With my season slowing down, I had the opportunity to do one more trail event. 12 km at The Keppoch near Antigonish. This former downhill ski location is no home to mountain biking, cross country skiing, hiking, and some awesome trail running. Certainly it is not the place for those that hate running hills.
The trails here are mostly smooth and flowy, as they are designed for downhill riding. That being said, you need to really take care for tripping hazards and rocks, and be careful of the sheer speed you can pound into your legs on the way down.
This event is a fund raiser for The Keppoch, and as such is more about fun. It was an untimed event followed by breakfast.
We had to get up super early to get to the mountain as the drive takes 2 hours. The closer we got, the colder it got, down from the balmy 3C at home to -8C at the race start.
Also, home had no snow and soft ground. Here the ground was hard and ankle deep in snow. Good thing I brought all my trail shoes. I ended up choosing my Salomon Soft Ground. They are light weight, so easy to pick up your feet high and offer a ton of grip.
After a briefing we weer invited to race start and sent on our way. While I could have just jogged around the mountain in a nice social way, I really wanted to see how my legs were holding up and specifically my climbing legs, before they got a winter rest.
So I took off into the lead and never looked back. I pushed at a sustainably hard pace and really enjoyed breaking through crunchy snow on this well marked and groomed course. Volunteers were out in some key areas to guide up the right way when the course went between short and long (there was an 8 km option as well).
I took the downhills cautiously to start but found that I gained a lot of confidence as the run went on and I could place some faith my my shoes and legs to hold me upright.
Certainly there were some dicey icy places that required some careful passing, but in all it was a trouble free run for me.
I finished the course in 1 hour and 1 minute with over 300m of vertical climbing, first in the long run. I was happy to "win" but more happy to feel well enough to go back out for more at the end. My recovery during these trail runs has been great this year, the only time I have found myself near my limits was when I was approaching 30km at Chignecto.
The morning finished with some awesome oatmeal with a ton of topping choices and great coffee, as I got to chat with the other BLT Runners that came up for the run as well. We all survived the cold and snow and I think we all had a good run.
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