Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

 A couple of weeks ago I did my second trail race of the year - the 5 Peaks Enduro event, this time at Whitemud. The course was once again around 14km, and I had an absolute blast! The race came just two weeks after the marathon, and with still having a little fatigue in my legs, I didn't want to go crazy and race things flat out. The organisers had warned us that some of the trails we would be going on were some of the toughest in the river valley, so I knew I would be crawling up those hills and likely losing a fair few places in the process! The first mile or two was pretty flat, and I certainly felt the benefits of my marathon training as I seemed to make light work of the terrain and moved steadily through the field. But when the single track started, as suspected I slid backwards, and people started to pass me once again. I was still doing pretty well on the hills and didn't really walk any of them but my pace really was a shuffle. The downhills felt good, although I wasn...

It's been a week now since I completed the Survivorfest 24 hour event, and I have to say that recovery from the event is going much better than I anticipated. The race itself was never really in my plans for this year, but then a case of FOMO back in March saw me registering, the plan being to use it as a training run for my forthcoming backyard ultra, and hopefully a confidence building if I could hit the 100 miles. Unlike previous attempts at 24 hour events, my longest training runs had peaked at just 35km - long enough to help me have a decent run at the Red Deer Marathon, but not really enough if I hoped to get to the 100 miles in that 24 hours. On that basis, I had no idea how the day would pan out, and my only plan was to keep on running for as long as possible and have fun along the way - if I got bored or my heart wasn't in it before the the 24 hours had elapsed, then I was ok about stopping. There really was no pressure nor expectation - I'd even opted to do the ...