I’ve been dreaming of racing The Bad Thing 50km for the last three years. A point-to-point route that follows the Maitland River from Goderich to Auburn while the leaves are changing in late October. Yes please, that sounds incredible. The first two years, it sold out instantly before I could register, and in 2019 when I finally nabbed a spot, I was injured. Oh well, maybe 2020 will be different? Yup, it turned out that 2020 was different, very different.
At the point in time that I’m writing this, The Bad Thing 50km is going ahead but it looks significantly different under the Ontario Health guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19. I still want to run the race, but not this year, not when there is so much risk involved.
And so…..
Meredith Parker and I decided to run what we called “Our Own Thing 50km”. To mix things up, we reversed the route and decided to run it from Auburn to Goderich. We picked a weekend date in late September that had nice weather and we were OFF!
We got up and out dark and early, dropped off her car at the “finish line” in Goderich, then drove to the Ben Miller area of the trail to hide a drop bag in the woods (we wouldn’t see it again for many hours, somewhere around the 30km mark of our run). Then off to Auburn to find our “start line” and get running. After finding an appropriate place to park in Auburn, we were off just as the sun was coming up.
It was a beautiful chilly morning, a perfect day to run far. There were one or two initial “where the heck is the trail?” moments, but after figuring out how the map navigation function works on my Garmin Fenix 5 we were locked in with the route and cruising along and having a grand ol’ time.
It took us just over 9 hours to run the whole thing. Since this was self-supported, our one vital drop bag gave us a single chance to refill on fluids and snacks. And most importantly, Coca-Cola, the cornerstone of any decent ultra-distance “aid station” even if that aid station is just a bag on the ground hiding under some bark tucked behind a tree.
Our route probably looks a bit different from previous years of The Bad Thing due to a recent re-route around a giant farmer’s field that adds 2-3km of distance, and a few closed areas due to COVD-19 and/or hunting (even though we were running through the area outside of hunting season). And so, our total distance slowly ticked up from 50km to 57km. That’s a healthy increase of 14%, and after 50km you really start to feel those extra kilometres.
Highlights:
“In Poland, mushroom foraging is a competitive sport” - retired couple who were foraging for mushrooms.
“You’ll be arriving just in time for wine time” - hiker’s response when we told her how long it will take us to complete the full route.
Those Maitland river views. Wow. Gorgeous.
This trail is really well maintained and the local love of this trail network is apparent.
Lowlights:
Mer getting stung on both her arms by bald-faced hornets. Shitty.
Confusing re-route signage when we were getting calorie depleted.
Tripping on a rock and wiping out at the exact moment I was talking about tripping.
This trail adventure was Mer’s first ultra distance run (woot! congrats!), and my first time on the Maitland Trail. It’s a beautiful trail and I’m so happy that we were able to pull this off. Only in a year as crazy as 2020, with no races, and no travel, would we both have the fitness, free time, and right level of lunacy to pull off adventures of this kind.
Would I do this again? Heck yes.
I’m strongly considering making this an annual thing. Some year, I’ll race The Bad Thing 50km, but until then we can keep coming back to do Our Own Thing 57km.
