A pair of Coast runners had up-and-down performances at the recent Elk/Beaver Lake Ultra Run May 10 in Victoria.
Halfmoon Bay’s Teresa Nightingale ran 50k (five laps) of the course, finishing first in the masters women 40-plus category, the second female and seventh overall in a time of 4:21:53.
Sechelt’s Tammy Dean completed 50.47k of the 50-mile in a time of 4:47:19, but had to pull out due to injury.
“I should really stick to my race plan next time,” Nightingale said. “The first 30k I was going a bit too fast, but I felt good and just went with it, but I paid the pice at about 35k. The quads started to protest just after 30k. How quickly things can go from terrific to horrible. Just after 35k they kind of stopped working and I had to walk for a few minutes.”
After walking for a bit, Nightingale started running again to finish the loop, getting some encouragement from a fellow runner. She got to the food station to regroup and headed back out for the last 10k, hoping for the best.
“My legs immediately felt better, and for a while it seemed possible to get back to normal speed, but every time I sped up a bit my body said, ‘no way.’ But it was a relief to be able to keep running, albeit slowly. Overall I finished five minutes slower than my original goal, but I will know better for next time, not to treat a 50k like a marathon plus 8k.”
Dean was registered for the whole race, but at 47k her problematic leg kicked up, and she wiped out hard.
“I had to make the hard decision to pull myself at 50k and avoid worsening injury,” Dean said. “It was sad. I was challenging for the top three overall females and appeared to have masters female in the bag. The rest of my body feels great, and I now know I can go this distance. We plan to both be back next year to conquer this one.”
