As I saw that 3km to go mark, I was filled with both anger and incredible sadness. Tears started to form as I pushed my way to the finish line. Eminem’s “No love” played over my headphones which I thought was kind of perfect. At that moment, I had no love for the sport of running. I had put my heart and soul into this training block, into this year… and I couldn’t help but think, what the hell am I doing.

How did I get to this point? Let’s back track a little.

After racing Sulphur springs 20k, I attempted to go run the Rim2Rim at the Grand Canyon only to wake up the night before with the stomach flu. Then a week and a half later I flew out to Alberta to race Minotaur, only to get a terrible chest cold the day before I left. I coughed and hacked my way up the mountains of Alberta. Yes I was lucky to race at all but, I ran at least 30 minutes slower then I know I could have. Returning home I was pretty beat up but, I knew I had 5 big training weeks between races and that I could rally the troops for one last race of the year; the Squamish 50km (the Canadian Trail Running Championships).

I raced the 50miler at Squamish back in 2022 in my 2nd year of ultrarunning. This came just after I raced QMT where my eyes were opened to what real trail running was all about. The course is the same as the 50miler, just starting closer to the end, so I knew what I was getting myself into. And that was a good thing, right?

Training

In my training post Minotaur I struggled to feel excited to train. I chalked that off to still being fatigued and/or sick. I forced myself to show up either way, ticking off a very consistent training block with three back to back weeks at over 10 hours of training and decent elevation numbers. After a few weeks, I started to get some spark back but traded the mental struggles for physical – starting to get some soreness into my knees specifically my quadricep tendons. I knew they were beat up from the 3500m of hard descent from Minotaur. I ran more cautiously with my downhill training after that point to ensure I made it to the dang startline. At the end of July, I hit a big weekend up in Blue mountain which helped to ease my fears as I started to feel smooth on technical terrain again.

All year I had my A++ goal in my head of finishing in the top 3 at Squamish. A lofty goal yes, but, I truly believed with all my heart I could. Even a top 10 finish would be amazing as this was a Canadian Championship.

Travel & Pre-Race

And just like like, it was time to head out to British Columbia for the final race of my season. Josh and I arrived in Squamish on Tuesday August 13th which, put me 5 days out from race day. When I raced the 50miler, Josh made friends with Craig, a trail runner from Alaska who was crewing his wife as well. They had a crazy idea of running up the Sea to Summit trail between crewing aid stations. Josh absolutely loved that experience and had planned on taking me up there ever since I signed back up for Squamish.

So that’s exactly what we did! We even made the trip a day earlier than originally planned just so I could do this hike and not have it impact my race. The Sea to Summit trail is very technical starting with endless stairs for the first 3km of the 7km climbing a total of 900m of elevation. Most hikers take 3-5hours to complete it. The best part about the trail is knowing you don’t have to put that same amount of technical descent into your legs as you just take the Sea to Sky Gondola back down. We jumped off the plane in Vancouver and headed straight to the trail. Albeit, a little grumpy from a full day of travel. After some much needed nature exposure I came alive and was so excited to experience this trail with Josh. I’ll definitely feature this in my upcoming youtube video so be sure to check that out. We crushed it in 1hr45.

For Thursday I chose a simple loop from the front door of our airbnb. No matter where you run in Squamish it’s all so beautiful. I just love being in the forest so I really took that in alongside the mountain views. Later that day, I talked Josh into heading out to check on the waterfall that we run over but can’t really see during the race – Mamquam Falls. It was definitely worth the trip.

Friday was a planned day off, as per usual, while Josh set out on his own epic adventure to Panorama Ridge – a 26km out and back with 1500m of elevation gain. He updated me as he went with stunning blue lake views, reminescent of our epic trip to Alberta.

Into Saturday, the day before the race.

For Squamish, they run the 50miler on Saturday and the 50km on Sunday as many people will complete the “50/50,” running both distances on back to back days. So this meant I wouldn’t race until sunday and we could go kill some of those pre-race nerves by watching the 50milers. I recently connected with Robyn Mildren, an amazing Ontario born runner who I’ve raced on the roads before. She also transitioned from roads to trails like myself and has already put up some amazing results, winning the Squamish 50km/ Canadian Championships last year. Josh and I headed to the 52km mark to cheer her on before getting in my own shake out run for the day.

