I AM ASTONISHED

As every winer will know, sometimes your grown children just astonish you. Not all the time, but sometimes.

This weekend we were in Mont Ste Anne, which is by Beaupre, which is 50k north of Quebec City. They have really nasty bugs here (pic in last post), spectacular scenery, and other stuff. We were here to watch our youngest run a 100 mile ultramarathon.

Ya. Unbelievable. He started at 8:00 pm in a picturesque little town called Baie-St-Paul, about 50k north of Mont Ste Anne. His wife, accompanied by us, drove him up there in the early evening, along with another 150 contestants. They congregated at a spa-resort type of place, conferred, stretched, and, precisely at 8, departed, about half an hour before sunset.

In these events they have various checkpoints, and their support persons, or crew, have to find those places on google map and be there before their person arrives. They bring all the necessaries, food, water, medicine, etc. In this case, the first checkpoint was about 15k away by road, and I’m not sure how far on the trails. The whole race is run on trails in the forest, up and down mountains, overnight. I am not kidding you. It is truly unbelievable. They have headlamps, and some water, and…I don’t know. A whole lotta nerve, I’d say. Anyway, we met Kevin at about 10 pm at his first checkpoint, during which he wolfed down some pizza and coke (not kidding), got some ice and water dumped on him, and then departed. Took maybe ninety seconds. After that I went home to bed, but Gail accompanied his wife to checkpoint # 2 at midnight or so, after which she came back to the moho. His wife grabbed a couple of hours sleep before meeting him at the third checkpoint at 5 am.

At the first checkpoint, Kevin was the first guy in, ahead of the next guy by five minutes or so. At the finish line, Kevin was the first guy in, ahead of the second guy by an hour and a half. He ran 100 miles in 20 hrs, 17 minutes, and 29 seconds, short of the course record by about 30 minutes (a record set by a Sherpa fella from Nepal. Better weather conditions, I’ll bet).

You really have to be there to appreciate this stuff…many hundreds of people, photographers, press people, live band, noise etc etc…a large scale production. I simply am dumbfounded that people can run 20 hours, or 30 in some cases, in the middle of the night, in the bushes, up and down mountains. Kevin said that this course was really “technical”, meaning that there were rocks, straight up and down stuff, creeks, etc. Crazy.

Ya. Numero Uno. His best buddy from Calgary ran the 80k version, and he won that too. A third friend from Calgary also ran the 80k version, and she was third on the women’s side. Three Calgarians on the podium. Actually there was another one too. Some exceedingly proud parents. A lotta good vibes on that day.

Which is a thing I noticed: the finish line is a scene of continual rejoicing. I guess if you have a bad day you don’t show up at the finish line. If you show up at the finish line, it’s a good day and you are happy. As are your friends and family and everybody else there.

So that’s it for the boasting for now. Perhaps we could use better language; it’s not boasting, but rejoicing. Sounds better. It might even be more accurate. Who knows.

At any rate, Kevin won a tough, competitive race by a huge margin.

I am astonished.

I am going to try to upload some vid of him crossing the finish line so you too can be astonished.

If that doesn’t work, go to ultratrailscanada.com. It’s all there.

photos only no vid sorry. Vid is on the net.