Brent Kearney

It has been quite awhile since my last post on the 5-Peaks series of trail running races that I’ve been doing this summer. Today I ran the 4th race in the series, which took place in Calgary again, but this time at Fish Creek Provincial Park. The 2nd and 3rd races took place in Kananaskis Country, a massive national park.

In my first race, my calves cramped in the final few kilometers, forcing me to slow down, continuing uncomfortably. A couple of people suggested that I was probably not well hydrated enough, prior to the race. So for the second race, I drank plenty of water in the days before, and in the morning before the race. I drank over a litre before the race started. I knew in the first 30 seconds of running that it was a mistake.

The course was 12km through a beautiful trail system at a place called Sibbald Flats. The weather was perfect for running: cool and moist, rain threatening at any moment. The sound of water sloshing around in my belly was mildly entertaining, but terribly uncomfortable. I felt like throwing up after about 10 minutes, and that feeling never left me. I managed to finish OK though, placing 8th in my category (out of 20), and 20th overall, out of 150.

For the 3rd race, I decided to get a jump on everyone and go out to the course for a practice run a few weeks before the race. The map provided by 5 Peaks sucked ass, but together with the map at Delta Lodge in K-country, I was able to discern the course. Although, I thought the website had said the course was 12-15km, but my GPS told me that it was only 11. It was easy running on wide road-like trails, nothing too steep, but the hills were super long. One section was about 2km of downhill, which just pounded my knees. So I thought the best preparation would be to work on power, so I trained on steep mountain trails, doing plenty of interval training.

The morning of the race, I didn’t over-hydrate, and arrived ready to run, with a strategy. A friend of mine who used to run a lot of cross-country races advised that its best to push hard at the beginning of the race, hold a good pace in the middle, then burn whatever you have left in the final bit. I knew that the beginning had about 1km of uphill followed by about 2km of down, and after that it was more or less flat for the rest of the race. So my strategy was to conserve energy up the big hill at the beginning, although keep a decent pace, and then burn really fast on the downhill, passing any ground that I lost.

That part worked like a charm, I was sprinting down the hill with huge bounding steps, and passed dozens of runners at twice their speed or more. At the bottom of the hill, the trail wound back to a fork in the trail, where I had taken a left during my practice run. To my surprise, the race course went right, instead. This worried me — suddenly I had no idea what was ahead, and I had just burned a substantial amount of energy. As it turned out, the course was indeed 15km, and there were plenty more big hills in the course. It was a major psychological struggle as I turned corner after corner to discover more and more climbs, and more and more distance. The sun was beating down, and it was around 30 °C. Normally for a 10-15k run, I would wear a hydration pack, but I thought it would be a quick 11k run at race pace. Ouch. In the end, I placed 8th in my category again, and 20th overall out of 150. Weird! I felt like death afterwards though, and it took days to recover.

My training between the 3rd and 4th race was sporadic and random. I did a few runs here and there, some short and fast, others long and easy, or long and grueling, and plenty of mountain biking. I did a few duathlon style runs, which I really enjoy. One of them was the most extreme run I’ve done, with about 10k of mountain biking, followed by around 20k of mountain trail running with around 1000m of elevation gain, followed again by another 10km of trail riding home. That was a week before the race, and I was worried that I wouldn’t have time to recover (my knees were aching from all the downhill). I did though, and even managed to do some speed work a couple of days before the race.

This morning I woke up a bit late — I stayed overnight at a friend’s place in Calgary — and rushed off to a late breakfast. I *hate* running before breakfast; it feels like I’m running in slow motion, on empty. So I ate a typical breakfast, hoping that two hours would be sufficient time to digest it before the race. It was and it wasn’t; when I was really pushing it, my guts were not happy at all. I could have used another hour to digest breakfast, but aside from some gross coffee-flavored burps and a pressing desire to visit a toilet, it wasn’t a huge problem.

My strategy this race, after some experimentation during training, was to pace myself for the first half so that I could really rip for the second half. In previous races, I found that the second half was always much, much slower, and I’d get passed by a dozen people. So I wore my heart-rate monitor, and tried to keep a pace that was as fast as possible while sustainable. There is a magic heart-rate, for me somewhere between 178 and 181 beats per minute, that is sustainable for a long time, probably hours. Above that, I’m running significantly faster, but I can only sustain it for 25 minutes or so before hitting a wall.

It was tough holding back for the first half of the race, watching people ahead of me that I knew I could pass if I just pushed it a bit harder. But then, after 5km or so, it was rewarding passing some of those people who had hit their wall, after passing me a few minutes earlier. It worked out well, but afterwards I felt that I could have pushed myself a lot harder than I did in the second half. I felt really good after the race, in contrast to the morbid pangs following the 3rd race. I even considered going mountain biking when I got home today, but opted for a hot bath and a movie instead. Strangely, I placed 8th in my category again, and 20th overall! This time there were 300 racers instead of 150, however, so I guess that it was relatively a better placing.

Hopefully I can break the mystical 8th-place barrier in the next race; placing in the top-5 would be great. The next one is in Canmore in September, and I’ve heard that its a gruesome course. I’m looking forward to it!