At this point, my legs felt good as I rolled through my strides over an easy 4km run. After that, we spent a few hours at the finish line waiting for the lead men and women to finish. I was so inspired by Marcus Ribi as he celebrated his way through the finish chute flying that beautiful canadian flag behind him. His emotions were raw and you could feel the energy in the crowd. He trailed behind Chris the entirety of the race only to pass him in the last section of the course and become the eventual Canadian Champion. And of course, the ever impressive Priscilla Forgie came through as the female champion. She smashed me by over 2 hours to win Squamish in 2022 at the 50mile distance only to go on the next day and do the 50/50! Robyn didn’t have the day she dreamed of but still ran with so much grit to finish 4th female/3rd Canadian. Once she finished it was time to head back to our airbnb and rest up for my own battle on the trails. If only I had known how much of a battle that was going to be.

The Race

Race morning my nerves were at an all time high. As we stood in the pre-race bus shuttle line, Josh reminded me to breathe as I tried to stay warm in the cold drizzle that was coming down. I found my friend and training partner extraordinaire Rhys at the start line as he made fun of my “tigger” energy while we waited for the 6:15am start. I was still very nervous but finding people I knew at the start line including Jeremy Walsh, a local to me runner who only a few weeks ago I shared some K2 repeats with, helped ease my mind.

And we were off. I knew there would be some crazy fast starters so I put myself a few rows from the front. I kept it conservative (at least compared to the front) started out at 4:30/km for the first kilometer on a road section through Alice Lake. I smiled as we turned off the road onto the same exact trail head where Josh and I had run on the Wednesday. Places shuffled a bit with a few men and women around me but I tried to find my own space as it was pretty dark and the trails still had some technical element to them. I definitely didn’t want to eat shit anytime soon.

Pretty quickly I noticed my legs seemed to have nothing in them. This starting section had a few little bumps of hills and I felt like I wanted to walk them. My heartrate was also jacked at 175bpm and I just felt uncomfortably warm. There was no reason to feel hot, it was 19 degrees and raining. Within 3-4 kilometers I was already running in complete no man’s land. I had no one around me to work with. I already needed to walk up several smaller hills on the course…“what was going on,” I thought. Often in training runs I don’t “warm up” or feel good for about an hour, so I just chalked it up to that and tried not to overthink it. I defintely did not expect to feel that bad so early on.

At 5km I went over on my previously injured right ankle which definitely stung for a solid minute afterwards. Already being frustrated, we hit this out and back section of the trail. While flagging the trail the volunteers were stung by endless wasps so they chose to skip part of that trail making it an out and back rather than a short loop. This meant the lead men were smashing full speed out of the technical single track at me while I was hobbling on my freshly rolled ankle. This made for a frustrating section, both trying to get my own legs going while jumping out of the way every 10 seconds. As I hit the turn around now everyone else behind me was in my way. Frustrated, I told the volunteers I passed on the way out of the section, “well that really sucked.” I had at least 20 women in front of me, I didn’t exactly count even though it would have been really easy to do so. I didn’t want to dwell on that with my plan always being to attack in the second half of the race.

We headed into the first aid station and I topped up my bottles. I still had a lot left as it was only 8km into the race but I knew I’d need more before the next aid station, which wasn’t until 19km, so I chose to spend a few moments there. As part of my pre-race prep I researched the top 10 women and found someone who came from 13th into 7th last year and kept some of their splits in mind. I knew she hit the first aid station at 45 minutes and I went through in 49 minutes. So really not that far back. I used this to remind myself that I’m still having an OK day and things can turn around. The section leaving the aid station was a nice wide jeep trail and a nice break from the single track.

From there I just focused on getting my legs moving as I headed to the first real climb of the day, Galactic Schiesse a 5km section of 616m of ascent at an average grade of 12%. I had focused a lot of my training with Galactic in mind. Every uphill treadmill session I worked towards the goal of being able to run more of this climb this time around. In 2022, I walked every single step of Galactic taking 1hour 1minute to complete this climb.

