Fifty | Trail Running Film

last year i could not have done this there's no way if i didn't train as hard as i've trained this would not be happening not everybody at 50 is starting to take up long distance trail running but the idea with doing this run was to take what i had been doing which was a 10k here and there a 21k trail run and see if i could challenge myself to run an ultra marathon if i trained like a professional more or less like a professional could i pull this off and there's no guarantees this is a difficult distance to run [Music] [Music] putting together a strong training plan both from a running perspective and from a strength perspective is going to be really important because staying injury-free is going to be key as well as being able to accomplish that distance it's all the time on your feet and hitting your legs when they're already tired long weekends pack it in do couple short runs during the week but really focus on doing runs on really beat up legs and work on eating a 50 miler is typically not a distance that you can do off the couch it's typically not something that you can just show up and grit your way through and hope for the best there's no faking it at that point and training is completely necessary and staying consistent and taking a long approach to what ends up being a short-term goal and you need to put in a lot of time to accomplish that goal on that day but especially when you're talking longer distances on foot i set out to run 50 miles on this course because it's an established race but the year i chose to do it the race was on hiatus it's an important historic trail for canada because it is the hbc heritage trail it was the key route into the interior of british columbia back in the middle of the 1800s it's an interesting trail because of the history but it's also just a beautiful spot [Music] there we go now my lights on properly give that a shot hopefully that works yes os button hopefully you don't need it originally i had thought of doing this run by myself and that seemed like a very bad idea because i wanted to have someone with me who would keep this just a safer prospect so i invited matt fortuna who is an accomplished trail runner to come with me so is this about equivalent to the barkley marathon or just slightly easier not even close mentally feeling prepared uh i'm always really strong mentally it's not the mental part i'm so worried about right now if not one of these cameras i won't be running with two cameras when i met up with matt fortuna at the yakima skyline run all right right away i knew that this was the guy i was going to invite to come on the run because there were very few other people i knew who i could say how would you like to run 80k with me in the mountains and they could do it one of the first things that you have to do in this run is across the tulamine river it's dark your feet are going to get wet and it's sort of like breaking the ice so to speak [Music] after the tulame river you have to go through some pretty dense brush and the only markers you will find there are red flagging tape that had been left behind from earlier in the season and possibly the year before if we're going to get off course this is where it will be onto the single track he'll climb just past 69k [Music] during the run there was one part where we got lost we missed a turn off i don't know how that happened and that's when i started thinking so this is how things can go sideways very very quickly is this where we came from this is the trail yeah this is the turn we missed in here right here there it goes how did we miss that yeah well it's a tight turn definitely some critters hanging around here yeah it looks like something's been through here we may have taken a slight wrong turn matt was going to run ahead to alert you guys and we realized we were probably still a ways away we did some pace calculating too though to make sure we were like three hours would have been a pretty fast uphill run yeah yeah it was mostly uphill it was nice to see you guys here that was this is great what you've set up this is really awesome so we're just going to keep running going into this run i really didn't know what to expect because at the very beginning when i started telling people i'm going to run 50 miles in the mountains in challenging terrain they really were surprising that's really difficult people in the ultramarathon world you know it's a training run but it's still a difficult challenging run it's the great unknown you don't know what to expect if you've never run this i got rid of the bear spray i'm glad i did that matt's going to carry it good to have it handy as you probably know if you're running the trails but i feel a little better now more freedom of movement not banging on the stomach anymore yeah when i came up here in 2016 with my wife aaron we were going through conglomerate flats which is still 20k or so away from us we saw a very large bear and we thought it might be a grizzly and these people that just passed us here said they spotted a grizzly about a half kid up ahead here so that's what we're heading into so we'll see how that goes blueberries look at all these blueberries sometimes the cows aren't so friendly hello cal you're good a little bit of bear poo there we're at 47 k's [Music] the knee on the left side is pulling it could be like uh my t-band thing so it hurts a bit but everything else feels good the hamstrings the calves shins the attitude so far so good creek and then there's stuff here to use nice little display that people don't wreck which is really cool [Music] the rain is real now [Music] [Music] just a couple of these i don't know if we picked up the pace i i was just joking with him every time i hear the beep beep of the gopro i start i get a little more motivated i feel like we've been the only people who've probably been on that trail in weeks it's really nice trail i'm really enjoying it let's send a quick note say i'm okay so i guess we'll see you guys at pierce creek as we left the aid station at jacobson lake i started thinking about what kind of weather we'd be running into we knew that we needed to cover as much distance as possible before it got dark [Music] i've experienced fog on this section of trail before but on a clear day it's in my opinion one of the most scenic areas you've got palmer's pond below and just endless mountain views in the distance one of the things that we know with regard to why do people stop exercising is there's two models out there and one of them is the psychobiological model which means that your brain decides at some point that you're working too hard or you've worked too long and decides to stop and that's where nutrition and training come in because you recognize you have a choice i just remember thinking i've done everything i can to train for this i've prepared the best i can now i just have to stay focused [Music] we did a little bit more math based on what we think their running average should be we're guessing that they should be here according to our math 5 30. right now wouldn't that have been great we've been eating a lot of food we had a sandwich at the last one oh really yeah full sandwich i love you guys i have a friend who's the long distance runner and someone said you know why do you run he showed a picture of himself when he used to be unhealthy and he said i'm running from that guy i thought that was pretty funny i'm not running from anything i'm running to something i'm trying to keep healthy so that as i get older and as i age i have a body that can carry me where i need to go that's what it's all about definitely warmer oh yeah here we're almost at colville camp we're making pretty good time but under this canopy it's pretty dark so we've had to bust out the headlamps and we got some light rain you do have to stay hyper focused and there's no drifting and i was drifting a few times thinking about our crew waiting for us and thinking about how long it was going to take us and i would always try to bring myself back to staying focused on one foot in front of the other all right so we've come up manson's ridge it's 3k from colville rainy muddy slippery foggy pretty tough to see so now we're going down the other side of manson's ridge visibility is poor to say the least key to success in those moments is being hyper vigilant and 100 present which is also one of the things that really entices or attracts people to trail ultra distance running is you have moments where you have to be 100 focused on your next footfall and that flow state of not being able to think about anything else is a beautiful piece of mind that is very difficult to find just on a day-to-day basis my wife has always told me because she runs as well she said you should never finish a race and feel horrible feel like you want to pass out feel like you want to vomit you should run at a level that makes you feel comfortable and i felt we did that in this run it went better than you could have expected right and you put the time in and you earned what you got there you don't have any unique advantages over anybody else you just decided you were going to do something and you went out and made it happen [Music] even for a seasoned vet like me i was i was whimpering out there for sure on that final climb so uh yeah it was good it was a good day i suspected that was gonna be a challenge oh it was brutal just navigating it or just no it was just uh it was foggy so you can literally see like two feet in front of you don't ask me if it's worth it i don't know what's worth it i don't want to take this for granted it was almost anticlimactic it was so strange because i feel good physically i feel like i could run more other than my knees right away i started thinking what do i do now i've been training for six months [Music] i didn't know if i could pull it off there's no fanfare it's just kind of like and you're done here we go cheers 250. so it was it was a bit strange and i started to focus my attention on what i was going to do next and i think that's what a lot of runners do is what's the next challenge what can i do to challenge myself in a different way

Channel: ET2media

Views: 39,908

Rating: 4.9440203 out of 5

Keywords: Ultramarathon, Trailrunning, Documentary, HBCTrail, shortdocumentary, runningfilm, marathon

Id: oEfstR7A7QY

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021