The Golden Ultra in Golden, British Columbia is one of my favorite events of the year. Its late in the season which makes for totally unpredictable weather. This just adds to the challenge at hand. Its also one of the best run events, in a beautiful area and a great way to close out the ultra season.
This year I opted to pass on the 3 day stage event and make it more of a family event. My wife entered the 10km trail race and two of my boys participated in the kids event. I signed up for a single day in the 60km event.
My plan was to run hard as there was no need to save energy and legs for any subsequent stages. As often happens, best laid plans have a way of going sideways. First issue was that the course changed to a different mountain. Instead of going up Kickinghorse, we were routed towards another peak just south of the town. This meant the trail was new and unknown to me, silver lining was that it was to become more of an adventure.
Getting out to Golden the weather was perfect: cool and dry with no snow like the previous year. When the race started I went hard out of the gate. I was feeling the best I have in any trail race and had a ton of summer conditioning under my belt. By the 10km mark we were settling in and I felt that I wasn’t too far off from the lead pack. I roughly new the course, but opted to not load any routes to my phone or watch like I typically do. This race is so well organized with flags every 20-40 meters there was low risk of getting lost or confused (or so I thought).
There were, however, a few sections where the course would loop back on itself and eventually we came across a trail intersection with flags going off in 4 directions. The runner in front of me blasted straight through, and although there was nothing at the intersection that indicated any correct direction, I assumed he knew where he was going and followed along. I heard the runner on my heels come with us and came to the conclusion that between the 3 of us someone had confidence in our quick selection. I thought about it for a while wondering how they knew which direction to take considering there were no arrows or indications.
We raced though single track and down a long hill for another 4km until reaching a clearing. Up ahead was a group of about 20 runners standing around. My first inclination when i see runners stopped is that there must be a bear or other hazard up ahead. I ran up to the group and it became apparent that we had all come to the wrong place – a wrong turn had been made. A guy beside me immediately mentioned that his watch beeped to turn back that the crossroad but seeing everyone go straight he just followed suit. At that point I knew exactly where we had made a wrong turn, and groaned knowing it was a 4+ km climb back up to the junction.
About 15 of the runners immediately decided to continue forward to a road and double back a service road to the main trail. I had no idea how to get back to the junction except back tracking. The remaining runners debated whether they would continue forward or double back. I immediately doubled back with another runner, at least we knew how far and where we made the wrong turn.
We started back and the guy I was running with was really down about the situation. I consider route finding and wrong turns part of the adventure and tend to not get too worked up – hey its just another 10km on a perfect day in the beautiful trails!
After about 4km of backtracking the guy I was running with stopped and was certain we went too far back, I wasn’t convinced and we quickly agreed to separate – he ran back again and i continued “forward” to the junction I thought we missed. Not even 1km further I reached the junction we all blew past, I tried to run back to catch the guy who went the other direction, but it was no luck and I decided to continue on the right path.
I spend the next 10km passing runners who were at the back of the main pack. At this point I threw out any high performance placement and just wanted to have a good day – good vibes only.
The climb this year was grueling, absolutely one of the longest, steepest, mentally challenging climbs I’ve done in a race.
By the time I reached the top I was hurting, but stopped to take some pictures, chat with runners and take it all in.
After the top we ran along the ridge with some scrambling and route finding. Some awesome volunteers were up there to provide some guidance in the more sketchy areas, cant imagine how early they would have had to come up – thanks!
After the summit the trail plunges down a long winding single track. I’m a climber, not a downhill speed runner, so this part was a knee destroyer for me.
By the last aid station I was feeling good, but ready to be done. I ran hard into the finish including the flat section along the river which I find is a good spot to reel in any hurting runners ahead.
Overall it was a great race. Scenery was epic and although i took a wrong turn, I was happy about how it came together. I came through the finish line with my family waiting at the end – perfect ending to a nearly perfect day.
Update: about a month after the race finished I received an email from the race organizer. Apparently someone had gone out the night before and removed some signs which caused the wrong turn by the lead pack. They were able to easily determine who had missed the turn and adjusted their time, and offered a discount on next years race. Super nice, shows the quality of organization that goes into this race and I’ll definitely be back next year again.