Where to begin?!
Brace yourselves for a lengthy post, a 24 hours race means a long recap. But before I can begin talking about my experience, I will provide an explanation of how the race works as best as I can.
The Cabot Trail Relay.
A 276km, 24 hour, 17 leg relay through the Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia.
(Note yellow highlighted road on the map below!)
The relay begins at the Gaelic College in St. Ann's (near Baddeck). Each runner (from a team of 17 members) runs one leg of the relay. We had 2 support vehicles to assist in driving runners to and from legs as well as providing water/food/encouragement along the way for each leg. The legs varied from about 13 to 20 km each, all on a variety of different elevations, according to their location along the Cabot Trail (See below). Each leg connected together completes an entire lap of the 276km Cabot Trail. The start of one leg would also be the finish line for the previous leg. When you start your leg, you have a certain amount of time to reach the start for the next leg.
For example, leg 1 started at 0700 in the morning. Kirk ran this one, and he had until 0840 to reach the start line for leg 2 (which is also the finish for leg 1). Because they have to continue to move the finish lines along with each leg, if you don't make it to the finish line/start of the next leg, you will miss the mat and the chip cannot be tracked, so you get the same time as the last tracked runner that made the finish +5 minutes as your final time). At the end, the times from each of the 17 legs is added up, and the team with the fastest overall time wins (this year 1st place actually took only 16 hours to run ALL 17 legs.. thats crazy!). Our team only had 9 people, as opposed to the normal 17, which meant the majority of us would be running 2 legs (or more).
Our team name was Running Dirty as we are all primarily OCR and trail runners!
We all met bright and early Saturday morning in Baddeck for a quick breakfast of egg and avocado sandwiches, then drove to the official start line of the race at the Gaelic College. Kirk was our first runner and we cheered him on as he left. We then waited our required 25 minute period before leaving (each support vehicle had a different time, to prevent car congestion). Driving along the first leg of the relay was a great indication of how the race would go. Support vehicles were cheering out the windows of the cars, everyone was having a blast, and the route was absolutely gorgeous. Anytime I get to be near/run by water, I'm a happy clam :D
Kirk made it to the finish of his leg with a time of 1 hour 19 minutes.
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| Kirk and I after leg 1! |
Martin was up next, and his leg started within 20 minutes of Kirk arriving. After we picked up Kirk/dropped Martin off and cheered him on as he began his leg, we started to drive toward the beginning of leg 3.
I was running leg 3 and my excitement/nervousness was growing. Doing the calculations, I knew I would be cutting it close to the cut off time. I had to maintain a pace of 5:58 to reach the finish line at leg 4 before it would be closed. This was stressful because not only is my average pace during EVERY training run EVER only 6:30-7:00 a kilometre, but I would still have another leg to run after this one. Regardless, I braced myself and got my kit ready to go.
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| Rock tape saved my life. |
Starting out, I tried to maintain an even pace at anywhere below 6 minute/km. Running an entire minute per kilometre faster than I've ever ran was hard, but physically I felt great. I maintained this pace for the first 5k, thinking maybe I just might be able to make the cut off time. Somewhere along the way, whether it was a hill, or just that pushing that hard was getting the best of me, I ended up with a couple kilometres being a 6:30 pace. I came into the finish line a mere 2 minutes after they closed it, missing the cut off time. After spending the entire week before this race panicking and stressed out about how I knew I wouldn't make the cut off times, this was very disappointing. I basically collapsed into Kirk's arms sobbing, feeling like a failure and very embarrassed about being such a slow runner. I know I'm still a newbie at this and I can't expect to get fast right away, however I felt like I was letting my team down.
Luckily, team Running Dirty was there for the fun times, and not for placement. Everyone was really just excited about me finishing strong, as opposed to caring at all that I didn't make the mat.
After some talking to Kirk, he convinced me to be proud of the fact that I had just ran almost 16km in an hour and 22 minutes (this is a good 20 minutes faster than an average run for me) and I've realized how much more I am actually capable of when I push myself.
Next up was leg 4, which was up Cape Smokey and run by Mike. He started a few minutes late and still finished 13th out of about 70 people!
Leg 5 was run by Tara, the other female on the team, who is super fast and can easily keep up/pass all the guys!
After Tara was done, it was past lunch and we were all starving so we stopped at a grocery store for some hummus and carrots, apples, orange juice, crackers and chocolate. Not a real lunch by any means but it really hit the spot.
