Trail of '98

Week 27: September 1-7

Bike: 46 km
Run: 35 km
Swim: 0...but I signed up for Master's Swim Class, so that almost counts as a workout

The darkness is setting in early and the crazy summer schedule of events is quickly coming to an end. To celebrate the fast approach of winter and the end of the midnight sun one of the biggest (and arguably silliest) events of the year happens - the Trail of 98 Klondike Road Relay. This event is huge (1200 runners) and ridiculous (180 km from 7:30 pm to 3:00 pm the next day), but I've already blogged about it's craziness.

This year was the second annual running of the "Moving at the Speed of Government" team. This team is made up of federal, territorial and occasionally First Nation government employees. We stay true to our name by making sure that we always fall in the bottom part of the standings - never moving too quickly or efficiently. Last year, part of our bureaucratic strategy was to miss a hand-off and take an hour and a half penalty. This year, we wanted to avoid those types of obvious time wasters and concentrate on having fun and looking good.

The distribution of legs for Klondike Road Relay is always a bit difficult. There are 10 legs which range in length from 9 to 26 km, and which run at all times during the day/night. Last year, I took the shortest leg, because I was in the midst of recovering from a cranky knee. This year, I was planning on being healthy (not completely successful), so I decided to take leg 6, a 26 km run into Carcross. I was joined on my mission by Polly and Melissa, two friends from work, who were running legs 4 and 5.

Our portion of the event started at 10:30 pm, when we hopped into the car and headed towards to Canada/US border for Melissa's leg of the race. We arrived at the start of leg 4 at around 12:30 am, just in time to start the two footed trek back to Whitehorse. Despite the insane hour in the morning, a combination of coffee, cookies and loud music kept Polly and I pumped through Melissa's 21 km run in the dark. Next up was the quick-footed Polly, who zipped through her 22 km in a little over 2 hours and had me ready to run just after 5 in the morning.

The appeal of running leg 6 of the relay, aside from an early morning 26 km relay, is that if you are lucky you get to watch the sun rise over Carcross. That would have been an amazing site, I'm sure, but I was unfortunately too slow to catch it. Thankfully, the sun did rise as I ran, and I was witness to a splendid fall display of yellows, reds and oranges that would have zipped by much too fast if I was sitting in a 4-wheeled vehicle.

The run went well, until the last 4 km going into Carcross. Normally a downhill is a fun way to end a run, but not an extended downhill on the pavement at the end of a long run. I could feel my knees starting to ache as I moved towards town, and I knew that the result might not be too good. I finished up strong, but went straight into Nares Lake to try to stop the swelling from getting out of control.

After limping out of the water, Polly, Melissa and I headed back into town just as the rest of the world was waking up on a Saturday morning. I got into my bed, just in time for Tony to get up and announce his intention to ride to Braeburn. I couldn't muster a response and just put my head on the pillow and shut my eyes. My rest lasted a couple hours, before I got up to meet Lisa on the final leg of the relay and head through Miles Canyon towards the finish line.

All things considered, it was an excellent race, especially because I had made my time goal by finishing the 26 km in just under 2:30 hours. I was feeling pretty chuff about the whole thing until I went to check the official time and saw that they had me clocked in at 2:35. It's not that 7 minutes is the difference between a world record or not, but 2:28 put me in the perfect position for the Victoria Marathon, and 2:35 meant that meeting my 4:15 goal would be pretty darn tough. In the end I'm not sure who had the right times us or them, but I'm trying to believe that it was us - even if it's a lie, I'm sure the confidence can't be anything but good for me!.

Sierra posted this on Sep 21, 2008 from the outside | | permanent link