The adventure of a lifetime was the ultimate journey of sacrifice and satisfaction for the winners of the 12th annual TransRockies Run.
Shawn Lywood of St. Albert and Mike Tucker of Edmonton persevered physically and mentally during six gruelling days of trail running over roughly 200 kilometres while traversing the Colorado Rockies in sweeping all six stages as the top men’s team.
“When we actually did win on day six it was pretty emotional. All the hard work and everything else all kind of hit you at once,” said Lywood, 36. “It really meant a lot to be honest."
Tucker, 37, echoed his teammate’s sentiments.
“It was a culmination of a lot of hard work and believing in chasing big goals and realizing something that you otherwise thought impossible just weeks ago,” Tucker said of the TransRockies excursion in Colorado that started Aug. 14 in Buena Vista and ended Aug. 19 in Beaver Creek. “By the time we got to the final stage we had a comfortable lead and we knew we could win the team title but we never wanted anything so bad than to win that sixth gold medal, and I’ve never ran so hard in my life to get it.”
The Wild Rose Runners Club members finished atop the podium in all six stages for an overall time of 19 hours, 25 minutes and 31 seconds.
“Physically it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” said Lywood, an open men’s soloist in 2016 with a 10th-place time of 21:17:19.
“A lot of my training going into this was just to be able to compete day in and day out and be able to run on tired legs and turn you body over,” Tucker added. “It’s just a huge challenge. You’re basically stripping yourself down and finding yourself.”
A distant second was a team from Costa Rica in 22:13:43.
The first-place female team from Ostersund, Sweden completed the race in 17:48:20 and the mixed team winner from New York was clocked at 19:54:33.
The TransRockies runners hit the road and trails around 8 a.m. every morning and after each stage they would gather at the next campsite for food, drinks and awards ceremony. Tents were also set up for the participants, who were allowed to fill basically a hockey bag of running gear, personal items (“We had a Dreamcatcher for our tent,” Tucker said) and a sleeping bag and the bags were shuttled from camp to camp every day by volunteers.
“You run and then you spend all day in camp. You sleep in a tent every night. It’s cold. You wake up in the morning and you really haven’t slept very well. You get up, you’re already tired and you’re trying to psych yourself up to get going that day. The first few days you’re maybe feeling a little bit energetic but day five and six it was very difficult trying to physically get ready in the morning, just knowing that you have to run another 40 kilometres in the mountains,” Lywood said. “I was just trying to think of every trick in the book to get amped-up every morning.”
Crank it up
The day of reckoning was the start line for stage one: 33.5 km with an elevation gain of 760 metres and three check points for the male and female solo runners and team pairings to conquer.In the team divisions, the runners had to be within at least two minutes of each other at every check point at every stage or else a penalty time would be assessed.
“Seeing some of the runners you’re competing against there is a lot of self doubt like do I belong here, can I do this, just from knowing the track record and the resumes of some of these competitors. But you’ve got to trust your training and knowing that you’ve worked hard to get here,” said Tucker, who competed with Lywood in the 10-km men’s division at the Canadian Mountain Running Championships in June at the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort in Golden, in addition to other endurance trail events in the Canmore area leading up to the TransRockies race.
Winning the first stage by 18 minutes at 3:19:48 was huge.
“The game plan was just make sure we survived day one and try not to beat yourselves up too much but run hard,” Lywood said. “The other stages are more like Alpine trails that you see at Canmore but day one was definitely more like desert. Lots of loose sand. It felt like you’re running on a beach for a while with the sandy conditions.
“We were really just trying to not die on day one at the end because the road at the end is uphill and hot and super exposed and we really wanted to make sure that you could actually run the last five K.”
The result was also a confidence booster for the rest of the race.
“We had no expectations of winning but when we won that first day I think it was a pleasant surprise and we're both competitive people so right away our attention focused on winning day two and it kind of just snowballed from there,” Tucker said.
Lywood agreed. “We went there with not a lot of expectations with winning or coming away with any sort of victory. We kind of thought it would be really cool to win one of the stages; we could get on the podium one day, but to win it I don't think that really crossed our minds before the race but as the race went on every day we had more of a sense we could.
“After you win the first four stages there was some pressure to actually perform and win the last two days.”
Stage two was 21.4 km and 975m of elevation gain with two check points that Lywood and Tucker covered in 2:32:17.
“We had to summit what’s called Hope Pass, a mountain you have to grind up. You’re not really doing a whole lot of running for the first half. You’re just trying to get up that mountain but obviously over a pretty good pace. Elevation is definitely a factor. We’re not used to that kind of elevation here in Edmonton. The heart is exploding out of your chest, but once you reach that summit you just rip it down that hill just as fast to carry us to the finish line,” said Tucker of winning stage two by 14 minutes.
Lywood: “I don’t think I’ve seen anything more physically impressive than Mike ripping down a mountain.”
Tucker: “I just don’t care. You have to detach yourself and not worry about the consequences of what might happen.”
Stage three was 39.4 km with the 823m elevation gain and three check points as Lywood and Tucker prevailed in 3:38:53.
“You start on main street Leadville, which is a pretty famous town in the trail running community, and you head out onto the single track. It was one of the longest days but we knew it was all very runnable, the kind of stuff that was our strength compared to the other teams, so we went out with the goal in mind of just running as hard as we possibly could and see where that got us,” Lywood said. “It was a really nice rolling single track for most of it. It ran down the Continental Divide Trail for awhile and when we finished we ended up winning day three by about half an a hour.”
