Running 67 kilometers..... The Deer Lake 67 Ultramarathon

It's the morning before the big ultramarathon for Pete and I. We both arrived in Deer Lake, Newfoundland yesterday. I drove in from St. John's via a camping night in Terra Nova, after spending a week with my family on holiday and Pete flew in, funny enough from St. John's after doing some business in the city.

Sixty seven kilometers, 67.55km. It's only 25.35km more than a marathon. The normal person would go, "what the fuck are ya thinking?" My brain and apparently the brains of the other 38 runners says "its only like a marathon and another half marathon to run" I saw quoted once "Any idiot can run a marathon, it takes a special idiot to run an ultramarathon" Well this idiot has run a couple of marathons and an Ironman triathlon, so I guess I'm special, in the, lets take the short bus to school kind of way.

The first thing I did when I arrived in Deer Lake was to drive down to the lake and have a look. It's been awhile since I actually stopped and walked down to the edge of the lake. We rode by it on our Labrador adventure this time last year. At the time I never thought we'd be back. Well....unfortunately the lake hasn't gotten any smaller. It's huge, and I realized then the challenge facing us tomorrow.

It was brick shitting time, all the doubts I'd been having on whether or not I had trained well enough for this came flooding back all at once. Yes, I wish I had trained more, done a couple of more long back to back runs, and did some strength training. I am fairly confident that I'll finish, just not as quickly as I would have liked to. There's a lot of Newfoundlanders in the race, duh....no shit, and growing up on the island, I know there are a lot of good runners here, and I suspect the finish times will be most impressive, like they were last year.

For those of you who do not run, and wonder how does anyone run 67km, or even a 100 miles, like they do in races like the Leadville 100 and Vermont 100. Except for the elite, genetically gifted athletes, most people don't run the whole thing. Almost all ultras take place off road, on trails. So it's really a combination of jogging, hiking, and walking, or wogging as I like to call it. You walk the uphills and jog the downhills and the flats. 

In 25hrs and 4mins from right now, Pete, myself and 36 others will be crossing the start line on, for some runners, what will be a 10hr adventure filled with emotional and physical highs and lows through a beautiful off road running course. Bring on the pain. Woohoo.

Hopefully I'll be recovered enough from this run to be able to walk next Friday, or at least ride a bike, since I'm going to CMG's Fundy Adventure Rally to film that. BMW has kindly given me an 800GS to ride for the 500km event so it would be nice to not have to have my legs screaming in soreness for the day long event, so I can enjoy the ride.