Sitting 5 weeks post op. Shoulder in arm sling that I am at this point ready to throw off a bridge. I have realized a few things.

1. My patience for recovery lacks a certain finesse.
2. Idle time doesn’t do me well. Relaxation meets boredom pretty quickly.
3. When removed from the ability of driving, your life radius becomes quite small.

Living on an island, means you don’t leave the island. You can see the cabin fever rising.

Running has been tucked into the back closet for the time being, and in an effort to maintain being positive and upbeat about my recovery from shoulder surgery I have begun walking. A lot. Walking Ash to and from school has been the norm since Kindergarten, but now with not a whole lot to do in the middle of the day, I have begun filling the void.

I have a community garden plot a few kms from our house and began a ritual of dropping Ash at school and walking over to the garden to water it and such. This grew into watering the garden and finding different ways to walk back home. I also started listening to podcasts which would often elongate my time spent walking as I would find myself halfway through an episode and would continue on around the block a few times until it was finished.

I began thinking about some of the previous races I have done and how big parts of those races weren’t spent moving particularly fast (either due to terrain or the fatigue of an all day race). This brought me down the “what if” rabbit hole that I often find myself. What if I walked all day? How far could I go? Could I walk an Ultramarathon? The chimes of inevitability began to ring.

I started routing longer and longer laps within the city. 10km. 15km. 25km. I will say that these routes often were lack luster in viewpoints, but they gave me the data needed to start playing with the Ultra potential. The 25km I was able to get done in under 5 hours. This gave me a base.

So yesterday I set out on my first attempt at a “City Ultra”. I mapped out a 33km loop that goes around the border of Richmond proper. A school drop off mixed with getting to and from the start of the loop would get me the distance.

Setting out at 9am, I began the walk.

It was about a 4km walk over to Steveston village, where I was meeting a friend, Pierre, who was willing to indulge doing at least the full 33km lap with me. I arrived and Isaac my brother had also shown up. He said he would come and join us for the first couple kms before heading off to work.

We made our way along the west dyke trail that eventually wraps around Terra Nova and begins heading East along the north arm of the Fraser River. A familiar route to myself as I used this route 4 years ago as part of a “virtual” marathon during the pandemic.

The rain began. Though not particularly cold. We tucked into Starbucks at the casino before vacating the dyke trail for the Bridgeport trail, our route that would take us through the back lanes and old irrigation ditch systems of the northern neighborhoods of Richmond.

We approached Shell Road. At which point we turned South and walked a few blocks where we could jump onto the Shell trail. We were now at the halfway point and sat to take a breather. 25km in the books. The weather lightened up and we continued on to the south dyke. From there, the dyke trail would continue back west towards Steveston.

We are quite fortunate to have this route that is predominantly trail and minimal road crossings. Most cities tend to chop up these trails for favour of more development, but luckily for us the dyke trail system won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, as it also serves as the city walls. Richmond sits below sea level, so no dykes means no Richmond.

Pierre and I took a few more breaks before arriving back in Steveston. The feet were starting to fatigue a bit, but we were on the home stretch. The day (and distance) went by pretty quick and overall we were feeling pretty good. We arrived back in Steveston and I bade farewell to Pierre. I continued and did a few laps of Garry point park before heading back home. That would get me the distance needed to hit 50km.

The Consensus

Arriving at home right at 50km. A full 10 hours and 6 minutes from when I left. Not as thrilling as some of the past ultra marathons I have done, but getting in an ultra while recovering was epic enough for me! The route overall was perfect. It has enough water fountains, bathrooms and close enough to a few coffee shops. Combine that with the minimal time spent on actual roads. I was happy to complete getting the 50km in the books, and this route, over 3 laps, would be suitable for a City 100km! (Perhaps a future endeavor. The wheels are already turning). Looking forward to getting back out and running again, but this has been an interesting experience and an opportunity to fill some time, do some micro adventuring, and maintain sanity while in Recovery.

Cheers.