This was... oddly mellow?
That's the word that kept popping in my mind all through the run: mellow.
We didn't have any big disasters to overcome, the weather was decent (if a bit atmospherically thick and heavy), my crew (Kare, along with the kids and Nana for the first half, and then David (The Plant-Powered Runner) Waters ⓥ🌱🇨🇦 for the second half) was exactly where they needed to be, and did exactly what they needed to do. Honestly, everything just sort of went off without a hitch.
As for the trail itself, navigation went pretty smoothly (though there were some stretches that had me concerned with blazes being few and far between, it was all quite intuitive) and while there were certainly some tricky technical terrain sections (kilometer 11-12 felt more like spelunking than trail running!), they were generally short-lived, with the majority of it being nice, gentle rolling hills. Honestly, I'm curious if others have the same perception, but for me, compared to all the other Bruce Trail sections that I've run, this one overall was just simply, mellow.
I can't even really say that I learned any lessons with this fkt attempt, aside from maybe it would be better to wait longer than 2 weeks after two back-to-back race efforts, but even then, I'd say my legs held up just fine. I do think with a bit more strategy and a bit more of a push towards the end, knocking off 30 minutes and getting it done under 7h would be very possible, but ultimately I'm very satisfied with how this mellow effort went, especially with only a few days of prep leading up to it!