From 0 to 100k - Part 9: Final Training and Preparations

A beautiful sunrise on Cobblers Crescent

It's hard to believe it has been almost two months since I last posted, but I have really struggled to find the motivation to sit down and write. I am hopeful that this series of posts will be complete before the 2021 running season kicks off in earnest, so I'm going to make a determined push to get the last 3-4 posts done soon. We shall see how that goes!

At the conclusion of the last post, it was mid-August 2020, and the preliminary plans for my ECT 100k were in place. The date had been set for September 26, with a midnight start. I had discussed the basic plan with my coach and had 6 or 7 people possibly lined up for support.

On the weekend of August 22/23, I did an out-and-back run from Cobblers Crescent to Quidi Vidi on Saturday, covering the entire Sugarloaf Path trail for the first and second time. Then on Sunday, I went from Cobblers Crescent to Motion Drive, covering Cobblers Path and Silver Mine Head trails twice each. These runs helped me to greatly increase my familiarity with the back half of the ECT 50k route. I also had my buddies Justin and Darrin join me on Sunday for part of the run, so it helped get some of my pacers more familiar with the route as well.

The view heading towards Quidi Vidi on Sugarloaf Path

Coming off that weekend, which totalled 45km, I had a few days off to prepare for a planned 3-day recon run of the entirety of my planned ECT 100k route. The idea was to run the route as if I was doing the 100k in a single effort, as much as possible. This served the dual purpose of giving me a really good idea of how prepared I was for the 100k, while also giving a baseline for how long it would take me to cover the route.

On Thursday, August 27, I covered about 36km from Pouch Cove to Cobblers Crescent in just under 5.5 hours. I started at just after 8:00 am, and aside from a little rain early on, it was a beautiful day. I did have a few issues though. I fell down a set of stairs heading into Shoe Cove and bruised both my forearm and my backside. And then I kicked a rock extremely hard about 3km later, damaging the nail on my big toe. Thankfully, after the first 6k the rest of the day went swimmingly.

This section of Cobblers Path is one of my favourites on the whole ECT

On Friday, August 28, I went from Cobblers Crescent to Quidi Vidi, covering a little over 28km in about 4.5 hours. I was blessed with another gorgeous day and felt tired but surprisingly good overall after day 2. The biggest takeaway from this day was that Sugarloaf Path is a much more enjoyable run when it is dry, as it had been rain-soaked when I ran it the previous weekend. Now if only I could control the weather for my 100k!

Sugarloaf isn't the most scenic part of the trail, but there is beauty to be found

To cap off the 3-day test run, on Saturday, August 29, I ran a little over 36km from Cobblers Crescent to Pouch Cove in about 5 hours and 15 minutes. I realize I'm sounding like a bit of a broken record, but day 3 was even nicer than the previous 2. In total, I ended up covering 100k in 15 hours, 54 minutes, and 3 seconds. I felt good right up until the final 11k, at which point I began yelling out, "Anyone can run (insert number here) kilometres!" whenever my watch would beep to indicate another kilometre had passed. This was reasonable motivation, although it was slightly embarrassing the one time I did it and came face to face with two hikers a few seconds later as I rounded a corner. Haha

The view into Blackhead Cove is stunning on a sunny day

With the test run done, the training portion of my preparation was mainly complete. With 4 weeks remaining until my ECT 100k, the important work now would focus on planning and ensuring my team was in place.

One important aspect of getting the team figured out was actually taken care of in part by me posting my test runs on Strava. Derrick Roul, a local runner who I had only met briefly on a couple of occasions, commented on one of my runs asking what the plan was for the 100k. This led to a conversation via Facebook messenger and ended up with Derrick volunteering to run the first 50k with me through the night.

Even sitting here 7 months later, it's still hard for me to put into words how much that meant to me. I've discussed my anxiety at length here, and I talked in the last post about how reaching out to people and putting a team together was a test for me in that respect. I was prepared to run through the night by myself if necessary, as I knew it was a big ask of anyone. To have a relative stranger step forward of his own accord was something I never could have imagined happening, and I'll be forever grateful to Derrick for that.

The next detail to fall into place was putting a more realistic time schedule into place for the run. Having done the full course over 3 days, I had a baseline for how long it would take me to run each section. After a lengthy phone conversation with my coach, I took those baselines and made the necessary adjustments to leave us with a schedule to use as a guideline for pacers/crew. I won't get too much into the details, but the basic idea was to allow more time for aid stations/refuelling in the latter half, and also to add roughly 25-30% to the time it took me to run each section in the last 50k. Once those adjustments were made, I had a workable plan to provide to my team.

On the Friday of Labour Day weekend, I sent out this updated plan to those who had volunteered to help out up to that point. The next day, my crew chief, Ginny, went out and ran her own 50k on the ECT route from Pouch Cove to Quidi Vidi. I was lucky enough to get out and run two sections with her, and seeing someone else accomplish such a big goal only intensified my excitement for the upcoming challenge.

The final 3 weeks leading into the 100k were mostly about fine-tuning. As I had never run on the trails in the night before, I got out for sunset runs on Cobblers Path and Father Troy's to provide at least a little acclimation. I found that running in the night wasn't that much trickier than running in the day, which was a relief. I also discovered that getting chased by a fox for a kilometre by yourself in the dark can be more than just a little bit creepy, so I was especially thankful for the fact that Derrick was going to run through the night with me after that experience. Haha

A breathtaking sunset, as seen from Torbay Point

Two weekends out from the 100k, I did back-to-back long runs for my final volume training. Saturday was a solo out-and-back on Sugarloaf Path, and Sunday I ran from Flatrock to Middle Cove Beach on my own and then had Justin and Darrin with me on the way back. Both runs went extremely well, and I was ecstatic to have all my long runs behind me and less than two weeks to wait!

As the final week approached, all that was left was to determine exactly who was pacing and crewing at specific points and to ensure that all my food/water/clothing/etc. was planned and ready to go. By the time I sent out my final email to the team the Monday before the run, there were over 10 people on the list. That email ended up being around 1000 words and had 4 attachments with instructions/schedules, so I'm lucky that no one decided to bail at that point!

I feel like this post has probably been a little disjointed and all over the place, but honestly, that is kind of how things felt in that last month before the 100k. I could probably split this into three posts and give a lot more details on specific parts, but I don't know if that would do it any more justice. So, I will end this here, and the next post will FINALLY be discussing the Friday/Saturday of my ECT 100k run. I'm guessing that it will take a couple of posts to fully cover the run, but hopefully, there are still some people out there reading who are interested. If you are one of them, thanks as always for reading, and until next time, take care.

Not much to say about these three pics; they are here merely to show how much
gear one prepares to run 100k in a single go!