Death March to Vic

I can't even say 'it sounded like a good idea at the time.' Because I knew before embarking on this run that it was going to be pretty tough. I got it in my head that I would run to Victoria after my night shift on thursday night because I had plans to go to the island and why not pack light and run over. I knew it would be tough coming off a night shift but I didn't think too much of sleeping for a few hours then heading over. So anyway, the plan was to run from my house to the Massey Tunnel under the Fraser River and catch the bicycle shuttle through the tunnel(you can't bike or walk through), then run from the south side of the tunnel to the Tsawassen ferry terminal, and finally run from Swartz Bay ferry terminal into town. The trick would be to get to the tunnel by 9 am because the shuttle only went through every hour. I was off work at 7am, and the run was 17.5 km, so I figured I would need at most 80mins to get there and have enough time. Unfortunately I wasn't very organized and hadn't brought my bike to work, nor packed my bag, so I walked quickly home and packed, and was out the door at about 7:50. I had no interest in just barely missing the shuttle so I hammered it pretty hard out there knowing it would probably bury me for the rest of the run. I managed to run out there in 63mins, which is only 3:45/km, but wearing a backpack that was no less than 15lbs made it much harder than you'd expect.


After this stretch I realized I was in for a very long day, and that brining my Vans was a bad decision. They are pretty much just hunks of rubber and unnecessarily heavy. The weight of the bag, with jeans, two shirts, a sweater, track pants and jacket, spare socks and unders, fuel, glasses, water and the shoes, actually, when combined with all the pavement running, was making my knees fairly sore. Not too bad, but enough to worry about.  From the south side of the tunnel I eased off on the pace running about 4:25/km for that 16.5km. Getting to the ferry I hadn't consumed nearly enough fuel through the night at work nor the run out to the tunnel, and what I had tried to eat on the way to the ferry was not sitting well. I figured my guts would work themselves out while I slept on the boat so I ate a power bar and a couple of fruit bars and promptly passed out.


Waking up at Swartz Bay ferry terminal my legs were already sore, and I actually had thoughts of phoning my brother to pick me up but earlier in the run I had this thought that it was kind of neat to have a symbolic run to Vic being as i'm moving there in a months time. I hadn't thought of this before the run but there is something appealing about the idea of going on foot. Anywho, off I went feeling decently energized after some sleep, running Lochside Trail through the Saanich Peninsula into Victoria. It is a reasonably pretty run, but much of it was lost on me. I ran the first 10k fairly well, which was primarily on asphalt, then through the next 10k things got tougher with some nice soft trail but also some very low grade asphalt that was very hard on the feet. At this point the day was heating up as well and I was just starting to suffer. The last 10k I ran out of fuel stores and water. I tried to take on fuel with a touchy stomach, but without water this was hard so I ended up just giving up on trying to refuel. This meant the last few kms were going to be brutally slow. In fact I took numerous walking breaks of about 15 seconds just to mentally regroup. I even went so far as to check on my phone to see how much distance I had left, it was a miserable crawl toward my brother's house. In the end I made it though, I stopped at a convenience store close to my bro's house and had a water and the most satisfying Coca-Cola I have ever had. All told it was around a 65km day. The difficulty didn't come from the distance itself but from the lack of sleep and nutrition, the "heavy" backpack, and the 60+km worth of pavement pounding. 


In retrospect, well actually even at the time, I kind of figured it wasn't the best idea, and in the end maybe it wasn't as I think I might be coming down with a cold(that may or may not have to do with the rest of the weekend). My knees also took quite a beating. Though the knees are feeling better because I felt it appropriate to take a couple days off to let them heal up. Today they feel better and I had a pretty kick ass hill rep session averaging 3 seconds per rep faster than last week. So I would say physically it was an OK idea, but it was a good adventure so i'm gonna give it the thumbs up, but won't be doing that again.