Lost Soul Ultra 100 - The Course

This is part two in my attempt to recap my 100 mile odyssey:

Part I: The Team

Part II: The Course (this post)

Part III: The Physical Challenge

Part IV: The Mental Challenge

Part V: The Gear

"The Toughest Race On The Prairies"

                                         -race slogan

The Lost Soul Ultra course is about 54km long (33.5 miles), with three unique aid stations that you run into twice on each loop.  The 50k racers, who started 24 hours after us, obviously only do one loop.  The 100k racers, who started at the same time as us, do one full loop and then a modified second loop.  Those of us tackling the 100 miler ran three loops of the same course.  

Although the course is in the river valley that runs through a city (Lethbridge), and is on the prairies, the course is anything but easy.  Surrounded by coulees, the majority of the course is singletrack trail, going up and over the hills.  

When I was in high school, I used to do a lot of mountain biking in the coulees.  10+ years later, I thought I remembered the terrain, but was hit with a wake up call on race day.  The difference?  When mountain biking, we usually took the path of least resistance going up hills.  The Lost Soul does the exact opposite.  There were countless hill climbs where I could reach out my hand and touch the trail directly in front of me, that's how steep they were.  

The singletrack trail frequently traversed the sides of the coulees, which got a little tricky after the 50k race started and we had a bunch of people wanting to pass us.  Running/walking along the side of a 45 degree slope, it was tough find an adequate place to step out of the way of the faster (and fresher!) racers.  

At times on the course, the grasses/weeds were over my head, and I was pushing them aside with my poles to get through.  By the time the third loop came around, the trails through the sections of tall weeds had been worn through a little better, but I was still beating bushes out of the way.

While much of the course is on the singletrack trails, there is a little bit of a break offered by sections that run on much smoother (and flatter) multi-use trails.  

That vast majority of the course offers no shade at all, which didn't help when the temperature rose to 44C/112F.  

The course was well marked, even though I did manage to get off course and lose 30 minutes or so.  I had my head down, and wasn't paying attention to the flags.  By the time I realized my error, I thought I knew which direction the course went.  Since the course is bounded by a river on one side, and the coulees on the other, I knew I could cross the course somewhere.  Unfortunately, instead of backtracking where I came from, I picked the wrong direction to head, and wasted a bunch of time.  I eventually made my way back to the aid station I had just left, and started the section over again.  The turn I missed was clearly marked - I just wasn't paying attention.  Oh well, two extra miles in a 100 mile race isn't such a big deal, is it?

I really enjoyed running the course at night.  There were small reflectors on the flags, and so a quick glance with the headlamp showed the path ahead.  In fact, it was almost easier for me to run at night, as the reflectors were more noticeable (to me) than the pink flags in the daytime.  By the time I needed my headlamp, I had completed a little more than one loop of the course, and so I knew (vaguely) what to expect in the dark.  The hills were less daunting though, not being able to see the top of them in the dark. 

The aid stations were easily accessible for crew, as two of them are in local parks and one of them (headquarters) is in a hotel parking lot.  Volunteers at the stations were great - encouraging and helpful.  Can't comment too much about the food, as I ate most of my own, but they did have a slurpee machine at one of the stations!  

A lot of racers had complete both the better-known Canadian Death Race, along with the Lost Soul.  The consensus was rather unanimous that the Lost Soul was more difficult.  Maybe I'll have to give the Death Race a whirl, so that I can weigh in on the debate!  Prior to the race, there was a lot of debate about the elevation change on the Lost Soul course.  No one could say definitively, but estimates ranged from 3000 to 6000 ft elevation gain per loop (so, 9000 to 18,000 feet of elevation gain for the 100 mile).  I had my Garmin in my backpack for the first loop to get some data myself, and here's what I came up with:

Unfortunately, between miles 20 & 25 is my two mile detour off-course, although it was primarily flat

Since Garmin elevations are notoriously inaccurate, I turned on the "elevation correction" option on Garmin Connect, and it gave me a total elevation gain of about 3300 feet for one loop (10,000 ft gain total).  Seems a little low, but I'm sure even an ant hill feels like a mountain after 93 miles of running!

Anyways, enough rambling about the course - here are some photos to give you a better idea of what it looked like.  Alternately, you can watch the video my wife put together, as it shows the course pretty well.

Heading south along the 'Oldman River'

Typical terrain at the top of the coulees

Typical terrain traversing the side of the coulees

Yeah, that's about how steep most of the climbs were!

Overview of the coulees.  We ran over, across, down - basically the
path of most resistance is where they put the course.

Running along the top

My pacer, John, and I are on top of the hill.
The photo was taken from an aid station that we just left.

John and I coming into an aid station

A little relief from the hills on a multi-use trail

I'm somewhere in there, climbing my way to the top!