The GRIZ!

The time has come.

Training has finished.

Taper has finished.

It's time to run.

...and be careful!

Over Thanksgiving long weekend the Grizzly Ultra and Relay was set to take place in Canmore, Alberta. Individuals and teams from across the country were are assembling to take on one of the challenging events put on by race director Tony Smith.

Our team consisted of five runners from all across the board. Initially a family team, injury, moves, weddings and the like unfortunately changed the team make up pretty substantially. A neighbour, an old friend, an ex-pro baseball player and a new friend (we met online through a run group and later at the Edmonton Marathon); we all came together to take on the grueling event.

The course was second to none. The event was based at the Canmore Nordic Centre, an olympic and training facility for cross country skiing and biathlon. The course consisted of five individual legs ranging in length from 5.7km to 14km and each leg was allocated a difficulty rating ranging from one to five (one being the easiest, five being the hardest).

The day was cold. Freezing as a matter of fact and Mother Nature created a beautiful show by adding a dusting of snow on the mountain tops, small flecks of which continued to fall throughout the duration of race day.

The race started at 9am with all of the solo runners and team members running leg one hold up in the starting corral. What seemed like hundreds upon hundreds of runners took off on the path and road leading down hill from the starting arena area. Not to be misleading, the leg offered two fairly sizable hills and two smaller ones; enough to make your legs feel the burn that's for sure. Leg 2 provided a trail that looked more like an EKG reading and a 4 claw difficulty rating. Leg 3 provided a 5 claw difficulty rating and had it's fair share of up hill sections inclusive of one near vertical range where runners literally had to claw their way up on hands and knees. Leg 4 hit where it hurt with a 3km vertical stretch before beginning the descent. Leg 5 was the shortest and was fairly roll-y poll-y.

Our team did a fabulous job. We finished and finished strong. Everyone worked extremely hard and pushed themselves to their limits. It was a successful day as we finished injury free and everyone still had their toenails post-race (always questionable when running trail, especially in the rocky mountains).

It was a long, cold but special day and I am glad I was able to race with the people I did. We couldn't have done any better.