Gunner Shaw Race Report

(Courtesy of Frontrunners athlete Rumon Carter. Originally posted at http://rumoncarter.blogspot.com)

Do triathletes make tougher trail runners?

Perhaps it's the puddle near halfway, lapping cold water up past your quadriceps. Or the finishing straight that runs right through Thetis Lake. One way or the other, two triathletes put both terrestrial and aquatic skills to use yesterday in winning the men's and women's titles at the 22nd Annual Harriers Gunner Shaw Memorial Cross Country Classic.

First across the finish line was Mike Vine, skating across the slippery course in a time of 32:35. Vine, a North Islander now living and training in Victoria, is a regular podium finisher on the international XTERRA off-road triathlon series, but didn't have the season he would have liked in '06.

"Things started and ended badly for me this year. Early in the season I was wrecking body parts; at Worlds in Maui, it was my bike," says Vine, referring to the four flat tires he suffered at the XTERRA World Championships, forcing him to withdraw. "But that was only four weeks ago and I'm still fit so I thought, 'I'm doing Gunner!'"

And do it he did, though his win was by no means a sure thing.

"At the start, [Aaron Holmgren] went out hard; I was just trying to hang on. I figured if he went like that the whole way, I was cooked." As the race went on, however, Vine started to find his form, settling into a rhythm and making up chunks of time on the uphills. But the Gunner goes down as much as up and downhill running skills are critical for anyone trying to take the title in this event. "Aaron was bombing the downhills!" marvelled Vine, who's no slouch himself on the trails, "he'd gap me on every pitch." In the end, though, Vine's experience and slightly better endurance made the difference, allowing him to open a finish line gap of 13 seconds over the younger Holmgren. Ian Hallam, coming back from injury and running for the host Harriers (as was Holmgren), finished third in the excellent time of 32:59.

The women's race was a much less closely fought contest with Canadian National Elite Team triathlete and Prairie Inn Harrier Carolyn Murray taking the win in 38:48 ahead of Pacific Athletics' Laurel Draper in 40:16 and third-place Emily Solsberg in 40:43. Though Murray had to contend with the mud, rocks and stream crossings like everyone else, perhaps the biggest challenge faced by this professional triathlete were the amateur men jostling for position around her. "At one point, this guy barreled right into me and almost knocked me off the trail! I was trying to be careful out there [Murray is racing in the National Cross-Country Running Championships in Vancouver next weekend], and this guy was running like it was his own World Championships."

Murray reported that she loved this first attempt at the Classic and that it wasn't as hard as she expected. "People build up that puddle and the course so much, but it wasn't actually that bad."

Perhaps a few of the male runners watching from the sidelines yesterday in their street clothes would have done well to hear this report. Asked why they weren't racing, they begged off with claims to be saving themselves for next week's cross-country nationals. Like the pink flagging tape that typically shows the way around Harriers-hosted trail races, were the ladies showing the men how it should be done?

In the race for master's glory, Harrier Paul O'Callaghan took the men's title in 34:30; Shelagh Germyn of the River Runners was top woman in a time of 44:43.

Also on course Saturday were Donald Peterson and Donna Carrigan, two-thirds of Team Gobi Canada set to race across China's Gobi desert in June 2007 to raise funds and awareness in the fight against breast cancer. In anticipation of this self-supported ultramarathon, Peterson ran the Gunner with a backpack full of telephone books. Sounds like the kind of thing that would have made the race's namesake proud.

For now, with another Gunner Shaw in the books and a rare Victoria snowfall covering the Thetis Lake trails, local athletes can turn their attention and training to the 3rd Annual Stewart Mountain 10-mile Cross Country Challenge (SMXC) on December 9th. The SMXC covers some of the same trails as the Gunner Shaw but with the added element of a grueling climb up Stewart Mountain at mid-race. Online registration is open with 70 runners registered as of Sunday evening.

Full Gunner results can be found at Race:Day. Tony Austin, Mark Creery and Devin Card were all out shooting the race. Thanks to Devin for the photos in this report.