1990 - From a Run to a Race (Part I)

We were all on quite the high after our inaugural run in 1989 - was it the 30-mile run or the pints we were consuming at the pub :-) Regardless, there was much talk about taking this from a group run with 8 of us that day to an actual race in 1990. The main question we asked ourselves was - will anybody actually pay money to run 30 miles on these trails?

Before answering that question, some background on the race co-founders - Shane Collins and myself.

In 1988, just 1 year before our inaugural run, neither Shane nor I were living on the North Shore and we had not crossed paths yet in life. In fact, neither of us had done much trail running in the North Shore mountains. Yet, we were both looking for athletic challenges/adventures beyond what we had experienced to this point as individuals.

Shane's athletic background was as a competitive swimmer in his youth. Later in life, he moved on to triathlon and was involved in the early days of Ironman competitions in the 70's and 80's and also completed many road marathons. Myself, on the other hand, came mostly from a road running background in my early adult years - starting with 10K fun runs and then progressing to marathons.

By mid-1988, we were both looking for something different to occupy our non-working time in our lives. We both also decided a change was in order for our home base, so that we would be closer to where we really wanted to spend our free time. For Shane, that meant a move from the "Centre of the Universe" (Toronto) to West Vancouver, while for me it was a more modest shuffle from the streets of East Vancouver (Commercial Drive) to North Vancouver (just a block-and-a-half from Cleveland Dam). Over the next few months, a series of events would lead to the 2 of us meeting for a run on the Baden-Powell trail in the spring of 1989, which is what eventually gave birth to the Knee Knackering Shore Trail Run.

In 1988, I finally achieved one of my big road-running goals - running in the Boston Marathon! My qualifying race was done in October 1987 at the Victoria Marathon. In those days, the qualifying time for men under 40 was 3:00. I ran my first and only sub-3 hour marathon in a time of 2:59:55!! Although thrilled at having finally qualified to run Boston, I was not so excited to put myself through the rigorous and intense training to perform my best at the marathon distance. I wanted to have a bit more fun in the process, so I turned to the trails.

After running Boston in April 1988, I spent the ensuing summer and fall exploring the trails of Vancouver's North Shore, as well as up and down the Sea-to-Sky Highway in the trails near Squamish and Whistler. Eventually I knew I wanted to challenge myself with a race on trails such as these. There weren't any of these types of races in British Columbia at the time, so I turned my sites to California to look for a race. After all, they were the only ones that were wackier than us on the wacky West Coast :-)

I had always heard, read and seen on TV the grand-daddy of them all - the Western States Endurance Run. It starts high up in the Sierras at Squaw Valley and 100 miles later arrives in Auburn, California, following the Western States trail and gaining 15,540 feet while descending 22,970 feet. No problems, it's a downhill run :-)

Well, better sense prevailed and I decided a couple of 50-mile races might be in order before stepping up to Western States. So I perused my copies of Ultrarunning magazine, which I had just started subscribing to earlier in the year. I picked a low-key 50-miler just outside San Francisco in November, 1988 as my first ultra, by the name of Skyline To The Sea. It was cold, wet and muddy, and I had found my calling!

My next ultra was much closer to home in Tsawassen in March, 1989, which was the good news. The not-so-good news was that it was 50 miles of roads!?! But, my buddy Tom Brown (another one of the Original 8) was also running this race, and he introduced me to Louis Briere (who also ended up being in the Original 8). Finally, Louis was the one who told me he met a crazy Englishman by the name of Shane Collins just the week before. He said Shane was planning on running the entire length of the 30-mile Baden-Powell Trail in the summer, and he was looking for company.

I did not need much talking into, and a couple of weeks later the 4 of us (Shane, Louis, Tom and me) met for our first run on the North Shore trails. Over the next couple of months, this became a twice-weekly ritual as we familiarized ourselves with the Baden-Powell and many other intersecting trails. It turned out that both Shane and I were preparing for longer trail races towards the end of the summer of '89 - myself for the Elkhorn Mountain 100 Km Endurance Run, while Shane was aiming for the Leadville Trail 100-miler. Our training on the North Shore Trails proved to be excellent preparation for these 2 events, and I had the privilege of pacing Shane for the last 40 miles of his 100 miles in Leadville, Colorado. It was a great close to our summer, with the highlight of course being the inaugural Knee Knackering North Shore Trail Run.

Of course, none of had ever organized a race from scratch before. But we were young and naive, and figured we could do anything especially after we had conquered 30 miles on the Baden-Powell Trail. Little did we know what was in store for us in the coming 12 months as we prepared to transform our little group run into a full-blown race in 1990, but more on that next week in Part II. For now, I'll just leave you to have a look at our first-ever entry form for the July 14, 1990 race.

Till next time...Enzo