Running the Bruce Trail

Winter’s here, with some fits and starts. It’s time to screw the hobnails into my second-run shoes and hit the local trails. I’m back in the game a bit after a slow year and went for a two-hour run in the Don Valley on Boxing Day.

New Year’s resolution numero uno: Finish running the Bruce Trail in 2010

Tory and I have been invited to a wedding in Tobermory at the end of the summer, so I have a deadline. It’s a long drive to the trail now so I want to up the daily mileage. I think I’ve got about 270 kilometres to go (contradicting my previous calculation of 236 and/or the advertised length of the trail).

Last night I started scribbling plans. Five, 40-50 km running days will put me at Bruce Peninsula National Park and the beginning of the last 40 km, which I want to finish on a two-day backpacking trip with Tory. The remaining running days look like this:

• Bothwell’s Corner to Glen Camp
• Glen Camp to Wiarton
• Wiarton to Hope Bay
• Hope Bay to Lion’s Head
• Lion’s Head to Crane Lake Gate

The logical way to do this would be a one-day run to Glen Camp, then a couple of 100-km weekends with overnights in Wiarton and Lion’s Head and shuttles from local B&Bs. This is how I imagined I would be running the trail from the beginning – in big chunks rather than 3- to 4-hour pieces. Full weekends for running are hard to come by, but I will try to make it happen in 2010 with some careful planning and negotiation.

A sub-resolution is to knock off one of these big chunks during the summer solstice, with an all-day run to celebrate the longest day of the year. Since starting this project I’ve dreamed of running a 100-kilometre day in June, but after my 60+ km day last year I don’t know if I’m up for it. I’ll be happy if I can do 100 km in a weekend.

After last year’s efforts on snowshoes, I’m happy to put this on hold until the snow melts and stick to local training. I can’t cover enough distance in the snow to make the drive worthwhile. Winter is for skiing.

Vote now to support funding for the Bruce Trail in this contest:

Mostly road.

Sunday 12 July 2009
Distance: 20.0 km
Time: 2 h 11 m
Avg HR: 143
Avg speed: 9.2 km/h
Total distance to date: 649 km
Distance to go: 236 km

Bike shuttled this run by parking at the Clearview subdivision and biking 15 km, 33 minutes (with a brisk tailwind) back to the start. I stashed my bike in some shrubs in a cow pasture. This was one of the most miserable sections of the trail to date. I think the conservancy must have just punched it through on roads to quickly connect the Bayview Escarpment to the main trail. In time, they’ll probalby route it through farmfields as more landowners get on board, although that wouldn’t necessarily be better. One of the few off-road sections was pure hell: slimy overgrown rocks following the base of the escarpment. I would have stopped to take a photo of this shnarb for the blog but the clouds of mosquitoes kept me moving. That’s 20 km I’m happy to put behind me.

Lack of conditioning/practice contributed to the general malaise. I felt rusty. I don’t get out running much these days and the time to exercise just isn’t there. Carving out a half-day for this leg was nearly impossible. I need to set aside some time to do long, consecutive days to finish the trail, but can’t foresee when I’ll have the time. My best hope at this point is to get out for some long family hikes in the fall and knock off a few kms that way – forget running, as long as I’m outside and on the trail.

Clap for the Wolfmaan
I just got a couple of interesting updates from friends in cyberspace. Wolfmaan, six weeks into his barefoot northbound trek, is in the Honeywood area, north of Highway 89, making good progress and enjoying the views.

Think about doing the impossible
Another ambitious speed attempt is in the works. Brian Culbert and David Battison plan to relay-run the trail in six days in September. That’s impressive considering the new record set by the Blaze race is 4 days by 10 people. The solor record is two weeks. Brian and David will have to sustain a wicked pace to meet their goal. They also plan to raise a million dollars for children’s charities. Good thing their motto is “think about doing the impossible?” See The850Race.

Completion of the Bruce Trail has been delayed (happily) until further notice by the arrival, three weeks ago, of a new runner in the family. Baby Lydia is stretching her legs and building her fat reserves. Her father is catching up on work and sleep. Her mother is trying to figure out how to get the whole family operation bunded up and out the front door before we can think about making our way three hours north for some hiking and trail running. A family assault on the Bruce awaits. Stay tuned!

Every winter runner needs to try these

This winter I got so frustrated running on Toronto’s icy trails that I tried studding an old pair of my running shoes with tiny brass wood screws.

The following should have been obvious, but I will say it anyway. The problem with putting screws in your shoes is that it’s easy to get the sharp end to point up into your foot, but hard to get it to point down into the ice. My homemade studs were a failure.

La Sportiva found just the thing in the world of auto racing: tiny spikes for hand-studding rally-car tires. They’re made of a fancy wear-resistant tungsten alloy with a flat corkscrew base that will embed firmly into the lug of a shoe without pricking into your feet.

La Sportiva now sells this little hand-studding kit for $45, which comes with a studding tool and 20 studs—enough for one to two pairs of shoes (replacement studs sans tool are $18).

I started off conservatively putting five studs each into my worn-out Crosslites (the ones I ran the first 550 km of the Bruce Trail in). The thick lugs in the Crosslites are well suited for holding studs, but I think you could probably stud any running shoe. My package came with a couple of different screw lengths, with the shorter ones better for the thin forefoot section of a road shoe.

Five studs per shoe was enough for excellent grip on ice. I ran post thaw-freeze cycle on completely packed and refrozen trails, and even walked over icy wave-blasted rocks beside Lake Ontario. With the remaining 10 studs added, I could have gone mountaineering.

The metal nipples protrude a good 4-5 mm from the sole so they’d wear out fast on pavement, but they’re great on ice or anywhere else serious traction is required (log driving?). I carry my studded shoes in my bag when I run from home to the trails and then quickly change shoes once I get off the pavement.

This is the best grip solution for icy winter running I’ve seen yet. Unlike strap-on traction devices, there’s nothing to wrap around the top of your feet and rub or interfere with circulation, and nothing that can slip or fall off.

The studs can be removed so if you wanted you could stud your trail shoes for winter and de-stud them in the spring. I was happy to give my old trail shoes a second life as winter ice runners. So now I own regular trail shoes, winter trail shoes, good road shoes, second-tier road shoes, and Nike Free “barefoot” shoes, plus new tap dancing shoes (y’know, those old road shoes with the brass screws in the soles?). But that—my role in keeping Chinese cobblers and closet organizers employed—is a whole other story.