Carrying on, leg 6 was run by Justin, leg 7 was run by Mark and leg 8 was run by Lloyd. I'm going to be honest, most of the day after I ran was a complete blur. Between eating, trying to get some rest (I was still recovering from working a night shift the day before) and checking into our airBnB Tara got in Pleasant Bay, I wasn't really sure where the time went.
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| Our rental had a short path to a look off! Selfies in-between napping haha. |
Before we knew it, it was 8 pm and time for Kirk to begin his second leg, #9. This leg had the most elevation change (gain and loss), was the first night leg, and it was raining. At the top, ironically, the team doing the water station was dressed as devils with signs reading "Welcome to Hell".
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| Wet and cold. Bad combination. |
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| Looking happy, but inside probably dying. |
When Kirk finally reached the end of his leg, we could all tell he was exhausted. We fed him a club sandwich and he got into the shower at our rental to warm up.
Our team was also in charge of a water station, except ours was for 1230 at night. I slept through it in the support van so I can't really talk about how that went, opps! Had to sleep a bit before my next leg at 5 am.
Throughout the night, Martin ran his second leg (10) - the hardest leg, straight up with a lot of turns and no downhill, Tara ran her second (#11), Adam ran his first (#12), Mike his second leg (#13) and Lloyd his second (leg 14).
Before I knew it, my team was waking me up in the back of the van and saying I had less than an hour until I ran again (leg 15). I can confirm one thing.. you don't get a great sleep in the back of a car thats driving up mountains haha. Another thing.. running was the last thing I wanted to do at that moment. Freezing cold, exhausted from barely any sleep, sore/stiff from running and then sitting in a car for hours... I was miserable and really dreading my run. This leg was just under 16km of rolling hills and I knew the cut off time would be tight. There came the anxiety again.
Once I started going however, I was surprised how well my body managed to run while sore/tired/etc. I was maintaining just around the pace I needed. Around 9km in though, I could really feel the effects of the past day and knew I was beginning to be dehydrated. Luckily my team was there to support me and give me water. I carried on, spending some time running with/behind my old friend from high school, Jessica. Having my team cheering me on, and Jessica there was just the push I needed to carry on and finish the leg strong.
I came up short again, by barely a minute, as I saw the next leg leaving as I was rounding the final corner (which meant they had closed the finish). However, instead of feeling disappointed this time, I felt proud that I had maintained a long run at a much faster pace than I had ever been used to before. The crowd was still at the finish since leg 16 had only JUST left (Kirks 3rd leg) which was great because the cheers while finishing the leg was amazing.
Once I arrived, we drove to the finish of Kirks leg, at the start of leg 17 - Martins 3rd, and the last leg.
They had a pancake breakfast set up at the end of leg 16 and it was just what we all needed to refuel!
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| Is it sad I have to stand on a tree stump to be the same height? |
Finally, after over 24 hours the race was winding down. We met our entire team at the finish line in Baddeck and waited for Martin. The crowd was unreal and there were a thousand people there cheering everyone on!
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| Quite a tall team! Minus the 2 shorties in front ;) |
After the race was over, all 1300 of us racers/support crew headed to the arena for a post race meal.
The Lion Club had worked so hard to prepare steak, lobster and vegetarian trays. I had the vegetarian, which had pizza, quinoa/grain mixture and a pasta salad. Everything was delicious, especially the carrot cake for desert! I was so hungry and excited I completely forgot to take pictures of the actual food!
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| Food, new friends and good conversations |
After the lunch, we took some more pictures and said our final goodbyes before everyone left for a long drive/flight home.
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| Yay team Running Dirty! |
Also in the picture are our lovely support crew/driver ladies! I cannot thank everyone enough for such an amazing weekend. Our captains Tara and Mike, for putting so much effort and time into planning everything, and for allowing a slow poke such as myself the opportunity to join such an amazing group of runners for the weekend. I feel blessed for being able to run one of my bucket list races so early in my running journey and cannot wait to run this next year (faster and more improved, of course!!).
Not only did I prove to myself that I can run 30km on little to no sleep, that I can push myself to go faster, but also that I can maintain a 6 minute pace for that a longer distance.
Once my legs recover, I cannot wait to get back out and continue training to see how much I can improve from here. My goal for next years relay (hopefully we can all return!) is to maintain a pace of 5 minutes/km. Tons of time to train.
For now, I continue training for the Ultra Beast in the end of July! A couple months of solid training left to go! I'll be ready in no time.
Happy Trails,
The Rural Runner
