I promised Lu after my last ultramarathon catastrophe that I’d stop pretending bravado and past success were viable training strategies, and I vowed to take these races more seriously if I were to continue doing this stuff. Yet somehow, here I was again on race morning – same fatigue, same lack of preparation, same delusion, body parts being held together by slightly fresher tape.

The universe had issued several memos suggesting I shouldn’t race. My “training plan” for this ultra was essentially a collection of short jogs around my increasingly hectic work schedule, and I hadn’t seen a trail in nearly four months. My first trail run in the weeks leading up to the race gifted me a wasp bite that turned my right ankle into something out of a medical textbook. The second? I rolled the opposite ankle so badly I could barely walk for the final two weeks before the race. My body begged for mercy. I signed the race waiver.

Wasp sting and ankle repairs while training

I rolled out of bed on Harricana race morning an emotionally and physically battered man in his sixth decade of making questionable decisions. Bruce and Pat dropped me off at the start line on their way to play golf — an activity that sounded infinitely smarter than what I was about to embark on – and I remember telling them to “smile often today despite your golf game” and to “cherish your ability to do these things,” as if I were giving them a motivational speech. I then declared confidently I’d be finished in 12 hours — a statement so absurd it deserved its own punch line. They laughed. I didn’t.

Then something odd and unexpected happened. The fear and uncertainty vanished, replaced by unwarranted confidence. The project manager in me finally emerged, and I devised a mental plan to get me across the line. Suddenly completing this gruelling 65-kilometer trail run in the mountains in 12 hours was not an optimistic outcome in the event the stars aligned, but rather the reality of things to come.

The horn sounded and I started off. No more than four hundred meters in, I rolled my left ankle again on a rock. The elaborate tape job I performed prevented me from collapsing in a painful heap, and it was the perfect wake-up call to remind me that my entire success now depended on preserving that ankle like it was the last donut in the box, and I had to revise my tactical strategy. I decided to walk the steep ascents and technical trail sections, run the flats and downhills, and minimize stops and socializing at aid stations to regain some lost time. The plan was put in motion.

Happy early on during the run

For a few hours, things went suspiciously well — likely because my head was strong and my body hadn’t figured out what I was doing to it yet. Around four hours in at kilometer 25, I felt the onset of cramping and my legs began to seize up like a rusty lawnmower. I decided to aggressively double my electrolyte intake, which would likely improve the cramping but would be catastrophic for my stomach – a reasonable trade-off I postulated. And while the cramping did subside over time with constant care and an unhealthy dose of salt pills, electrolyte drinks, and energy gels, I spent the next eight hours or so hobbling and dry-heaving my way through the forest, looking like a man exorcising demons. Add a bloody blister the size of a loonie on my right heel and my left ankle solidly mummified in tape, and I must have resembled a crash test dummy in motion and not a fine-tuned endurance athlete.

(Surprisingly) holding it together 50 kilometers in

Through sheer stubbornness and an unearned sense of destiny, I crossed the finish line in 11 hours and 47 minutes — a full 13 minutes faster than my own ridiculous prophecy, proving once again that miracles do happen and that the mind is almighty. After collecting my medal and posing for a few pics, I texted my friends to “fire up the BBQ and uncork the wine”, yet an hour later I was curled up in a fetal ball on the couch, pale as a sheet, communicating exclusively in groans. Bruce and Pat devoured Wagyu steaks and drank Barolo. I fell asleep with a full beer in my hand too nauseous to consume it.

Pseudo-athlete looking forward to steak and wine

Fetal on the couch

In the end — I finished the first ultramarathon since my knee surgery. And in the grand tradition of (amateur) ultra running, what counts is survival, sarcasm, and one more story to explain why you’ll “never do this again”, until the next time you register for a race that you have no business entering.

Taking off my shoe back at the cottage, exposing the blister that had hobbled me

Looking weirdly like a shrivelled human bobblehead with no neck the morning after