Ok, so everyone (or most everyone) knows about the now infamous Canadian Death Race. The 125 km ultra marathon trail race through the low mountains of northern Alberta. This is it’s 10th year, btw. I never had any intention of running that whole race solo (which many people do) because I’m just not ready. But I wanted to participate – so I found a team. Our 5 person team is called Speed Kills. I’ve been looking forward to this one since we registered in January. Anyway, this event is so intense, that the organizers have annual training camps, which are great opportunities to see the whole course, over a 3 day period. I had to take advantage of this great opportunity.

Grande Cache, if you weren’t aware, is about 4 hours West of Edmonton, and about 1 and 1/2 hrs drive North and West of Hinton. It’s a great little town. There isn’t much there, however. It used to be a mining town, but then it died out. They revived it somewhat by getting a penitentiary built in the neighbourhood. This has helped over the last number of years. The other major event that they have is this Canadian Death Race. It takes place every year on the August long weekend. And the t raining camp, as I have found out, is an excellent way to see the whole course, if you haven’t experienced it before. What makes it great is that you get to see the whole course over the weekend, not at once, and also part of the schedule calls for trail biking part of the course, so you don’t actually run the whole thing.

Over the course of the weekend of June 11th, our group ran/walked/hiked about 85 km, and rode about 26 km more – which is abotu 111 out of the 125 km course. There was a 7 km stretch of leg 5 (from the start of that leg) to the river crossing, which most people ran on the Friday night. I missed it however, because I was too fatigued from the day run. And there was about another 7 km that was fairly boring and inconsequential to the whole course, and so was also left out.

The weather for the training camp weekend was fantastic. And lucky too. I spent the week before the training camp in Grande Cache. Wanted to try my hand at camping. It wasn’t really so bad, except that the weather was rather cold and damp. It rained every day for at least about half the day it seemed, and remained overcast for most of the days. As I wanted to be well rested for the camp, I had arranged for a hotel room for the weekend. In retrospect, I’m glad I did that. Even though the week before the camp was damp and cold, the sun came out late Thursday afternoon, and then on Friday and the weekend, it was mostly sunny, warmer, and it only rained one time that I recall, and not for very long. And then as strangely as the great weather appeared late Thursday, it vanished again on Sunday afternoon, and when I left the next day it was again cool and overcast.

On the Friday, we hiked/ran leg 2 of the race, which is the most technical leg. It’s not the longest, but there are more ups and downs, and “through the trees” hard to keep your step, places. There are two smaller mountains – Flood and Grand – and in between them is the infamous area known as “Slugfest”. Let’s just say that it is appropriately named. I think it’s about 5 km through Slugfest, but it feels like at least twice that. Mossy, steep, with lots of round rocks on which to slip and fall. I didn’t take any pictures while running this leg – I spent my time trying to stay upright through all the mayhem. The average time to run this leg is between 4 and 6 hours. I think I finished around 4:45 however we missed about 2 or 3 km at the end. The full leg finished right in the town, whereas we all stopped a few km out for the sake of convenience. It was this leg of the race on Friday that wiped me out to the point where I did not participate in the night run that evening – which was only 5 km piece of leg 5. I wish I would have ran that one though.

As I recall, on the Saturday we biked half of leg 1, and then ran/hiked leg 4, which is the assault on Mount Hamel. 37 km. This is, although longer than leg 2, easier in many respects in that it is just brute force uphill and downhill. The paths are good and the most technical parts are trying to walk/hike where the slope is steep and the path is mainly small rocks and loose gravel. I took a spill on the downside of Mount Hamel, drew some blood, but was not a significant injury and I was able to continue fairly easily. At the end of the the day, I felt noticeably more alive than I did at the end of Friday’s events. Saturday night there was an informal pasta supper and most people attended. It was great to sit down and chat with people from all over the land about the impending race. Here are a few images from the Mount Hamel adventure.

I have a more images in my Facebook photo album, click here.

The weekend was a great success. I met many great people, heard many great stories, and got many great ideas for nutrition and running in general. I was really glad I went, and want to go back next year. For someone who is running the race solo and is not familiar with it, I would definitely recommend it. If all goes well over the winter and into the spring, I am thinking seriously about doing this Death Race solo next year.

Next up, the K-100. Kananaskis 100 mile relay from Longview, Alberta, to Kananaskis Village on June 19th, 2010.