The third annual Bolton Fall 50 originated as a birthday celebration for Coach LD. It's a multi-sport event - paddle/bike/run - that travels 50+ km through Caledon and finishes at Goose and Coach LD's place for dinner. It is a tour, not a race. If there are injuries or if people want to divide themselves into "single track/double track" or "walk/run" groups, we sometimes split up - but only temporarily.
Coach LD and Goose hosted such a terrific surprise birthday party for me in August that a mere thank you note would not suffice, so I offered to organize this year's Fall 50. We started on foot at the Innis Lake Rd. entrance to Glen Haffy Conservation Area. Coach Huet sprained her ankle last weekend so she and Mike skipped this run and joined us later at the trek/bike TA.
When we reach a particularly beautiful place in our outdoor explorations, Coach LD sometimes likes to sing "Oh Canada". And there was a gorgeous hillside in Glen Haffy that deserved it.
The hikers who arrived a minute later (who were among the very few people we saw all day) asked whether someone was about to drop a puck. We ran close to 10K along the Bruce Trail Side trail to our place, which was TA1.
Coach Huet dropped off Mike at TA1 and drove Tammy down to Bolton where the two of them would start biking north to meet us. The first half of our bike route was going to be Palgrave and Albion single track, which was too risky for Coach Huet's injury, but the second half was advertised (by me) as travelling on leaf blown double track and quiet roads. About 30K in total.
Between my ankle injury and my focus on running, it's been over a month since I rode a bike. Remind me never to do *that* again. Not only did I have to be cautious with clipping and unclipping my injured foot from the pedal (with one excruciating miscalculation), but my biking fitness and technical skills felt rusty already. Still, we couldn't have asked for a more spectacular November day to be in the woods.
They were setting up a cyclocross course at Albion Hills! Maybe next year.
We locked up our bikes at Goose and Coach LD's place, then headed up the hilly Humber Valley Trail on foot. In the excitement of managing things at the TA at our house, I'd neglected to toss my running shoes into my pack when we started biking. So on this trek, I was wearing a pair of borrowed shoes one size too small with my ankle brace wedged inside. Definitely better than 5K in bike shoes on a gimpy ankle!
It was around this point that it occurred to me that the 5:50 sunset time I'd culled from some website could not possibly have taken the clock change into account. We were supposed to have 3 hours of light left but we only had 2 hours. It was going to be tight!
When we got to the trek/paddle TA, Crash (who had just joined us for the run due to a shoulder injury) surprised us with a birthday party complete with champagne, personalized chocolate cupcakes, balloons and a linen tablecloth. It turns out that we had four November birthdays in our group - Coach LD, 'Bent, Rocky and Coach Huet - so we raised a toast to them all. Crash is a professional chef and sommelier so she does this sort of thing *really* well.
If 'Bent's smile looks a little forced, it's because we called him over to be in the photo as soon as the sparklers were lit. Unfortunately, he had just collapsed to the ground in agony with a severe leg cramp. But sparklers don't wait for anyone so he had to suck it up and get in the picture. Naturally, you can't even *see* the sparklers in the photo.
We slipped into the river for the final paddle down the Humber River to Coach LD & Goose's place. The light was already getting dim in the valley and we had about 90 minutes of paddling in a twisty, shallow river with good current and lots of obstacles to steer around and duck under.
Rob and I teamed up, as we did in the Wild Boar earlier this year. I managed to turn my feet into popsicles by getting out a few times to push us off something, but otherwise things went well. We got off the water after sunset but before dark, and everyone was still smiling. Total distance was 53.5 km so luckily, we didn't have to do anything else to achieve the required 50K.
We had hot showers and a yummy potluck dinner followed by beautiful birthday cakes, also baked by Crash.
Happy Birthday to all the November people out there! :)
Total time: 5:49
Total distance: 53.5 km
Climb: 498 m