#RunVan Update 7 – Getting Dirty

I’m currently training for the 2013 BMO Vancouver Marathon and am one of six official bloggers. Each week I’m providing updates on my training and experience leading up to May 5. You can read my first six posts here 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Training for the 2010 BMO Vancouver Marathon is what got me started running, but it didn’t take long for me to also find and fall in love with trail running. Each year I find myself putting more and more trail races on the calendar, with longer and longer distances. Last weekend, I competed in the Dirty Duo 25km trail race in North Vancouver. As I’ve done this race three consecutive years now, I was able to use it as a barometer of my running fitness as we inch towards race day for the Vancouver Marathon. I approached this race as a training run and didn’t do a taper or any extensive trail running leading up to it. Instead, I tackled it as high-intensity long training run (and a rude reminder of just how punishing the gnarly North Shore mountains can be). I was really looking forward to the race this year to see how much (if any) improvement I could post over last year’s time. Any minutes shaved counting as a confidence boost that I might actually be able to post a 3:05 time at the Van Marathon.

In 2011 I completed the Dirty Duo in 2:49, which I think at the time was the longest trail race I’d ever done. After putting a lot more trail running experience on my legs in the remainder of 2011, I followed up with a much better time of 2:36 in 2012.

So how did 2013 go? Well first of all, the weather was perfect! It was a crisp, sunny day and the course was as bone-dry as you could hope for this time of year. There also wasn’t any snow up on Ned’s trail which was great. I started out nice and easy, near the middle of the pack. I kept a nice, steady pace wanting to save my legs for the notorious Old Buck hill. Starting out easy seemed to pay off because by the half-way point I was still feeling fresh. I was able to run the hills that I was walking last year, and was really happy I was able to keep a trot going all the way up Old Buck without needing to hike it (although walking wouldn’t have been much slower with the speed I was going).

Based on the advice I received last week from my fitness assessment, I also tested taking in more carbs during this run to see how I might be able to handle it during the Vancouver Marathon. Whereas in previous years I probably had 2 or 3 gels over the whole race, I tried to have 2 or 3 gels each hour. Theoretically I should be eating even more than that, but I don’t think I could have stomached much more than I did manage to put down. I do think it helped however, as overall I felt I finished pretty strong. I actually ran the final kilometre (although mostly downhill) with an average pace of 4:08/km so I still had something left in the legs. So its encouraging to think that if I can incorporate more carbs into my long training runs, I will be able to get more out of them than I had been previously.

In the middle stretch of the race, I passed a lot of people and still had fresh legs to push aggressively down Ned’s and Bottle Top. When I got to the Twin Bridges aid station @Jamesblmarshall let me know that @tomcraik was ‘only’ about a minute or so ahead of me. I have a lot of respect for Tom and would love to inch past him in a race one day. I took off down Fisherman’s as fast as I could, but by the time I was halfway up the hill on Homestead my ‘fresh’ legs were gone. I never even caught a glimpse of Tom and he finished 2.5 minutes ahead of me (taking his third consecutive Dirty Duo Relay 1st place finish in the process).

In the end, I finished with a time of 2:26:18 which was a full 10 minutes faster than last year! The perfect course conditions certainly did me a big favor, and probably account for a few of those minutes, but I was really happy with my result. Had I ran in the solo 25km category it would have been good for a 7th overall result.

This year, however, I ran in the relay category with Teresa, who I know from Twitter and met for the first time as we high-five-tagged-off at the start/finish line. Teresa had been dealing with a virus leading up to the race but still tried to gut it out. Unfortunately with her depleted energy levels she started to bonk pretty hard near the end and made the judgement call to pull out of the race before injuring herself. You can read Teresa’s excellent recap of her race on the MTB4Her website.

It was a great day, and definitely a lot more fun than the typical training run! Glad I had a relay partner with a sense of humour too:

@karlwoll I’m sorry to hear :( Time to switch to mountain biking?? I hear it’s fun…

— Teresa (@mtnbikinggirl) March 6, 2013

@karlwoll Ok! So how long does it take to walk 25km?

— Teresa (@mtnbikinggirl) March 6, 2013

@karlwoll About the same… Do they give prizes for last place??

— Teresa (@mtnbikinggirl) March 6, 2013

@karlwoll @needsexample I like chocolate…

— Teresa (@mtnbikinggirl) March 6, 2013