First objective since a hallucis longus injury that took me out of running from September 2022 until April 2023. I was building towards an attempt at the west coast trail fkt, but upon realizing Parks Canada won't grant day passes, pivoted with like 3 weeks to go to try the jdf.
Comparatively this felt like I was sacrificing an adventure/ logistically oriented goal for an athletic one. I hit Tyler D'arcy up as he had just dropped the time on jdf and he alerted me that Logan Roots had taken the time even lower. Ugh, I thought, this is gonna be hard. In the few weeks of training I had left, I added more climbing to the training as the jdf has a higher vert to distance ratio than the wct.
In overlaying all previous fkt holders tracks on google earth, I realized Logan stayed on Bear beach a little longer and managed to skip a pretty slow 500 m section of trail, saving five minutes and some energy expenditure, a helpful bit of beta.
Run started off a little funny. With just a one week taper I was convinced I my be a little sore and I came into Bear only a minute or two under my last time with some fatigue. Bear to Chin went insanely well, likely thanks to fuelling earlier than the last attempt (1st intake @ 1hr 30 instead of 2 hr).
Expected to arrive at Chin at 2:05 and the watch read 1:50. Wow, something might happen here I thought, but also I may have just gone to hard. Stayed steady to Sombrio, trying to stay mellow on the climbs so that I could manage the tech dh and flat sections with more confidence.
At Sombrio, I wasn't really sure what the times meant any more, and the first muscle cramps started to show. Had to really shorten strides on ascents to prevent hamstring spasms. Also, many of the creeks were dry, so only had like 1.5 l of water (from some questionable sources) in the post Sombrio section. Just pushed on and when I hit the 40 km trail marker at 4 hrs ish, I started to get excited. When I hit the gravel road 1 k from the finish I realized I may go sub 4:40. I had nothing in the tank at the end.
I didn't really have a target time, I just wanted the fkt. I still can't really believe I ran it that fast. I'm writing this the day after and I can hardly walk, so it was definitely a push.
My watch unfortunately tends to often place me to the right of which ever direction I'm running, so it appears that I ended the run pre finish, but I used the same starting/ ending points as my 2021 run, this being on the parking lot side of the rocks separating the trail from the parking lot at each end, as this is just outside of what could be defined as the trail.
Met some nice folks at the trailhead pre-race, which helped make things a little more chill, so that was nice.