Stage four, featuring 23.3 km with 854m of elevation gain and two check points, marked the second half of the race and the tightest margin of victory for the front-runners by almost six minutes against the Costa Ricans at 2:26:40.
“Some of the shine of the camping experience was starting to wear off. You’re starting to get sick of the food a little bit and you're starting to get tired of your tent,” said Tucker, a vegan. “Day four is another big grind. It was just straight up Hornsilver Mountain but this one was even steeper and it was pretty tough getting up and over that thing.”
Lywood also rolled his right ankle in the knee-deep Wearyman Creek.
“I had a pretty rough day on day four. Once I got up to elevation I had a tough time going across the ridge and I was just trying to keep up with Mike for the rest of the day,” Lywood said. “Mike really did drag me along so I was pretty grateful for that.”
Darkest of days
Stage five was the lowest of lows as both runners were on the verge of throwing in the towel despite their first-place standing ahead of five other men’s teams.“It was the darkest day,” Tucker said of the 39-km route and 1,250m elevation gain with three check points. “It was scary. There was a light rain but by the time we started climbing the mountain the temperature really dropped and the rain intensified. It was probably like six degrees and we were both just in singlets.
“We’re on top of Vail Mountain and I was just thinking I can’t physically do this. I hurt so bad. It’s so cold. We’re not even halfway done and there are tears streaming down my face. I didn’t think I could finish but we got to the aid station (check point) and I really wanted to quit but I looked over at my teammate and it’s like well I can’t let him down. Thankfully I managed to have a drink of water and get my gloves on and my tuque on and was able to get back out there.
“And once you start heading down the hill the sun comes up and starts warming up and everything is good again.”
Lywood: “It was pretty emotional just trying to finish, especially that aid station where I think we both wanted to quit and we kind of looked at each other maybe half waiting for the other guy to say something but none of us did. We just started running again and it was good.
“That’s what you really think about the team aspect of it. We both hit that aid station and we’re freezing. I couldn’t feel my hands. It was pretty dark, pretty scary,” Lywood said. “Mike and I were probably thinking the same thing. Screw this. I’m done. I’m so tired. Everything hurts. I just don’t want to go on but you know your teammate is counting on you to finish."
Despite the personal hardship, the winning time of 3:41:21 outdistanced the 4:18:16 effort by the Costa Ricans.
“Day five for me was the craziest experience I’ve ever had on a run. Most ultra runners will tell you they have times where they go dark and you really have to dig deep and find something within yourself to keep putting one foot in front of the other because it would be so easy to say, 'I’m done, I quit,' ” Tucker said. “But I kept thinking back to running through the (crappy) winters we have here and the cold temperatures we’ve endured before, and once we finished I said to Shawn they make them tough in Edmonton because you had to be really tough to be able to compete on that day and do well and we kicked ass.”
Going the distance
The sixth and last stage, 36.1 km with 1,600m of elevation gain and three check points, ended in a blaze of glory at 3:46:29, compared to the 4:29:23 for the Costa Ricans.“It was like we were running scared that last day thinking that we’ve really got to move otherwise someone is going to catch us. I even kept looking back a few times thinking that other team had to be right behind us,” Lywood said. “We probably had it wrapped up as long as we finished, so the game plan was to go hard out on the road for that separation. There is a 4K section on the road to start the day to get over to where the trail started and we felt like we had better running on the road than the other teams.
“But I went out a little too hard on the road. There was a guy running in the solo category, Cody Reed (of Flagstaff, Ariz., and the men’s open winner at 16:37:14.), a pro runner and sponsored by a whole bunch of people. We got to the trailhead and I was literally three feet behind him and at that point it occurred to me that I probably went out way too fast.
“Mike wasn’t saying anything but I could hear him thinking,' What the (heck) are you doing, you need to slow down.'
“But after that we got on the single track and it was awesome. It was a really nice climb, like a white aspen forest, and when you got to the top of the ridge you could look down and see Vail and when you came down you ran through this town called Avon and then you climbed up the last climb to where the race finished in Beaver Creek. That last climb was kind of painful. The last six days are really starting to take its toll and catching up to you, but you're starting to get that rush of emotion at the end, like, 'Holy (smoke) we’re actually going to do this.' ”
Teamwork was the unbreakable bond that kept Lywood and Tucker together through thick and thin.
“We played off each other's strengths. There were days where Shawn would drag my ass for the first 10K and then we kind of switched roles,” Tucker said.
“Shawn is way faster than me on the road, but if our game plan was for him to go out hard, I don’t have a choice. I have to hang on so he’ll push me to do better and then we'll switch off at the trail and then I’ll go up the hill and Shawn does his best to hang on.”
Ten days after the thrill of victory, Lywood and Tucker described their post-race conditions as a bad hangover and both were reluctant to confirm their participation in next year’s race to defend their title.
“I’m not sure about that. I’m still tired,” said Lywood, a Bellerose high school alumnus and father of three who has competed in about 20 marathons while losing about 100 pounds over the years.
Lywood is also mechanical engineer who returned to the University of Alberta to study exercise physiology.
Tucker, a member of the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team, is a former jogger who started running seriously last year, culminating with the TransRockies Run as his career highlight.
“It was just physically taxing. I’m still trying to recover from it,” said Tucker, who grew up in St. Catharines, Ont., and has three children.
