on glass. My ankle really sucked and NAN!’s feet were less than happy with her as well.

We tried to run for a bit but that was more painful than walking, so we just walked as fast as we could and tried to enjoy the colors in the surrounding environment. With about 4 km left NAN! decided to try and kick a rock that had been comfortably placed in the same place for a hundred years. The rock won and NAN! now had one really really sore big toe, this also managed to make the rest of her pain ‘disappear’ .

For the next 40 minutes we talked of our pains as race cars in a race to see what hurt the most and what other pains were trying to compete for the coveted prize of most painful part of the body. NAN!’s 2 big toes took first and second for her and the balls of my feet took first and second for me with the right ankle in close third. - Yup we’re losers!

Some great shots by NAN! on the way down just as we are finishing the hike:

She nails it here:

10 and half hours after starting we were done the hike, there was still some sun left and we were both still smiling. We walked the 500m up to the hostel hoping that we would be fortunate enough to get a bed to sleep in (or a ride to the car) and the day will have been perfect.

Complete:

{Intermission 2}

We walked into the hostel and asked if there was a room for 2 folks, this was not a nice hostel, it was small bunk cabin beds with a separate cook ‘house’. The lady, who was sitting on the bench let me know that they only had room for 2 women - this was a problem as I clearly was not a woman. This was not a major problem as we did have the tent and sleeping bags, but sleeping in a bed would have been a nice treat. I let the lady know about what we had just done, hoping for some sympathy and a little more effort on her part to make this work. She was able to move one girl into another cabin and we both had beds! Jackpot.

Getting to the end of the hike was great, but we didn’t have any food, clean clothes, different shoes (this would have been a nice treat), clean socks etc. We did have meet some nice folks who gave us some pasta, and some Korean rice wine. It was then off to bed, in the morning we would figure out we were going to get to our car which was still 40-50 kilometers away.

After a great sleep, I walked into the cook house and within minutes someone offered to take us to the car as that is where they were going. Life was simple. Once we got to the car, we changed clothes and shoes and headed into Jasper for breakfast and were back in Calgary by 4 pm.

Some shots of the lake at the trailhead:

Our bodies were not to sore the next day considering and both my best buddy NAN! and I were convinced that not only was doing the hike in one day not much harder if at all than doing it as a multi day trip, but also that this would be an amazing trail to do a trail run on. It is never super steep, if it was a bit drier and without snow, you would not need gaiters, and it has scenery that is stunning enough to keep you interested.

———

As I mentioned at the top this was not written for folks to read in its entirety. The story was much to verbose its purpose was to be a log for me to look back on in the future of a couple of days that were a lot of fun, and a reminder that failing to plan and just taking life as it comes is often more fun. I think we spend too much time worrying about what might go wrong and don’t allow ourselves the chance to take things as they come. Course most of the folks that read this agree, case in point.