By Greg Balchin
Port Alberni’s is our most favourite trail series run. It has all the twists and turns you could ask for, with a couple of ravine dips just to keep the climbers happy.
This course begs to be run hard and fast. There are numerous trail and Galloping Goose-like flat spots that allow you to pick up the pace (if you have enough gas in the tank). The catch, however, is the likelihood of going out too fast, and bonking before the finish line. I've done this twice now (I'm a slow learner) and it's so frustrating, because the fastest part of the track is the last 5k.
You also have to deal with Port Alberini’s 30'c heat and humidity, which conspire to reduce your sweat’s ability to cool you down. Water consumption at the aid stations is a must. Pauline and I filled our 2ltr water bags with ice cubes. That actually helped us a lot. It cooled our backs down for most of the run, even though the sloshing around melting ice, was a bit distracting.
116 long distance runners showed up for the event , 164 short course runners took off 15 minutes after our race start. Pauline killed it on this race, coming in at 2:38:32 while still managing to take videos of the run at the same time! I limped in nearly 13 minutes behind her, at 2:40:30 . Pauline got 1st place in her age group and was 38th of 116 to cross the finish line (very impressive)! I was a distant 51st of 116, and 2nd in my age group.
We really had fun on this run, lots of friends to run with, the running community (trail and road runners) is a relatively small number of people, especially the trail runners. There are approximately 600-700 of us registered, and fewer actually make it out to the majority of the events, so you really get to know people over the years.
A number of us got stung by wasps again. I got stung in the same spot on my knee as last year. There's a nest about 3k into the trail, and they just wait for us every year. I think they enjoy this event as much as we do. Ultimately, the fault is mine. I'm not running fast enough. The first 30 runners never get stung, the rest of us, however, are never so lucky.
