(Photos by Karen Chow have been posted here. Report by Glenn Pacé below.)

This is more like it!

With the Van­cou­ver Marathon out of the way, we saw a very good turn-out for our second run of the season. All told, there were over 70 trail run­ning enthu­si­asts ready to hit the trails & get their legs ready for the race in July, despite the fact that it was Mother’s Day. We started things off with a few gen­eral details about vol­un­teerism, trail mark­ings, etc…& Curb Ivanic from Core Run­ning (one of our spon­sors & a prior fin­isher at the Knee Knacker)  got us moti­vated with a trivia ses­sion & a DVD give-away.

We lucked out & dodged the mon­soon that fell the day prior, but the trail was still quite slick. Although we were lined up at the start to get to the sin­gle­track, every­one even­tu­ally got into their own rhythm & fol­lowed the trail towards Lynn Head­wa­ters. It was a great mix of vet­er­ans & first timers & it’s always inter­est­ing to hear the vari­ety of opin­ions from gear (hand-helds vs packs), to nutri­tion (the merits of cheese­burg­ers vs gels, or beer as an elec­trolyte drink), to cloth­ing (socks, shoes, hats, watches, etc…).

The trail took us up to our high point where I joined Ken Legge (another expe­ri­enced Knack­erer ) for the bal­ance of the run. As is the norm on these runs, casual con­ver­sa­tion car­ries ahead to unsus­pect­ing ears & we gave Gitta quite a fright. As she was run­ning just ahead of us, she could hear us dis­cuss Ken’s cur­rent train­ing. Sud­denly she was feel­ing quite underprepared….but she didn’t real­ize that he is train­ing for an upcom­ing 100 miler late in the summer (that’s right….there are people out there that run 100 mile races or more), so his mileage is some­what skewed. Rest easy, Gitta….just follow the train­ing runs & you will be more than ready!

We made it to the LSCR Gazebo  to refill our water bot­tles before turn­ing around & going back up what we had just come down (damn you, Fromme!!!). The great thing about out-&backs is that it gives you a great oppor­tu­nity to gauge your pacing, so I hoped that this 1:25 “out” would turn into a 1:25 return….or some­thing like that. Climb­ing isn’t my strength, so I sucked up the quad pain on the climb out of the valley & looked for­ward to the downhill…..which came eventually.

During the return we  stopped to ana­lyze the ero­sion that is taking place on var­i­ous parts of the trail ( a great way to break up a climb!). Some parts are a little more exposed than others, so run with care. Suzanne Reynolds was look­ing quite strong as she caught up with us & kept on going….not to be seen until the end of the run. We enjoyed the down­hill of the final sec­tion & wound our way down towards the park­ing lot for a 3:05 finish time. Not exactly an even split, but good enough.

This next run will entail a few changes due to the deep snow­pack, so stay tuned to the web­site for updates. Patri­cia Jensen will be your host on Sunday & she has some great routes for you!!!

For those of you that are fairly new to trail run­ning, there were many ques­tions about gear & nutri­tion. There is no “right” answer to most of the questions….we are all very dif­fer­ent. The best advice is to listen to a few people’s opin­ions & try one item at a time. You don’t want to do any dras­tic changes, but if you are look­ing at trying any­thing new (such as a hand held bottle or a blad­der pack for the very first time) now is the time to exper­i­ment. Better to have a fail­ure on a train­ing day than on race day. As the weeks progress, you will want to even­tu­ally dial in your sys­tems so that every­thing works together with ease on race day.

Happy train­ing & see you in a couple of weeks!

Glenn Pacé