On June 10th, the 2nd race of the 5 peaks trail run series was held at Rattlesnake Point conservation area in Milton Ontario.This area is located on the Niagara escarpment, on the most southern extremity of the Milton outlier.This area, along with its natural beauty hosts many sporting and adventure outings showcasing and utilizing a very deep canyon.This canyon is called the Nassagaweya canyon, which was formed by a preglacial river, then during the ice age was deepened and widened, providing a playground 2nd to none for todays rock climbers and racers of bikes and foot.That would be us.The race was delayed by a 1/2 hr to accomodate last min. registry, making a total of finishers to around the 407 mark between the sport race of 4.5k and the enduro race of 12.7k.The cooler temps{ holy burrr!} kept the bugs at bay, making the run a bug free event.With 260 entrants and 220 finishers in our enduro event, the 12.7 was a fairly populated event, leaving us with the decission of where to start, so we started about 20 runners from the front..good choice...It was a fast take off, through the mud and over the endless tree roots and rocks we went, i`ve never seen so many roots, thousands of them, no joke, pick up your feet #1 rule.The first k was in about 4:45, it was a fast crowd until we hit the rock climb section, for those who were at or have done Sulphur Springs, may recall "the gully" well this area was all that but you wern`t on the ground, you werte climbing boulders all the way up, never hit the ground once, and we had to come back the same way..brutal..Some people actually ran on these rocks, making incredible time, while running i was talking to this lady, she was one of the rock runners, she told me that she lives here and so she trains there....home ice advantage...the climb took us to the top of the escarpment, and back down again, but we hit an awesome boardwalk, the crowd was thinned out at this point and so you could run like the wind on this thing, plus it felt good giving the legs a well deserved streach.The latter part of the run was hooked up with the sport trail, which wasnt bad at all, if you had anything left in you then use it here, just watch the roots, my friend Brian was scraped and cut from hip to foot from a nasty fall, i ended up with 3 twisted ankles{ no i dont have 3 feet}, did in the left ankle once and the right twice, not over completely, just enough to get your attention and to keep me on ice today as i write this report.After the finish line i watched the runners come in..wow!..alot of people were limping, hoping and draging themselves over the line, one poor girl was covered..and i do mean covered in dry caked on mud, from her face to her feet, the only real bad mud was within the first 7k, so she had lots of time to have all that mud dry on her...yuck..cool wipe out though!Saw one poor man with an ankle as big as a football, must be broken..eww!.And the good news is that i didnt get lost on this one, but 5 others did, including Brians wife, it didnt help that the marshals were pulling up the marker flags before all the runners were in..duh!! no wonder they got lost, and when we were leaving one girl was still missing { Jane she is Doonst`s running partner}.Over all it was the toughest 12.7k i`ve ever seen, but i`d do it again.I didnt do so bad , better then i thought, i ran a 1:07:46 while running 5:21`s and that put me comming in in 68th place out of 220 finishers, not bad for me, dont know how to train for rock climbing unalone do it on race day, so i just took my time on them, and made up for it on the pathways, did the trick eh? So if anybody wants to try and grab the snake by the rattle next year, count me in..its a blast!!, and how was your day??.David Storey.
