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The inaugural Whistler 50 Relay & Ultra took place on Saturday November 5, 2011. Participants had the option of running the 50 miles (~ 80 km.) as part of an 8-person relay team or tackling the entire distance in the solo ultrarunner division. Approximately 50 runners choose the latter option, and I was on hand to help out as an “ultra volunteer”.

This event took over the calendar spot vacated last year by the Haney to Harrison Relay & 100K Ultra. BC Athletics moved the location of their season-ending event to address safety concerns due to traffic congestion along the busy highway which was the route of the previous event. The only traffic concerns in Whistler this year were the bears near the course, especially around the Nicklaus North golf course

The ultrarunning community is rather small and close-knit, so this was a good chance to get caught up with some old friends who were either running the race or volunteering. Our 2 aid stations were located less than 100 yards apart, at about the 8km and 16.5 km points along the ~20km loop that would be repeated 4 times by the ultrarunners. The cool weather was pretty ideal for the runners, but the vollies had to keep hopping to generate heat as the temps never got much above freezing. We did get come welcome sunshine by late morning and for the rest of the afternoon. Have a look at my pics at http://enzo.smugmug.com/Sea-To-Sky/2011/Whistler-50-Relay-Ultra-Nov-5/. Many thanks to fellow ultra vollies Ron, Cathy, Wendy, Brian and Gottfried – you made the time pass by quickly and most enjoyably!

As far as the competitive aspects of the race, both men’s and women’s races were very close – Chris Downie of Burnaby winning by less than 3 minutes in 5:52:55, and Jenn Segger of Squamish (yeah, Squamish ) winning by 6 minutes in 6:31:20! Overall the race had 52 starters and 47 finishers. Full results can be found at http://www.raceheadquarters.com/results/2011/run/W50M2011OA_U.html.

Just want to close off on a non-running note, as the conditions in Whistler this past weekend were a reminder that this is expected to be another awesome ski season with La Niña back for the second straight winter! Here are a couple of pics of Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains, and both look ready to open before their officially posted date of November 24

Whistler Mountain

Blackcomb Mountain

From being “On The Road Again” (Willie Nelson – on YouTube), it’s now “Good To Be Back Home Again” (John Denver – on YouTube):

Shannon Falls from below

Whistler Olympic Park (at the top)

 
The West Coast of British Columbia welcomed me back with a few days of wonderful weather earlier this week. I took advantage of it with a combination of hiking/jogging/biking in the great outdoors. Complete sets of pictures at:

• Shannon Falls Hiking
• Whistler Olympic Park Cycling

…to the other side – in keeping with the theme of Jim Morrison & The Doors

The "Other Side" of Little Whistler Peak

Whistler is at the high point along the Sea To Sky Highway from Horseshoe Bay to Pemberton. From the Village, there are ski lifts to take you even higher up both Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains. During the peak of summer, lifts are operating on both mountains taking hikers, bikers and tourists even higher into the alpine.

Alas, summer has drawn to a close and operations are gearing up for the upcoming winter season. In fact, snow was reported as early as September 17 at the Roundhouse on Whistler Mountain – good sign for another La Niña winter

The upshot of all this was that options were more limited for me on the first weekend of October. Saturday was a bit of a washout from a weather perspective, but Sunday provided a small break between storms. Time to head up to Whistler/Blackcomb for some alpine hiking, and the Whistler Village Gondola provided me with a bit of a “cheating” start to get me to the Roundhouse Lodge at 6,069 ft

Whistler has always had a very special place in my heart since my first visit in 1978. Upon graduating from University Of Toronto that spring, Vancouver and Whistler were the launching points for me and 3 buddies on an adventure that would take us on a road trip down the West Coast – all the way to Tijuana and back. Now that’s a story for another time! But for now, below is a picture showing one of the old gondola cars that I took up the mountain from Creekside (I don’t think that name even existed at that time) in May 1978 for some wet spring skiing.

