As soon as I opened the email, I knew what was coming...
As I read through, my eyes filled with tears. It's over. I'm not running 100miles. 15 weeks of preparation for nothing. Bow Valley Ultra is canceled. I couldn't believe it but it was right there. All my hopes and dreams shattered.
You're probably thinking now - omg it's just a race, get over it, find another one!
There isn't another one.
I wasn't interested in running 100 miles. I was, but not anytime soon. All the 100M races here were not interesting to me, the only one I'd consider was the Sinister 7 but that one is pretty early in the season, it's really hard and usually it's super hot and I just didn't think it was something I could or even wanted to do anytime soon. So when BVU popped up, there was just something about it. I was drawn to it. I didn't really have to travel anywhere, I could just wake up in the morning and drive to the start and then go back when I'm done. I knew these trails, I knew I can train on the route and get pretty familiar with it, I knew I could get some local people to pace me through the night sections and I thought the weather should be pretty decent around that time. Could be warm, could be really cold. I hoped I could run the last meters to the finish line with Lucy and Mike...
It was perfect. Since they announced it last year, I've been thinking about it. When they put more info out, especially about the requirements, I was like OMG I have to do a 50mile race! Now! I started looking right away. I wanted to make sure I will get it, in time. And that's why I signed up last minute for the DARK 24 HRS UNDERGROUND. No specific training for it at all, just my will to do 50miles in 24hrs on a 500m looped course, under ground, in a mine. Like who does that?! Well I did. And I succeeded. There were multiple updates on the race before and after the New Year. It was going good. I reached out to find a new coach to make sure I have the best chance to get to the finish line. They made it pretty clear that it's not 100% yet that the race is gonna happened but they were very positive. I started my training in February. I thought about this race on every single run. Probably every single day as I listened to podcasts about running etc. I was making plans, I was just living in it. It was there, all the time. In the end of March they went through with the full registration, which meant the race is happening, I paid for my entry and I was IN! There was no way back now, I'm doing it! I was excited and scared. Training for something so far away was really hard for me. But I was trying to trust the process.
I lived for this race the last 15 weeks. I was putting a LOT of work in (I was doing hill repeats in -25 ffs!), I took it seriously. I even started this stupid blog to have it all documented. I was thinking about this race every day. On every shitty run I thought how I'm gonna feel during the race and how I'm gonna overcome this there, like I did just here. Every thing that went wrong during my training runs I was like It's okay tho, I now know I can get through this and if something similar happens, I know I'll be fine. Everything was planned around and for this race. It seemed even I was finally getting a hold of my nutrition too. I visualized a lot of it...
It's all gone now.
I'm heartbroken and devastated. You may not understand and that's okay. You did not live the last few months for this race. But I did.
Maybe that was my mistake to put all the eggs in one basket and have no backup plans. I just didn't think this could happen anymore...
I'm really not sure what's next. I've already looked obviously but again, there isn't any other race around that time that excites me to do it. It's not just the distance. It was the whole thing...
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