John Mcalister start the season strong with his first podium of the season. John is another incredible Julbo athlete that perform as a 40-year-old runner who works long hours and has two young children. For more details, read his race review below.
On Saturday, I raced the Laura Secord Memorial 100K, which follows the rugged Bruce Trail route in the Niagara Region. According to the race description, the course was supposed to be a mix of single track, double track and a bit of road. Instead, due to the heavy winter and recent rains, it was a mix of mud, ice and a bit of road.
As the event was a joint venture with the Canadian military, we were treated to a cannon blast to start the race at 5 a.m. I settled into an easy pace with Kent Keeler, who eventually went on to win the race. We ran together for the first 40K or so of the race. I’m not sure if it was my lack of fitness or the extra weight of the thick mud sticking to my shoes, but I started to experience cramping in both my quads.T
his is something that always seems to happen to me in my first race of the season. Knowing that I had 60K left to go, I started to take frequent walking breaks to let my quads settle down. I hadn’t planned to be competitive in this race anyway, so I knew I needed to focus on getting to the finish. Kent went on ahead (and managed to win) and I just settled into a consistent but manageable pace.
With the heavy mud and icy terrain, some of the descents were quite sketchy. Although I wasn’t pushing the pace, I managed to have a few nasty falls (and have the scratches to prove it). I took extra care as I just wanted to finish the race injury free. And after diving face first into a muddy bog, I stopped worrying about moving too quickly in the really muddy sections. I was tasting dirt for hours after that.At any rate, I managed to finish third overall, so that’s a decent result given my recent training.
John's favorite model to run with is the Trail
Trail
