In India: Getting ready to run the Himalayan 100 Mile Stage Race (a 5 day ultramarathon)

I am in India! It’s hard to believe…resting up in Delhi right now, with a 24 hour stopover here before heading on to the Himalayas, and the starting point of my 5-day, 160 km ultramarathon: the Himalayan 100 Mile Stage Race.

I am here thanks to India Tourism, and the Race Director, Mr. C. S. Pandey, all of whom are taking very good care of me, to both run the race, and to report on the race. My daily reports will be posted on SleepMonsters, the world’s top adventure racing medium, in the next week or so (usually my reports are live, written after each day’s racing, but I don’t think I’ll have the internet connections to do that this time). And I’ll also be writing an article for Jan/Feb issue of Ultrarunning magazine.

Well, it’s hard to ever be able to say

A 16 km loop from the Candy Store, Log Train Trail. Port Alberni

This is a nice loop starting and finishing from Port Alberni’s iconic Candy Store, where many hikers, runners, cyclists, quad enthusiasts park to start an outing.  We walked down the Log train trail and up Citizen’s Climb to the power lines.

Citizen’s Climb

More back-to-back training days for my upcoming multi-day ultramarathon: This time, climbing into the unknown!

It’s less than two weeks to my race – 160 km over 5 days in the Himalayas, all of it at altitude. So I am at the stage of having a pretty heavy training load, especially incorporating back-to-back days of both hiking and running. Last week, I did three hard hikes in a row: Tuesday, 4hrs/14km with close to 700 m cumulative elevation gain, Wednesday (this blog post) 2:20 with another about 700 m of gain, and then the next day, a 3+ hour moderately hilly hike with Dave. And that was all following the Juan de Fuca Trail run that April and I did the Thursday before (8:30 on foot, plus another 1:30 on the bikes to get back to the car). And a few shorter faster runs in between.

So the hike I’m talking about in this post didn’t really go as planned.

Ultramarathon training: Don’t underestimate the value of long hikes!

I’m on the final countdown for my next race: a five-day, 160km utramarathon in the Himalayas. I leave for India in less than two weeks! I’ve got over a lot of health issues that I’ve struggled with these last two years, and am running much better lately. But I am also including long, and especially hilly, hikes as part of my multi-day ultramarathon training program. Any time on your feet is valuable for ultra training, and hiking reduces the pounding, and the risk of injury that too many running miles can cause. Hilly hikes, especially, are really good – working your uphill muscles and your downhill muscles.

Our last big hurrah: April and Jackie run the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail

Well, it won’t be our last big trip forever – but it will be our last big trip together for a while. I am very sad to say that April moved away from Vancouver Island today, to pursue new and exciting things in and around Toronto. But April does not do things in a small way. She and I had talked for about two years about running the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail. So, a few weeks ago, she said “Let’s do it before I go.”

We set aside a window of three days, October 2nd, 3rd and 4th, since the weather is iffy this time of year, with the idea of

A rained-out run: Somewhere above Port Alberni’s Log Train Trail

Fall, or even winter, seems to have come pretty early this year. Dave and I headed out on this run a bit over a week ago, on September 17th, when it was still officially summer! (Kind of hard to remember summer now, it’s been so cold and wet this week). The original plan was to do a 16 km loop on trails that Dave knows, which I have never been on, starting at Coombs Candy (on the highway) and heading down the Log Train Trail, then veering off onto the single-track trails above.

The four of us together starting out on the Log Train Trail.

It all started well…