Oh, I know. It’s been a long time since I last posted – a whole two years in fact – and even longer since I last raced, at the Wandering Moose in Kelowna, BC in October 2022. In an effort to correct both these lapses, I took part in the recent 5 Peaks Powderface Mountain Marathon, in beautiful Kananaskis, an hour east of Canmore, and am now writing about it…
I signed up in March, a couple of months after returning to Canmore from a three month stay with my family in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a great place in many, many ways, but it isn’t great for either trails or mountains…
Feeling starved of both, and eager to get in shape by having a goal to work towards at the beginning of the summer that was not the Minotaur Sky Race or a self-supported crack at the Canmore Quad – both of which were tempting but felt a bit beyond me at the time – I signed up for the 44km Powderface Marathon.
I embarked on a training programme consisting of easy, tempo, intervals and long runs with some elevation thrown in here and there. Despite my best efforts not to progress too fast too soon, my training was derailed in early May by a calf strain. This required some visits to the physio to begin to put right and also prompted the decision to drop down from the marathon to the half-marathon distance.
Initially, I wasn’t thrilled about this but soon came to realise that the half marathon distance is in many ways the sweet spot. It’s a challenge and definitely something you need to train for but unlike a marathon or ultra, the training doesn’t take over your whole life in the process. And race day nutrition is also a lot easier to figure out – a few gels and some electrolytes and you’re golden.
In any event, my calf was keeping my training very much in check. It was three weeks before I began running again. By the time the race came around, I was back up to running for an hour and a half with regular walk breaks. This was a vast imporvement on where i’d been but didn’t feel sufficient. I was expecting to run for twice as long on race day. The thought of not managing to go the distance had entered my mind. As it was, I needn’t have been so anxious as race day came, my calf muscle was surprisngly well-behaved, and I had a great morning on the trails with dozens of other folk, finishing in 3 hours and 1 minute.
On Strava, it all looked like this:
Strangely perhaps, given how much time i’ve lived and run here, and how prominent and renown 5 Peaks are at organising trail races in this area and elsewhere in Canada, this was my first 5 Peaks race. And perhaps all the more strange given that Powderface is billed as “an Alberta favourite, a classic, the one that started it all and a ‘must-do’ for any trail runner.”
And it has to be said that race director Kevin “Houda” McDonald and his team know how to put on an excellent event. Indeed, Houda’s experience is long and wide, being a central figure also in the Transrockies race series and the Golden Ultra. The organisation was great – number pick up was smooth and easy, the race briefing clear and informative. The three aid stations and finish line were well stocked and the course was very clearly marked. There was great finisher’s swag and, last but not least, enthusiastic, kind and encouraging volunteers.
And then there was the actual course – a great mix of smooth, rooty and rocky single track which was, for the most part, among the trees and either heading up or down – I don’t recall a whole lot of flat other than at the start and towards the finish. The descents were fast and technical and the climbs felt longer and more frequent than I expected. Even my watch was confused. I was expecting around 647m of elevation overall but my watch logged over 1100m.
As is always the case at trail races, at least in my experience, the overall vibe among the racers was very positive, friendly and supportive. There’s one section of the course where runners going to and from the turnaround point pass each other on the trail and it was an endless chorus of “great job”, “well done”, “nice work”, “you got this” which is how it should be. And again, very supportive, cow-bell wielding volunteers.
Would I recommend it? Absolutely. Will I return next year? I wouldn’t rule it out . It was a great day in a beautiful setting and I feel the 44km marathon and I have some unfinished (un-started?) business…
Canmore Runner 