Old gondola car at Garibaldi Lift Company

Now, here I am 33 years later heading up the Gondola from the Village that was just starting its transformation from a garbage dump in the late 70′s. (Note to self – compare that to my own personal transformation over that 33 year period).

The alpine was cool and occasionally blustery as I stepped out of the warm gondola car after the 25-minute ride from the Village. I shared the ride with a couple from Langley and we were treated to a wonderful scene with a Mama bear and her cub firmly planted in the middle of the main trail used by downhill mountain bikers. As bikers made their way down, Mama bear stood (actually sat) her ground while her cub sought the protection of the trees to one side of the trail. The bikers made their way down the trail coming within 15-20 feet of Mama bear, who did not move but kept her eyes on them and her cub at the same time. The bikers made a wise decision to go around Mama bear on the other side from where her cub was hiding in the trees

I’m not going to post all my pictures from the day here, but if you want to see some of this action and more of my pictures they are available here on my SmugMug site.

Given how late in the season it was, the Peak chair was now closed. This did not allow me to easily get to the highest point on the mountain – Whistler Summit at 7,087 ft. I say easily because I could have hiked/scrambled up there, but I chose instead to follow the Pika’s Traverse Road that took me to Little Whistler Peak.

Little Whistler Peak and Harmony Hut Tea House

The road climbed 885 feet in just a mile-and-a-half to reach the Harmony Hut Tea House (closed for the season) that you see on the right. This is also the point from which the picture at the top of this post was taken.

From here, the route finding was a little tricky as the crew had already started taking down some of the trail markers, especially on the Half Note Trail that I was attempting to follow to it’s junction with the High Note Trail. Fortunately, there were plenty of footprints to follow in the fresh snow left from the storms over the past couple of weeks.

The High Note Trail markers were still in place, making for a less stressful passage and the opportunity to take in some spectacular scenery with views to Cheakamus Lake and Black Tusk to the south. The trail itself is actually just across the border from Whistler into Garibaldi Provincial Park. It eventually meets up at a junction with the Singing Pass trail that can take you all the way back down to Whistler Village on foot – about 22 km in total! I met up with a group of hikers who had done the hike from the bottom up, which brought back some good memories of doing likewise back in the late 80′s myself – at about the time I was really starting to get interested in trail running and ultra marathons. Coincidentally, this was also around the time when Shane Collins and I met, leading us to start up the Knee Knackering North Shore Trail Run in 1989

Ah yes, many good memories from a relatively short alpine hike in a very special place, with many more being made all the time. I concluded the hiking portion of this day with an easy 1-mile Alpine Walk on Blackcomb Mountain after a quick 11-minute ride on the breathtaking Peak-2-Peak Gondola. After the walk, it was a return trip on the gondola across Fitzimmons Creek valley to Whistler Mountain. Then it was back down the mountain via the Whistler Village Gondola.

Once back down (both literally and figuratively), I took a stroll through the Village. This led me to the northern end of the Village and the former site of Celebration Plaza during the 2010 Winter Olympics. It has now been redeveloped and branded as Whistler Olympic Plaza, with many symbols from the Olympics and Paralympics adorning the grounds. Just 3 weeks ago, this was also the place where 7,000 lycra-clad cyclists (myself included) celebrated after a 122 km journey from downtown Vancouver in the second annual Whistler GranFondo. Yet another story for another day!

One thing that I missed seeing on that day just 3 weeks ago was a memorial to a fallen athlete from the 2010 Olympic games – twenty-one year old Georgian luge athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili. His untimely death came in a tragic accident on Opening Day, and I wrote about it here. On this day, it was once again a poignant reminder of how fragile and precious life is. I close this post with a picture of the permanent memorial and tribute to young Nodar.

