Percé, Gaspésie, on the edge of Quebec, on St Lawrence River, in a charming fishing village to take part in an wonderful Trail race. I was initially inscribed to run 100 miles, but had no choice but to switch for the 100 km in 3 stages ( 12 – 54 – 34 ), due to the lack of training of the past few weeks and mild pain in my Achille’s heel…
The Gaspésie is a lovely corner of nature perfect for a great Trail race, I had a great deal of fun exploring its forests and running along the coast. Congrats to Jean-François, fisherman and organizer of Gaspesia100, who’s always in a good mood, and its dedicated team.
For the first stage, the climate was humid, and the sea rather too rough for us fresh water runners, and the short boat trip to reach Bonaventure Island, facing us, is cancelled. Fallback solution is an 8km along the beach, with a marine climate and wet feet.
The 2nd day schedule was 54km, but as one may say, I took my time (dragged myself really) : 8h40 … Mild pain in my right Achille’s heel, which generates pain in the left knee, which generates pain in both psoas muscles…
I wasn’t able to train much since the Barkley. I completed the Great Wall Marathon in the wake of the Barkley but knew I was already losing steam and needed to catch up with the training … Struggled to. And gained 5 kg. Guess I’m just going to take things easy, nothing serious, I’ll just have to go back to training.
So I quickly decided to go for a quiet journey around the Gaspésie, its rugged and wild forests, its jagged peaks … decided not to make things worse and simply cancelled the 34km scheduled for Day 3…
No regrets. I took the opportunity to discover Bonaventure island, and its 100.000 Northern Gannets colony. Every couple comes each year to this place to reproduce, coming back to the very same nest amongst thousands, before migrating again to Southern latitudes in Florida and Mexico for winter season…
This trail race in Gaspésie resulted in a lovely journey, and provided the perfect excuse to come and visit our Quebec cousins, grasp their melodious accent and language where the use of vous instead of tu (almost) doesn’t exist, and their sayings which are, indeed, more French than ours.
#GASPESIA100, #UTG100, #TRAILtobeALIVE
