Two friends of mine Oleg Tabelev and Joe Huising both told me about their plans to run fast, benchmark type times at the Elk Beaveer 100K ultra in May. They mentioned their intentions to run with one another to aid in the ultimate goal of running below said benchmark time (I'm not mentioning the time so not to cause them any more stress) and I told them, "I wanna be a part of this!" So started the plans for a training run in Red Deer on Friday April 18th - three weeks before the launch day.
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| Oleg Tabelev, Joe Huising and me |
When planning this I envisioned a beautiful, crisp spring morning running parallel to the river...but yeah for unpredictable Alberta, we got the opposite. We arrived to snow, wind and borderline sub zero temperatures. Pulling into the parking lot were a lot of the Alberta ultra running elites: Joe and Oleg whom I mentioned before, Alissa St. Laurent, Vincent Bouchard, Gary Poliquin, Wayne Gaudet, Gary Glover, and Alan Lam, to name a few. All lacing up their shoes to get in a solid training day getting ready for upcoming events, finding an excuse to get out for a run, or my main reason, seeing old friends, making new ones and getting out for a hard run while enjoying the activity we all absolutely adore.
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| Alissa St Laurent and myself |
It was my goal to press the 4:30 min/km pace for 50K but given the weather conditions we in the end fell short and hell thats okay! The effort was there but mostly it was just down right awesome to touch base with fellow ultra folk. After the run we all sat down in a resteraunt for some lunch. Looking around the table, enjoying good food, drinking good coffee I was caught in the realization that sometimes that happiness doesn't exist in what you are doing. It's about who you are doing it with.
Thank you all for taking part today. I hope you had as much fun as I did.
1 comment:
I thoroughly enjoyed this blog, thanks for sharing
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