Canadian Death Race

I remember seeing an ad in Outside magazine nearly 10 years ago about this ultramarathon called the Death Race. "125 km, 3 summits, 1 river crossing. Are you tough enough?", was the gist of the caption. Ballsy, I thought.

Well I've had a romantic notion about running this race ever since. There's a reason Canadian running magazine calls this a must-do trail race. The challenge is epic, the scenery is spectacular, and the volunteers are amazing. If you're up for a challenge I would definitely recommend this race. But be ready for a challenge - less than half of the 333 soloists that started finished within the 24 hour cut-off. Another 85 registered runners failed to start.

I finished 25th with an unofficial time of 18:32:02, which I'm really happy with (4th in my age category!). However, this is a race report so the following is a closer look at my performance solely from a finishing time perspective.

I "lost" this race before it began by starting mid-pack. Here we are waiting for the national anthem and the starting gun.

Starting mid-pack meant becoming unexpectedly trapped for the better part of the first 30 km. Heading south on Hoppe Ave.

before making a hairpin turn, passing through the start/finish line again

and heading out of town on Highway 40.

At this point the entire field crammed onto a single-track trail and proceeded mule train-style to the first aid station. This was extremely frustrating. There were too many people on too narrow of a trail to allow passing so, rather than being able to run my own race, I was stuck with many others in this mule train. I finished leg 1 in 164 place among soloists. Mid-pack.

Leg 2 did not start on a better note - the mule train continued its slow, tedious slog up Flood Mt. I'm all about walking up hills, especially steep ones, but when the angle slacked off and the pace didn't increase accordingly I found myself yelling "time to run" from the back of the train. This would be my last Death race, I told myself.

 After topping out on Flood Mt both my race and my outlook improved dramatically.

I "won" this race on the downhills of leg 2. I hate not taking full advantage of gravity so I run down hills at a good clip. Climbing to the summit of Grande Mt before descending 640 m over 6 km to station 2. I must have sounded like a freight train because people were scrambling to get out of way. I'm undecided whether this approach is easier on the quads than a more-controlled descent but the time-savings is undeniable. My pace increased to 30th fastest among soloists for that leg.

I maintained this pace-standing over the next two legs despite fried quads and rising temperatures. Mt Hamel, the objective of leg 4, is more than 1000 m up over a 10 km stretch. Temperatures reached 23 deg C without a breeze - there were swarms of mosquitoes on Hamel`s ridge! - and several of us suffered muscle cramping and were forced to walk.

Cool evening temperatures and a half dozen salt tablets had me running and smiling on the backside of Hamel. I finished leg 4 in the dark.

I also "won" this race on the final leg by increasing my leg-standing to 19th fastest. I don't know if I got faster or the rest of the pack got slower. Maybe I found extra effort in the awesome cheese pizza I ate at the last aid station. Whatever the reason I found enough energy to run up the final hill to the finish line.

Much thanks to the misses for taking photos and for keeping me fed and watered. This was a team effort.