Memorial and Tribute to Nodar Kumaritashvili - Whistler Olympic Plaza

Enjoying a double scoop after R2R crossing

What better place to start my story than at the end

I had just spent 8 hours and 37 minutes (including breaks and warm-up power walk) on the trail crossing the Grand Canyon from the North Rim to the South Rim. This is a total of about 24 miles (40 km. for you young metric folks, but this is the last conversion I do for you), descending about 5,800 feet down to the Colorado River in the first 14 miles or so on the North Side. I then crossed over a bridge to the South Side of the river and ascended about 4,500 feet to the South Rim via the Bright Angel Trail.

Many thoughts (or visualizations) went through my mind as I slowly walked the last few miles, climbing a couple of thousand feet on the Bright Angel Trail, in the mid-afternoon heat of Tuesday October 12:

• must have ice cream
• must have beer
• must have head examined for doing this

Made it to top of South Rim after 8+ hours!

Of course, the ice cream thought won the battle to be my first priority upon reaching the end of the trail. It was helped along by the fact that the Bright Angel Lodge ice cream parlour is one of the first places I saw with my glazed eyes as I finished up on the South Rim. It is literally within spitting distance of the Canyon, although I did not confirm this fact myself.  

Prior to indulging in my ice cream reward, I also had to get an obligatory picture to show I made it to the end of the trail! I asked the first tourist I saw to take a picture of me at the trail head, using my iPhone. He admitted it was the first time he had done so with this type of device, which shows with his fingers partially covering the top of the lens in the picture to the right.

Enjoying fine meal at El Tovar later in the evening

This last picture on the left is a few hours later in the day - after I checked back into the Bright Angel Lodge, washed up and had a nap! I was still famished and had not yet fulfilled my second visualization of a post-hike beer. I had the foresight to have previously made a dinner reservation in the fine dining room at the El Tovar Hotel. The picture is of my ribeye steak dinner and beer, part of a wonderful 3-course meal to celebrate my Rim To Rim (R2R) crossing earlier in the day.       

More details of the actual crossing itself to come later – stay tuned! In the meantime, I have uploaded data from my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS unit that I used during the R2R crossing. The output is here – lots of data, pretty charts and maps! Although I am skeptical of the overall stats for total elevation and distance, as they seem to differ from the published stats.

This is part 2 of my GranFondo 2010 experience. Have a look at part 1 for a quick recap of how I got to this point in my 6-month transformation into a road cyclist

The race/ride from downtown Vancouver to Whistler (~122 km. or 76 miles) along the Sea To Sky Highway would start at 7:00 am Saturday September 11. My final preparations for the ride started in Squamish about 24 hours prior to that, and this is an account of the highlights of my GranFondo “weekend” on Friday and Saturday.

Friday Morning

I had arranged for the day off work, so this was a chance to sleep in a bit, and then enjoy coffee and breakfast on my deck facing the Chief. I had left my bike at Dale and Tracy’s place in North Vancouver, after a last ride with Dale 2 days earlier. So, I only had to pack the clothing I needed for the day of the ride. With predictions of wet, cool weather I prepared 2 sets of apparel and hoped I would only need the clothing for drier weather

Friday Afternoon

Caught the Greyhound bus just before noon, which deposited me in downtown Vancouver about an hour later – right at Burrard & Georgia where the ride would begin in just 18 hours! I still had to pick up my race package, but not before a little shopping at the Apple Store in Pacific Centre. It’s not everyday that I get into the big city so I wanted to take advantage of it, but alas it was just browsing. I did not see any accessories I wanted for my new IPhone 4, and could not justify another splurge on something like the iPad

I then made my way to Canada Place to pick up my race package, only to find a long line snaking way out onto the pier outside. It turned out to be about a 45-minute wait to get in, and another half-hour once inside to get processed. Not too bad, but I think the organizers need to streamline this a bit, especially if plans proceed to grow the race from it’s first year of 4,000 riders to 6,000 next year, and 10,000 eventually! I ran into a few people I knew, including Greg who has helped us with the Knee Knacker race for many years. We wandered off for a coffee (and carrot cake), and a chance to talk about the upcoming ride. Greg was not participating but was able to offer sage advice to this cycling rookie, drawn from his many years of triathlon experience (including Ironman). We agreed that given the mass start and amount of riders along the route, the main goal for me was to stay on the bike Thanks, Greg!

