When Don Hubbard crossed the Mad Moose Marathon finish line after falling short of his goal of completing a 63-kilometre ultra-distance off-road race, he expected his wife Wendy Wagner to be there to greet him.
Hubbard and Wagner were running mates for 44 kilometres of the lengthy route and had just passed the Taca Road checkpoint when Wagner decided she wanted to run ahead and try beat the 10-hour cutoff deadline. But after a few kilometres on her own, Wagner's realized she wouldn't beat the clock and decided to backtrack to rejoin her husband. But somewhere along the network of trails at Otway Nordic Centre, Wagner took the wrong route and missed hooking up with the 68-year-old Hubbard, who at that point knew he was unable to finish the ultra distance due to knee pain.
"What happened is it was clear if we stuck together we weren't going to finish because there wasn't enough time," said Wagner. "So I left him and gave everything I had and I would have been here before 2 to turn around and go back up [to Takla Road] except I got mixed up. I turned around and started to try to find him but then I decided I wasn't quite sure [where to go] and thought I'd better not move, so I waited there until he phoned."
Race officials and volunteers from Prince George Search and Rescue were prepared to mount a search for Wagner but that proved unnecessary when Hubbard reached his wife on her cell phone about a kilometre from the finish line at Otway.
The Nanaimo couple gave each other a big hug as Wagner crossed the finish line, eight hours and 38 minutes 48 seconds after the race began. Her time was recorded in the 48.2 km marathon category, along with Hubbard's time of 8:23:16.
"I've never done an ultra before, I've done lots of trail runs on the West Coast and we thought we could do it," said Hubbard. "I've never had joint problems but my knees started giving me trouble on the way down and I didn't want to have an injury that would take months to heal."
Damian Pighin was the fastest of seven ultramarathoners, completing the course in 5:29:54, Caroline Toews won the women's ultra in 8:06:51. It was a record-setting day for men's marathon winner Jim Van Bakel, who took advantage of unseasonably warm conditions to finish in 3:09:45, shaving three minutes off Kevin Grigg's 2010 record time. Angela Wheeler captured the women's marathon in 3:58:41.
Greg Tone (1:29:28) and Shar Balogh (1:38:04) were the respective male and female half-marathon champions. The eighth annual race attracted 113 runners.
Hubbard and Wagner saw a couple of deer on the course but had nothing to fear in regards to wildlife encounters. Both were impressed with the level of organization and the efforts of race volunteers to station themselves at strategic spots on the course to offer food and water on a day when the temperature reached 25 C.
"The course was stunningly beautiful and I would like to come back to do the whole thing," said Wagner, 61, a native of Williams Lake who has completed five off-road utramarathons. "The trees right now are starting to change and the ground is covered with leaves -- it's like a gold cobblestone highway. It's beautiful at this time of year. I'm disappointed I didn't finish."
