2008/7/6
Lake Youngs Ultra Marathon
It was long, but I was happy to finish the 50k run.
It was a fund raising event for a breast cancer research, but I must confess I just really wanted to run. It was to run Lake Youngs Trail for 3 laps. One lap was a 9.6 mile long, and three give you 28.8 miles. It had an option to run another 2.2 miles to make it 50 km and I took the option and took me 6:25:43, but it was okay.
It was actually quite cool, and even misty or raining. I was expecting a hot day, so I was lucky to get such a nice day for running event. I didn't even need my sunglasses although I saw the sun in my final lap. The running event was very small and casual. I thought there were only less than 20 runners, and the only aid station was at the starting and ending point. There was actually a couple of water bottles on the other side of the loop, and they were also provided by the event organizer. There was no other place to get water or any other supplies, so I had to carry a water bottle.
As mentioned a few weeks ago, I ran the same set of race, and failed. Therefore, my focus was only to finish, and the time wasn't matter almost not at all. There was a lady with a dog, and we ran pretty much at the same pace. She was actually faster than I was, but she had to stop occasionally to give her dog water and I caught her a couple of times because of that. I was also amazed that the dog finished running 28.8 miles. It seemed easy for her.
It was okay to run the loop clockwise or counterclockwise, and I kept running the counterclockwise. The big hill that I thought it was the last time was actually not bad since now it's the downhill at the beginning of the race instead of the uphill at the end of the loop. There were a couple of other bigger hills when I was running the loop counterclockwise. I almost gave up after finishing the three laps and thought of skipping the last 2.2 miles. It was just 2.2 miles, but it's a long distance after running for 28.8 miles. It's all perspective.