Running: Lost Soul Ultra Report

The short version: CANCELLED DUE TO RAIN.

We arrived in Lethbridge on Friday afternoon with lots of time to pickup my race package (which included a very nice jacket) and check into the hotel before dinner. We found a local Boston Pizza for pasta to do the carb loading thing.

On our way back to the hotel it began to rain heavily with lots of wind on top of it. (It is Lethbridge after all.) I was certainly glad not to be running in it, but I couldn't help but feel badly for the 100km and 100 mile racers currently outside.

Back at the hotel I did the last minute obsessing about the gear and had everything ready to go before Aerin and I hit the hot tube for a soak. At this point it was still raining a little outside, and I was hoping it would let up long enough to save the course from being too muddy. We met another couple that was there for the 50km race, so we talked about running and traded war stories.

It was time for bed about 9PM, but little did we know as we drifted off that they were already shutting down the race due to the rain. The clay gets very slippery, so they decided that it was too dangerous to continue to let the racers go through the night. Of course it wasn't until 6:30am at the race meeting that I learned my 5am wakeup to get ready was in vain.

Needless to say I was disappointed and more than a little grumpy about not getting to run my race, but in the end it would seem to be somewhat fortuetous since I'd be having an odd occasional pain in my left knee. After trying to get a couple more hours of sleep, Aerin and I spent the day relaxing. We visited the Japanese garden, did some pillow shopping since the old one didn't do well on the new mattress, caught a movie, and generally took it easy.

The movie we saw was Kung Fu Panda, and we both enjoyed it enough to put it onto our DVD wishlist. Watching the movie reminded me of an article I'd read in the paper when the movie was first released. Why do they shell out a lot of money for big name actors to voice characters other than the name recognition when it comes time to promote the film? They certainly won't help the movie if it just stinks to begin with. But now I'm straying off topic...

So in the end, we stayed for the breakfast on Sunday morning to collect my Rock with no time, have some food and trade a few stories again before heading home.