After running 86 kilometres over rugged mountain terrain in 27 C heat, a torturous grind that lasted 13 hours, Reid Roberts of Prince George had a few choice words to describe the course in the Scorched Sole Ultra.
"It was (expletive) brutal," said Roberts, the second-place runner in what was supposed to be an 80km race Sunday in Kelowna.
How bad was it? While Jeff Hunter of Prince George was on his way to winning the event, 13 of the 26 long-course runners decided they'd had enough and did not finish. Ten of them, including two runners who were leading the 80km race, got to the top of Okanagan Mountain and rather than retrace their own steps for the second half of the race decided to follow the 50km course to the finish line.
Hunter, 35, finished fifth in 2010 and had figured on spending about seven hours racing. As it turned out, on a new, untested course through the burned forests of Okanagan Mountain provincial park, his winning time was 11 hours 23 minutes 45 seconds. The last competitor crossed the finish at 2 a.m., 22 hours after he started.
"It turned out to be a whole different race than I think most people signed up for," said Hunter.
"80K for utra-distance isn't really that bad. It's kind of, nice trails down here, but it turned into almost a 90K brutal technical bushwhack. It was very rocky, very steep, and very thick. There were some sections of trail that you couldn't see more than a yard in front of you [because of the trees].
"It was a lot longer than most people thought it was going to take. That's good for guys from Prince George who are used to trail conditions that are a little worse and it's a boatload more fun because you get to push harder. I did a training 80K a couple weeks ago in 7:40 and this thing was all-out as hard as you can go for 11:23."
Hunter's wristwatch altimeter registered 5,500m of elevation gain by the time the race was done. To put that into perspective, Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, is 3.954m above sea level.
"It was like an episode of Mantracker, it was pretty cool," said Hunter, who finished fifth in the 80km event in 2010. "I did have a serious nutrition/hydration/salt plan that got thrown off a bit because the conditions were worse and it went longer and I did have a bit of cramping.
"I'm ecstatic at how well Reid did in his first go at that distance."
Roberts, 42, suffered upper leg cramps that grew severe with about 10km left, but there was no way he was going stop. He started the race at 6 a.m. and finished at 7 p.m. with a time of 13:00:30.
"Last year, a 13-hour race would have put you in last place and this year it got me second place," said Roberts, who shared the medal podium with friend Neil Rybak of Kelowna (13:16:31) and Hunter. "It was 13 hours of insane climbing but it was worth it.
That [extra] 6K was basically another hour of running, it was so tough and I'm glad I finished it. I was shutting down, I was ready to pack it in around the 65K mark. It was so hot and I was going through water like crazy and I started cramping up. At about 75K I was getting cramps in my upper leg, and I was in major pain but I wasn't going to give up. I got to another aid station and loaded up on Gatorade and just pushed through."
Roberts placed second in the Scorched Sole 50km race last year. He still plans to use Sunday's run as a training session for the Fat Dog 100, a 115km race through Manning provincial park, July 23-24.
Hunter was back running again Tuesday night. His next running challenge is the 125km solo event in the Canadian Death Race, July 30-31 in Grande Cache, Alta. He placed 10th overall in the 2010 Death Race, finishing in 16:10. He also has the Pine to Palm 160km race in Oregon in September, a race with nearly 10,000m of elevation gain.
n Aaron Bond and Richard Stewart of Prince George, and Jamie Lazar of Vanderhoof were entered in the 50km Scorched Sole race. Their results were not available.