I smiled seeing the Team Canada representatives spectating just before I turned into Galactic at the 10km point of the race, reminding me why I was there. I stayed focused on the present and decided which parts I would run and which parts I would walk. I quickly realized there were so many flat runnable sections that I knew I had walked on previously. I briefly chatted to a french guy who told me to just take it easy on Galactic and save the legs for the climb trail. He had just done the 50mile the day before and after a short conversation he went ahead of me. “I’m being passed by a 50/50 runner, I don’t know if I should be impressed by him or embarassed for myself, ” I laughed as I thought to myself. I trailed him and one other guy for the second half of galactic which helped a bit but otherwise was still living in complete no man’s land. We reached the top of the climb and I was proud as I knew I 100% covered that section a lot faster (15 minutes faster in fact!).

At this point it was all runnable again. I started coming alive. This, this is what I was waiting for. I smiled as I started to smash the downhill coming off Galactic. I trailed behind one guy who was moving pretty well on the technical descent and another guy just behind me. At one point I saved him from missing a turn and then I lead down the rest of the way. It was so much fun! Memories of cursing each downstep from the 2022 as my hip flexors were destroyed flashed across me and all I could do is laugh at the 180 degree flip. Downhills have now become my strength and favourite part of every course. At the hour and a half mark I knew that my luck was about to change and the race I had expected to run was finally about to start.

We hit our second aid station halfway through the downhill at 19km, I was still feeling hot temperature wise but, didn’t really see the bucket for cooling so I filled my bottles and was on my way. I kept rolling this downhill section all the way to the first crewed station of the day, where I looked forward to seeing Josh. I had a slight soreness starting in my left hip flexor but absolutely nothing compared to 2022 where I couldn’t run upright so I wasn’t concerned.

At 23km I rolled into the aid station at Cap-U (Quest) in good spirits. I came through at about 2hr51 (7:08/km). I told Josh, I just went through hell and my legs were heavy but, I seemed to be coming back alive. He knew not to tell me what place I was in at the point as he expected me through between 30-45 minutes ago and could tell I wasn’t having the best day. He swapped my bottles and reminded me not to take more than needed at the next aid station to keep the weight down. Again, I looked around for the cooling buckets to no avail.

Onwards to the climb trail – the next big climbing section of the day. I left aid station solo, no one really in front or behind me to work with. I did the math as I saw 3 hours cross my watch, maybe a 6 hour finish day was still in the cards. It wouldn’t be the magic of 5hr30 that it would take to place in the top 3 but, a 6 hour finish would be very respectable.

I’m not really sure when as I just focused on pushing the climb trail section but, my legs felt like concrete blocks again. I had been taking in 100g of carbs per hour so I knew it wasn’t a fueling issue. I started taking in a few salt tabs… “maybe it’s an electrolyte issue,” I thought. This trail consistented of endless switch backs with decent stretches between each corner so I power hiked the corners and ran the in between. There were two guys that I leap frogged with here, gaining some confidence here as eventually gapped them and put some good time in on them. My legs might have been heavy but, I sure as hell was going to make them move. This climb topped out around 29km gaining 451m of elevation over the 7km section.

I knew well enough not to get my hopes up about feeling good as the rest of the course was rolling hills. At this point, I was getting frustated about my heavy legs; they only felt relatively normal on descents. I would try running more of the small hills and instantly was like, nope, there’s nothing. I decided that the 3rd gel per hour that I was testing for this race wasn’t doing me any favours and just went back to 2 plus my bottles. I tried to distract myself thinking only about getting to the next aid station. This part of the course was gnarly single track and I almost tripped a few times but luckily caught myself.

At the 32k aid station I went through in 4hr7 averaging 7:29/km – a full minute per kilometer slower than my goal coming into this race. I was clearly losing time. My legs weren’t doing their usual second-half-of-the-course battle cry. This time is asked where the head dumping water was and felt so much better! Another male runner jumped on the trend and we had a brief moment of joy and relief together.

As we winded through the trails I thought about my friend Rhys and hoped he was having a great day. I knew he would probably run somewhere around 5hr30 based on his QMT finishing time and that at this point I was going to be an hour behind him. I didn’t lose any more time off my average pace but, I also wasn’t closing hard like I’m used to doing. This course is absolutely relentless and at a certain point I just wanted to be done.

