The story of Caro and I started 2 years ago when we randomly met through common friends. When I got to learn how much she loved endurance sports, I knew I just got myself not only a new friend, but an adventure partner. Because until then, I had never found someone mad enough to want to join me on my crazy projects. Last Christmas, I saw the opportunity of a shared gift; Adventure boxes! I gave Caro 4 boxes (see first picture), each attached to a sport challenge and each containing a reward that we would only get to open when a challenge would be completed. On each box was written a number; 1, 10, 100 and 1000. What was the meaning of those numbers, you'll certainly ask, well here it is;
Box 1 = We had to do one hour of sport together every day for one week (it was quite complicated since our work schedule are very different and we made it even harder by wanting to do 7 different sports (skate skiing, spinning, crossfit, swimming, yoga, trail running and road running). See second picture.
Box 10 = We had to swim 10km in open water in one go (and we actually swam 15km cause we found we were not tired enough after 10km). See third picture.
Box 100 = We had to skate ski 100km in one go (and the day we decided to do it was actually one of the coldest day of the whole winter with a -28 degrees celcius which added to the difficulty of the challenge). See fourth and fifth pictures.
Box 1000 = We had to run a total of 1000km together through the summer, and when we reached 1000, we also had to go get the FKT of Great Trail in Gatineau Park to get to open the box.
We quickly got the 1000km of running done and we were very excited to tackle the FKT (since we both love trail running). We tried to set a date to do it but had to reschedule 4 times for different health and injury reasons. So lately, with the temperature getting colder and colder, we saw our window of opportunity slowly closing and decided to try it October 18th. Sadly, 6 days before our FKT attempt, I twisted an ankle really badly (see sixth picture). I was soooo disappointed because Caro and I had been looking to try the FKT (and hopefully beat the previous record) to have access to the reward in the box. We had been waiting for that the whole summer. I took the decision to try the run on my twisted ankle anyways (would never recommend no one to do that!). I put on my stabilisation ankle brace and we started our journey.
Caroline's father dropped us at the beginning of the course. We had all of the supplies needed (water and goodies) in our hydration vests and didn’t require any external help. We started to run around 9h30 in the morning on October 18th. The first 20km went well. We were flying at a good 5:30/km average pace. At that point the only problem encountered were blisters on Caro's feet but they were tolerable. Side note about the course, near Lac Philippe, we had to make a little detour and use trail #73 because the beginning of trail #50 was closed for construction. Both segments are approximatly the same distance as they run parallel to each other but the #73 is a technical single track with even a bit of scrambling (see seventh picture) while the #50 is a large flat and non-technical trail. So we couldn't follow the main route because of construction, but that detour actually made the course a tiny bit harder than the OG one.
After 25km, I started to hit a wall. My ankle was throbbing and I started to feel exhausted, dizzy and nauseous. I ran a few km in that state but felt I could not keep up, even more knowing that the next 5km would be all uphill climbing. I seriously considered bailing out but Caro convinced me to try and continue, one step at a time. We then mainly walked or slowly ran for the next 5km (7:00-9:00/km). At 30km I wasn't doing any better, I was crying and was exhausted, it was really not my day. Again, Caro convinced me to try a keep up a little more, telling me the rest of the course was mainly downhill. So I mustered all the energy I had and started running again. While running, I made calculations in my head trying to figure if there was any chance that we could still beat the FKT even with the accumulated delay and yes, there was still a slim chance. So I had a boost of energy and started to run faster and faster finishing the last 10km at a 5:30/km average pace. So we finally made it to the end of the course with a finish time of 4h29m54s which was just 3 minutes faster then the previous FKT women’s leader.
For me, that run was all about mind over matter. For Caro, it was a walk in the park but she will not admit it. She finished as fresh as she started!
We finally got to open our last adventure box and inside was 200$ with a note saying that to celebrate our FKT, we would have dinner in a good restaurant and treat ourselves. We went to my favorite restaurant in Ottawa called Buvette Daphnée and refueled after spending lots of physical (and psychological!) energy during that FKT.
I feel very blessed to have Caro in my life to share that kind of adventure, help each other get out of our confort zone and push our limits.
Now, I am resting and taking care of that poor beaten ankle!
P.S. Caro and I didn’t get the exact same amount of km because we used different types of tracking watches but we did the exact same course side by side from beginning to end. Besides taking trail #73 instead of trail #50 because of construction (on about 1km) we followed the OG course rigorously.