Canadian River Valley Revenge & What's next

I ran the River Valley Revenge last week in Edmonton. My friends Carleigh and Jon, Jon’s brother Eric and soon-to-be sister-in-law Joanna also ran. The trio below ran the 5K together while Joanna and I ran the half-ultra. We were all pretty beat after the run.

But too beat up to start making plans for June’s version of the River Valley Revenge.

Eric, Jon and Carleigh are all smiles after finishing their 5K race. It was Jon’s first race!

It’s been a week now and my body is nearly back to normal. This race challenging, much more than I had anticipated. (See my race report in the Advocate column for more details.) There were many, many crazy short climbs and switchbacks that my poor body did not expect.

What’s your number? Checking into the 18K aid station.

My right leg/glutes were starting to feel the strain about 16K into the race. I felt it mostly on the downhills so I tapered my enthusiasm. All week I have been rolling and stretching to relieve the pain in my butt. It’s slowly helping undo the damage.

Thankfully I have lots of time to get stronger before my next race. I have to work on strengthening my core, glutes and legs. (That’s just the beginning of the list.) The Elk Valley Ultra is freaking me out. I watched a vlog of someone’s race and I nearly lost my lunch.

I digress … The river valley was beautiful. I bet these trails are simply beautiful in the summer. The course at times felt like an obstacle course – we were ducking under bridges, climbing over logs and clinging to life on muddy trails.

I remember one narrow path where I was behind a man in flat sneakers who was sliding all over the muddy trail. Gosh I thought he was going to fall down into the valley. I felt bad that he was having so much trouble but I couldn’t stop laughing after I passed him.

I felt I had a strong race especially since I expected to be done in other three hours. I had a few hiccups with my Garmin – it kept pausing or stopping when I was climbing. I think it thought I was dead because I was going so slow. I knew I was about 1.5K off when I got to the 18K aid station. My Garmin read 16K.

Because I didn’t have an accurate reading on my Garmin, which annoyed me in the latter parts of the race. I kept asking people about the distance and most weren’t even wearing a watch. I thought that was strange because every runner I know wears a watch of some sort. Weird.

Before the race, I noticed a few runners had headlamps. I thought – shoot me if I am still running that I need a head lamp. Thankfully I finished before the sun went down. It was close – I finished in 4 hours and 30 minutes (so much for three hours). I’m happy with my finish in the middle of the pack. I was even happier that there was a beer at the finish line.

Next up is Blackfoot 50K in May. This should be a fun race too. Over the next few months, I will continue to work on my strength and get in some solid long runs.