It was all I could do to focus on getting to the last aid station to see Josh. I dreamed of throwing my extra gels on the ground in anger at his feet. I felt like all that work fueling was getting me no where and the gels just weren’t hitting my legs. I decided not to be a crazy person. I did feel an overwhelming sense of disappointment as I saw Josh. I felt bad that he must have been there waiting for more than an hour for me to come through. I felt bad that I wouldn’t have it in my legs to crush the final 10km that I knew he has come to expect from me. I felt bad that I dragged us all the way across the country to be miserable and basically time trial on the course…in complete no mans land. I wasn’t even in contention at the Canadian championships… I wasn’t even an afterthought.

We traded bottles again and I told him this was going to be a just-make-it-to-the-finish kind of day. In my self-pity I rethought my whole training block… my whole life. What am I doing out here. What kind of lala land was I living in to ever think I could be top 3. I already was second guessing my plans for next year – would it even be a smart idea to race the canadian championships again (at QMT)? Would I crack under the pressure…again? Would I completely ruin my love for trail racing. I didn’t want to ever race again. I didn’t want to exist.

My mantra became, the faster you run the faster you can be done. I was passed by 2 or 3 women. Good, I thought. Now I’m being passed by people who probably train way less than me as I continue to blow up on this course. I tried my best to reel back in the negative headspace. As a saw the last final downhill section in the trails and just tried to have fun. I was able to pass one of the women back which helped ease the blow as I ran through smoke bluffs.

Now I was just mad. Mad that I signed myself up for this. Mad that somehow 2 years later I was just as pathetic of a trail runner as 2022. I have painstakingly evaluated my weaknesses and my training plans putting in 2 hours per week on average more training and double the amount of elevation. It all felt it was worthless. I was worthless.

I saw the sign for the last 3km and just started tempoing. As I turned onto the road past the volunteers to head to the finish I started to get upset on top of my anger. Eminem’s no love came on my headphones and I thought, perfect. This is exactly how I feel right now. I put all this work into my training and I get no love back from it.

I knew the tears were coming. In 2021 I was crying tears of joy as I finished my first ultramarathon at Haliburton Forest 50k. Now, they were tears of frustration. I crossed the line and Gary Robbins consoled me with his iconic finish line hug. I had been dreaming of that moment – of crossing the finish line and getting my Gary hug. Now it was tainted as I felt embarrassment. Embarrassment of how I could have just run so poorly in a race I said I was going to shoot for the stars and place in the top 3. I had now just been somewhere in the 20s. I had finished in 6hr42 minutes, an hour and a half behind the first female.

The tears fell now as I found a spot on the grass to crawl onto. Josh found me somehow and tried his best. I expressed my frustration at how my legs just had nothing all day and how I was embarrassed to place so far back in the women’s field. My one reprieve was when Jeremy Walsh came over to congratulate me. I looked up from the ground to see the sadness in his eyes as well, the race did not go as he had dreamed of either. I felt comfort in knowing it wasn’t just me. I was shocked when Josh told me I had placed 17th. I swore I had at least 20 women in front of me. That definitely helped ease the sting. It helped lift my spirits to talk to my training partner Rhys to see that he had an amazing day placing 11th male, helping the lead women the whole day. Fitting, I thought, as I knew how much he enjoyed helping me in my training runs.

Post Race & Reflections

Josh, Rhys and I headed for a much needed shower and food. I continued to wallow in self-pity but, on the inside. I didn’t want to ruin Rhys’ day. I also didn’t want to seem ungrateful to Josh as he spent the day driving around everywhere for me to come do this race.

I made a passing joke about how runners have some kind of mental health issue they are running from. Under my breath I said, yeah my problem is that I feel that I’m never good enough and I just went out there and proved it. The boys tried their hardest to help me see the positives of the day, but in the end I had to do all that soul searching on my own in the past 48 hours.

There are many ways I can look at this result, at this season really. I could look at it as, wow what a failure of a year, I did nothing I set out to accomplish, which I did think about many times during my race.