Friday Evening

I would be having dinner and staying at Dale and Tracy’s, so I hopped the SeaBus to meet Dale and get a ride up the hill with him. They took great care of me as I made my final preparations for the ride the next day. We enjoyed an awesome BBQ steak dinner prepared by Dale and a few large bottles I brought down from the Howe Sound Brewery. The unanimous choice for top brew that night was the Honey Pale Ale. I was not the greatest company after dinner, as I started hinting at going to bed around 9:00 pm and finally retired an hour later after setting the alarm for 5:00 am the next morning.

Saturday Pre-Ride

I slept quite soundly, which was a bit of a surprise compared to the nights before my running races. I sure can’t complain about that. Had a quick, light breakfast before loading the rest of my stuff into Dale’s vehicle and heading downtown. A small surprise that we could not get onto the Lions Gate Bridge from North Van, as closures for the ride had already begun. It required a minor detour to West Van, and before we knew it we saw the masses on Georgia Street.

Here is a brief video of the scene from the back of the corral for riders hoping to ride between 5 and 6 hours, just 20 minutes before the start:

Saturday Ride

The timing for events leading up to the 7:00 am start was bang-on – Mark Donnelly leading us in “Oh Canada” (as he does for Canucks games) at 6:45 am, followed by the Giro (100 or so serious racers) start at 6:50 am. The remaining 3,900 riders did get sent off at 7:00 am, but it took me almost 13 minutes to walk my bike the 3 blocks from my starting spot to the actual start line! Another area of improvement required for future GranFondos – perhaps a wave start as used by the Sun Run?

Once I hopped on the bike, I did manage to get up to speed fairly quick and almost all riders looked quite comfortable riding in groups. As we started the first significant climb through Stanley Park up to the Lions Gate Bridge, there was even more space between the riders and from there to Whistler there was never much of an issue of congestion amongst the 4,000 riders.

Crossing the Lions Gate Bridge on the roadway rather than the sidewalk was a real treat as it felt much smoother. In fact, I felt quite privileged to be riding along the roadway the entire way up to Whistler after a few months of using the shoulders with their rumble strips and other bicycle hazards. Of course we did pay good bucks for this privilege, but it was money well spent as far as I’m concerned. The other thing we paid for was the aid stations – 3 of them before Squamish and 2 more after. And of course, Squamish itself had the best station of all at roughly the half-way point in the ride. It was called Corsa Sosta, and put together by our local bike shop, Corsa Cycles. It felt like quite the party atmosphere, and most of us did not want to leave. Besides the usual race food, there was a tremendous spread put on by Bearfoot Bistro – Greek pasta salad, hot pizza bread and wine!

Here is another brief video I shot of the Corsa Sosta feed stop in Squamish:

Squamish was the first aid station at which I stopped, which is what I had planned by starting the ride with my 2-litre bladder pack and a gel flask. This allowed me to avoid the congestion at the first 3 aid stations as riders were required to dismount to fill up their bottles and re-fuel. It also allowed me to keep a strong, steady momentum in the first half at an average speed of 16.5 MPH. I had a lot of fun on some of the straight wide-open downhills hitting over 40 MPH on many occasions with a top speed of 43.7 MPH just after Lions Bay

Since I was ahead of my planned pace coming into Squamish, I did decide to take my time and enjoy the festivities at the Corsa Sosta feed stop, stopping for almost 11 minutes to eat, drink and take some pictures and video. My videos are embedded above, and you can find my pictures here on SmugMug. Could not have asked for a much better setup here – we even got some sunshine peaking out from behind the high clouds!

