Imag­ine turn­ing on the cold water & stand­ing in your shower for the better part of 3 hours. Add some ice cubes on the shower floor & set your bath­room fan on it’s “turbo” set­ting. Short of invit­ing about 45 bud­dies to join you for this chill-fest,  you’ll start to get an idea of what Sun­days train­ing run felt like.

In the 9 years that I’ve par­tic­i­pated in these train­ing runs, I can easily say that this is at the top of the list of epic train­ing days. (See Karen Chow’s pic­tures from the day here)

When the group met at the Cleve­land Dam park­ing area, we started out under dark skies, but the pre­cip­i­ta­tion was fairly limited….but it didn’t wait for long. It seemed to start as we crossed the dam & it was relent­less. If the Inuit have 200 words for “snow”, I’m sure we have just as many for the rain we saw on Sunday……showers, driz­zle, deluge, rain, spit, mist, & sleet!! There were, of course, a few other words….none of which should be repeated here.

The climb up through the British Prop­er­ties & into the forest kept most people warm. The rain­for­est canopy did a decent job of keep­ing the rain away….or at least min­i­miz­ing it….but as we climbed the Holly­burn Chute, the air got cooler.

At the top of the Chute, it was down­right cold & the tree canopy gave way to open skies as we wended onto the cross coun­try ski trails. No sooner were we on this wide path­way that we were on com­pacted sloppy mashed potato type snow (do the Inuit use “mashed pota­toes” in their snow verbage? …that’d be 201 words).  The con­di­tions made it feel like a walk at the beach….a beach in the Outer Hebrides, perhaps….but the snow made for some extra work as we climbed towards Holly­burn Peak. I couldn’t help but think back to last year, on this very same run, when sun­burn was the biggest con­cern. Today, we were look­ing at numb fin­gers, & cold soaked skin.

Many people opted to turn around early. Some headed back to the warmth of the lower climes, others took an alter­nate cir­cuit that allowed for some qual­ity train­ing miles on clear trails. I turned around at the base of the Holly­burn Peak headwall….I couldn’t feel my fin­gers despite my gloves & fig­ured that there wouldn’t be any­thing more to gain.

On the descent, there were a couple of surprises….sharing an umbrella on the forested sin­gle­track above the British Prop­er­ties, Karen & Andrew were brav­ing the rain to take some photos of our epic effort. Look for their photos in an upcom­ing link.

Back at the park­ing lot, many people had brought a change of clothes & made haste in get­ting out of their soaked garb & headed home for hot show­ers or hot food….or both.

Fun times!

Glenn Pace

Impor­tant notice!

Next week’s planned run was to cover the last ½ of the Knee Knacker course. Due to a con­cur­rent event, park­ing in the Deep Cove area will be very lim­ited so we are chang­ing our meet­ing plans slightly.

Instead of meet­ing in Deep Cove for the car­pool, we will meet at the Lynn Canyon Sus­pen­sion Bridge park­ing lot at 7:30am. The park­ing lot gate should be open at 7:00am. We will car­pool to Cleve­land Dam from there.

The train­ing run route will change to accom­mo­date our meet­ing area.

We will still start the run at Cleve­land Dam, but instead of going to Deep Cove, we will turn up the trail above the Varley Trail & head up Lynn Head­wa­ters. At this point we will have a couple of options.

Option 1: run up Lynn Head­wa­ters trail to the Debris Chute, then turn up & run back along the Head­wa­ter Loop trail  & back to Lynn Canyon Sus­pen­sion Bridge.

Option 2: run up Lynn Head­wa­ters trail passed the Debris Chute to Norvan Falls, then return to Lynn Canyon Sus­pen­sion Bridge (those that feel the need to earn extra-manliness points, can also include the Lynn Loop route above the Debris Chute).