Quebec Mega Trail 80K - A Reflection

A peculiar race weekend.

With the 2023 Quebec Mega Trail weekend coming up at the end of this month (June) I thought I would reflect on my race experience at last years 80 kilometer race I ran, since I didn’t write about it at the time. It also ended up being a very peculiar weekend for myself but even more so for my friends that were there to race too.

Myself, Adam Harris, and Jon Corbett, all grew up in Sussex. Jon and I still live in Sussex and Adam currently lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. A couple summers ago Adam was making a lot of trips back home during the summer to visit family. So, all three of us ended up getting out on the local trails, what felt like almost every weekend. A couple Fundy Circuit loops together too. There’s something about getting out on the trails for hours on end that seem to bring you closer together with friends, the bond that is made reminds me a lot of the feeling I would have with teammates from my team sports background, specifically with university basketball, people you may not know that well, you get to know very quickly. It’s impossible not to while it’s just you and your crew out there in the woods somewhere for up to (potentially) 5-10 hours.

That being said,  the three of us were running a lot together and decided it would be cool to sign up for a race somewhere outside the maritimes.

Enter Quebec Mega Trail.

QMT seemed to work with each of our schedules, so we booked the time off for a road trip to Beaupré and the beautiful Mont Saint-Anne.

Adam had just recovered from a bout with covid, but it wasn’t going to stop him from going to the race, especially since he had put in a great training block over the winter and spring, and he had his eyes set on a 100 mile attempt at the end of the summer at the Chiggy Ultra and this would be a great training effort for that.

Myself, Adam and another friend of mine Alex DesRoches who travelled down from Toronto to meet us, were running the 80k, and Jon was running the 50k.

Jon had booked the hotel right next to the finish line and where the shuttles picked us up in the morning, so we couldn’t have asked for a better location for a home base.

We took off a couple days before the race, had a fun road trip up through New Brunswick and through beautiful Quebec City, and onward to Beaupré.

We took it easy the day before the race, a little shake out run and exploring around Mont Saint-Anne, you could feel the excitement building around the mountain, I was so pumped to be there feeling healthy and ready to go.

I didn’t have many expectations for the race, my training was consistent but completely unstructured, I tried to run every day, with a little speed session once a week and a long run on the weekends. The furthest I had ever run before this was 50k around the Fundy Circuit at Fundy National Park in Alma, New Brunswick. So, although I was confident that I was capable of completing the race, there was still a feeling of uncertainty, but I knew it was going to be fun.

#layflat

It’s hard to sleep the night before a race, we still tried to go to bed early but I don’t remember sleeping much. Adam, Alex and I had a 2:30AM wake up call to catch the shuttle that left at 3:30AM and a 5:00AM race start. Jon’s race didn’t start until 7:30AM so we left him at the hotel and we were the first shuttle out to the race start.

It was an eerily quiet shuttle ride, you could feel the nerves of all the runners, but I was so excited to see and experience the new trails that the excitement overtook any nervousness.

We got to the start line just as the sun was coming up, and it was perfect weather for a picturesque race start.

I knew the race started out with just under 1000m of elevation gain in the first 15k, and the race had a total elevation gain of around 3300m. At the time, I thought I was prepared for the climbs, later I would realize, maybe I wasn’t.

Just like that, the race was on.

Alex took off quick, (he likes to go off hot) and Adam and I held off and stayed in the back of the pack and stuck together for the first climb.

It was a doozy.

We made it through and continued on to Cap Du Salut aid station 28.5k’s in.

This is where I left the aid a little before Adam and figured I would see him soon.

The trails were rugged but beautiful, talking to people from all around Canada who were running was probably my favorite part of the race.

Even though in my head I wanted to finish with a good time, I stopped to snap a few pictures with my phone along the way.

I made it all the way to the 57k aid station feeling surprisingly well. I was consciously moving quickly but not overexerting myself knowing there’s still a ways to go. It was a party at this aid station at Saint-Tite-des-Caps. I finally saw Alex there, we sat down for a minute together and since this was our drop bag location, I decided to quickly change my socks and shoes.

When I was ready to go, Alex had already taken off. Leaving this aid station you run through a small town on the roads for quite a distance before getting back onto the trails. I decided to check my phone for the first time since I figured I would for sure have some service.

This is when the peculiar events took place, not so much for me, but for my buddies.

I read multiple texts from Adam and Jon. Adam had dropped at 40k. Knowing Adam since he was a kid playing basketball, I know how tough he is, and how awful he really must have felt to make that decision, one that wouldn’t sit well with him, but would drive him to do even better things later that summer. Overheating and residual sickness from covid really took a toll.

And then I read a text from Jon saying he didn’t even start his race. After we left the hotel room he started getting nauseous and threw up. He knew something was off and got a covid test at the front desk… positive.

Got a good laugh at this note from Jon.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading, terrible luck for both guys. I sent off a text saying I’ll try to get this thing done for the boys.

I couple of river crossings and one more aid station at Mestachibo were my favorite parts of the race, it felt deep in the woods, by the water, very tough terrain that was hard to run, the type technical terrain that’s really my favorite kind of trail running. I had caught Alex and moved passed him, he still looked strong but for whatever reason I had a second wind and was moving well.

Although I felt okay, I wasn’t going as quickly as I hoped I would, I wasn’t prepared for the climbing at this race. But, I knew I had the legs left to finish.

Near the end of the race, you come across an absolutely beautiful waterfall, but the course leads you up a staircase directly beside this waterfall. This was the toughest part of the race for me, I had to dig my poles into every step to get up to the road.

There was a little bit of a downhill to the finish, I tried to pick it up as much as I could, but wasn’t moving too quickly. I could hear the crowd and the music of the finish line.

It’s a great feeling knowing you did something you weren’t sure you could do.

The guys timed things out from when we were texting so they were at the finish line when I came through, it meant a lot for them to do that, and they even grabbed a video.

I finished in 13:19:39 for M37, definitely further back than I had hoped, but overall I was happy how the day went, even though I was probably going to get covid too. Alex came in soon after at 14:02:59.

If you’re thinking about doing Quebec Mega Trail, do it. I was beautiful, well organized, and overall epic trail run. Onward!

-Colin