There were also many people out cheering us on through town (and a few motorists cursing us for making them wait at intersections). Between that excitement and the rest at the aid station, I was really charging out of town – at a pace that was not sustainable for too long. A fellow rider mentioned to me that now the race really begins, with the longest climb of the day of over 1,000 feet to the Tantalus Lookout north of the entrance to Alice Lake Provincial Park. About halfway up the climb I realized what he meant, and slowed down to almost a crawl. This did not come as a total surprise to me, as I knew that climbing hills was one of my weak spots. But having ridden the route a couple of times in training (another key to success), I knew there would be some downhill sections coming up to give me brief recovery periods. Lo and behold I did reach the first of those, and managed to get my heart rate under control and also get some life back in my legs. That pattern would continue to play out the remaining couple of hours up to Whistler – suffer on the uphills and come back to life on the downhills. Once I hit Whistler Creekside with just over 3 miles to go to the finish, I managed to push myself harder both up and down hills as I smelled the barn

I don’t have any video or pictures of me crossing the finish line in 5 hours and 17 minutes and change, but here is a brief clip someone shot of the sprint finish amongst the Giro riders a couple of hours before my arrival:

A neat feature of the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS unit I’ve been using is the ability to upload the data to a web site for sharing. My output from the ride is here – lots of data and pretty charts and maps!

Saturday Post-Ride

What a high crossing the finish line. I heard someone calling my name from amongst the spectators, but did not dare look for fear of doing something silly after a day of strong, safe riding. I was feeling good physically, and had a big, stupid grin on my face the rest of the day

More signs of good organization with the layout of the celebration area in Day Lot 4 of Whistler Village, with BBQ and Beer served up by Red Truck. It would have been great to have some more of that complimentary food that was served up in Squamish available at the finish, as well as coffee and hot soup – some more feedback for the organizers. They did provide an entertaining band (Famous Players), and were prompt with awards at exactly the times they published. They were unable to provide exact times, and results are still incomplete as I write this a few days later.

None of that could detract from the overall celebration and feeling of joy amongst the riders. I ran into a few people I knew, mostly from my running days. They were a little surprised to see me at a cycling event after all these years. I did not run into Willy and his gang, but I did talk to him on the phone. They were staying in Whistler overnight and had invited me to join them for dinner, but I was determined to get me and my bike home to Squamish on the 4:45 pm BC Transit bus.

Having some time to kill waiting for the bus, I wandered into the Village to redeem one of the coupons in our race goodie bag for a free ice cream cone at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. That and a nice hot coffee was all I needed while waiting for the bus. I got there early as the bike racks only have room for 2 bikes, and I was first in line About 10 minutes later, 2 young mountain bikers joined me so I’m glad I got there early as they waited for the next bus.

The showers started falling as the bus wound its way down the highway that I rode up just a few hours earlier, and they turned into heavier rains as we neared Squamish. We were quite fortunate with the weather during the day, as the rains persisted for the next 24 hours or so! It felt great to be home at about 6:00 pm – what a day, and what an adventure

Epilogue

A couple of things I wanted to mention.

First, I’ve registered for next year! Registration for Founding Riders opened at noon Sept. 13. As of earlier today, they already had 1,500 people signed up in just over 24 hours! I believe this reinforces the fact that this was a well-organized and fun event, with a few kinks to work out. Kudos to Neil and his team for pulling this off in their first year. With this many people already signed up, we have faith they will properly address the deficiencies for next year.

And lastly, on a more serious note I want to extend my thoughts and prayers to John Botelho, his wife Hillerie Denning and their families and friends. John had a terrible crash in the early stages of the race, suffering serious injuries, and is in a coma at Lions Gate Hospital. Further details are in this Vancouver Sun article. From all accounts, race organizers have responded admirably with their support for John and Hillerie. John has a lot of fellow riders pulling for him to make a recovery. Let’s all be just a bit safer out there, and watch out not just for our own safety but for all those riding with us.