2024 goals:

• Run the course record at Sulphur 20k
• Complete the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim
• Top 15 Female at Minotaur
• Top 10 at Squamish

That’s 0/4.

The problem with that, is this is SO FAR FROM THE TRUTH. There has been so much growth in this year alone, let alone the past 4 years since starting on the trails. I’ve already run more elevation for the year than the entirely of last year at 64,000m versus 51,500m for 2023 and only 20,000m for 2021. I’ve successfully been able to train more averaging 2 hours more per week than last year without returning to the bottomless pit of burnout that was 2020. I was so terrible at downhill running at QMT in 2022 I swore I would never do another technical race like that again because I just “wasn’t good at it” and now it is one of my strengths.

I switched over to ultrarunning on the trails because I couldn’t handle the pressure I was putting on myself on the roads any longer. I was miserable. And truly the only thing I’m not proud of from my race at Squamish was that I let myself go back to that headspace. Because I know it was never about the finishing place. No matter what place I came in, my life would have not changed in the slightest. People would still be proud of me, I would still have a great career helping others, and I would still have other races. I love racing trails because I love going out into the woods for 4 hours and coming back with adventures to share. I love being out in nature and seeing how far my I can travel on my own two feet. I do it because it makes me stronger in all aspects in life, bringing out the best of me (on most days unless I’m exhausted let’s be honest).

Instinctually, I knew I was going to struggle at this race simply from the fact that I was struggling to enjoy my training after Minotaur. I’m not sure exactly why this hit so hard.. was it race fatigue? Coming down from being sick? Life stresses? Or was it that stupid unnecessary pressure from myself that I had to “place well” at the canadian championships; that I could “make a name” for myself on the trails. Now, I don’t have the answers to how I can keep myself from falling back into that trap the next time. I just know that I race the best when I’m happy and excited. All I can do is try to push myself towards the joy and see what happens next.

And I know I am good enough, I can compete with the best on any given day. I also know that no amount of success on the trails can fill that hole of feeling less than. I have to truly believe that myself and be happy with the person I am. I’m still only 32 and I have years of fitness and training left before I really need to give that a second thought. I still haven’t explored longer distance ultras – who knows where my true talent lies. I have absolutely skyrocked in my downhill and trail running skills; so much so that I ran down a friggen skree descent like it was nothing at Minotaur this year.

In the end, Squamish was actually a pretty good race if I look at it from the outside:

• I did not drop out – a finish in an ultra is never guaranteed
• I did not come out of it injured even though I went in with a few aches and pains
• I ran the EXACT time (6hr42) that I ran at QMT 50k in 2022 which is arguably a much easier course. My gps ran me 53k today so possibly 3km longer than my 49.5k reading from QMT; and still I ran the same time. Meaning, I ran a much stronger race at Squamish even feeling rough from the gun
• I pb’d on Galactic and ran the goal time of 45 minutes up it, even feeling off
• I ran faster on pretty much every other section of this course compared to my 50miler here

In the end, that race wasn’t bad at all. It was my expectations that were the issue. I somewhere decided I wasn’t going to be happy if I was outside of the top 10 women. In the first half of the course I was only 5-10 minutes behind my goal at each aid station based on what someone who was 7th the previous year ran. So in reality, I was still having a good day – the girls in front of me were just having an even better day. The winner actually beat a 10 year old course record from Ellie Greenwood who is a legend in the sport by running 5hr16 for the 50k! Last year was won in 5hr30! So quite the stacked field. And if I had run closer to what my goal was of 6 hours I would have been around 9th or 10. Even 15 minutes faster would have moved me up quite a few places. So, I know that the ability and skillset is there, I just need to have the right day. I also think I wrongly expected to feel OK on the course with all my hard training – huge mistake. You never go into a race expecting to feel good especially on a hilly race like this. So I think this likely did not help when within the first 5km I already felt uncomfortable and expected to feel good. The training makes it so you can handle the course but, it doesn’t make the course easy.

So, I’m not going to let one bad day define me. I am actually pretty blessed that I’ve run 7 ultra distanced races now and only have had one go “poorly.”

And I don’t really care if nobody else believes
‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me