How does one run from Deep Cove to Porteau Cove, some 80 kilometres away?
One step at a time. Baby steps, really, says Alexander Mark Weber.
The 39-year-old just completed the “Cove to Cove” run in 29 hours, 20 minutes and 55 seconds. The run, which began in Deep Cove at 5 a.m. on Sept. 7, saw Weber charging up Mount Seymour and along Vicar Ridge all the way to the Seymour Dam before making his way through Lynn Headwaters Regional Park, down Grouse Mountain to the Baden Powell Trail, back up to Cypress Mountain Provincial Park and north on the Howe Sound Crest Trail all the way to Porteau Cove.
According to his Strava account, the ultramarathoner gained 7,107 metres in elevation – the equivalent of doing the Grouse Grind nine times or going 80 per cent of the way from Mount Everest’s base camp to the summit.
Baby steps
Growing up though, Weber never did anything more athletic than bouncing on a trampoline. It wasn’t until he was in grad school that he took up running. When a friend there mentioned she was training for her first half-marathon, Weber was incredulous.
“And I was like, ‘That’s insane.’ I just didn’t think that was possible for normal people,” he says.
But Weber began to wonder whether the self-doubt was justified, and so he signed up himself. He graduated to marathons and, eventually, ultramarathons, including the North Shore’s Knee Knacker, the Squamish 50, Gary Robbins’ Coast Mountain Trail Running series and the 110-kilometre Fat Dog in Manning Park.
With his 40th birthday on the horizon, Weber, who is an assistant professor in neuroimaging at UBC’s department of pediatrics, wanted to do something special and unique combining all of his favourite runs on the North Shore.
“It had been stewing in my head for the longest time and it was this summer that everything came together and I was like ‘That’s what I’ll do. I’ll just do it on my own,’” he said. “How many people can do all that in one go and experience all of the North Shore, all at once? It’s an overwhelming feeling”
Long may you run
As you might expect, a run that spans so many trails over such a distance and so much time requires a lot of planning, logistics and support. Initially Weber thought he’d start in Porteau Cove and make his way down, but a friend wisely pointed out, the hairiest, most overgrown segment of the trail where it would be easiest to get lost would be Vicar Ridge on Mount Seymour.
Weber’s family and friends, as well as some acquaintances he barely knew, offered to run segments of the trail with him and set up aid stations along the way.
Because he had a lot of people stepping up to help or join him on segments of the run, Weber was feeling a lot of pressure to not let them down.
“I was super nervous leading up to it,” he said. “Also, I didn’t want to do it and then fail and be like, 'Oh, I guess I have to try again next year.’"
Except for one “brutal” section of the Hanes Valley, Weber said the first 40 kilometres were like a breeze and he had little doubt his finish would be “in the bag.”
By the time he’d made it to the Cleveland Dam, darkness was setting in. His wife and a friend met him there with a change of clothes and fresh shoes, perogies, french fries and anti-chafing cream.
Soon after, he found the hardest stretch of the run wasn’t the most physically strenuous. After leaving the Cleveland Dam, Weber was solo and struck by loneliness and a bit of worry about what was to come in the night ahead.
“Suddenly, I was running in the dark by myself. And that was a low point…. I had been running since 5 a.m. and just for motivation, it’s nice to have someone else who’s suffering with you,” he said. “It’s kind of scary to be in the forest by yourself. There was a ‘Bear in area’ sign, and I was like, ‘Oh, God. Hopefully, he’s asleep.’”
It was the only point in the trail where he felt any temptation to maybe call it quits early. It would still have been an epic run to be proud of, he reasoned. But as he made it to the Cypress Mountain parking lot, things came back into focus. He’d remembered the training he put in and the support he was receiving from family and friends and pressed on with a second wind.
The Howe Sound Crest Trail is all ups and downs, which can be demoralizing in its own way, Weber found. Like a lot of ultramarathoners, he spent the last hours of the run with hallucinations playing tricks on him.
“In the distance, my brain just kept doing some wishful thinking and being like, ‘Oh, look, there’s a car ahead. That must mean that we’re near the end,'” he said. “But we were nowhere near the end and there was no car.”
Weber kept a satellite communication device with him to stay in touch with his wife and be ready to call for help if it was needed. He worried about getting hobbled by cramps or nausea or that a root or loose rock would take him down, but it never happened.
“I was incredibly grateful that it all kind of went according to plan. You can’t count on that in life,” he said.
The final stretch, he said, felt no different than completing any other hike. He was anxious to get to the car so he could get himself to a burger and a beer.
Hearing his wife and friends cheering for him as he crossed the finish line of his own private ultramarathon was a “super emotional” experience, he said.
It wouldn’t have been doable without so many people helping him along, he is quick to add.
“That made me feel loved and that was incredibly special,” he said.
Model citizen
Amazingly, Weber considered himself pretty well recovered from the ordeal within a few days.
“I had no blisters. My feet were fine. I’ve never lost a toenail,” he said, referencing the occupational hazards that ultra runners know to expect. “I would say for two days, I just was walking pretty funny.”
Much like the half-marathon he’d once considered himself unfit to attempt, Weber said there is validation in proving oneself wrong. And if you’ve done the training, the hard part is already behind you.
“Normal people can do this. You just need to take all the baby steps. You just need to slowly progress towards it,” he said. “And one day, you’re like, OK, maybe I could do the next big thing.”
At his home in Vancouver, Weber keeps all the medals and trophies he’s received for completing marathons and ultras, but when you go it alone, there isn’t a something you can hang on the wall after. So, Weber decided to make his own memento.
Although he didn’t know anything about 3D printing, Weber fell back on the “baby steps” philosophy that has served him so well and started to teach himself 3D modelling. Within a few days, he’d created a topographical map of the North Shore mountains showing exactly the route he ran for almost 30 hours.
There are longer, more challenging runs that others have done, Weber concedes, but now when he looks at the North Shore mountains – whether it’s from Stanley Park or the model of them on his living room wall – there’s a new and palpable sense of awe that they bring.
“I seriously love the North Shore, and to be able to traverse it like I did is kind of like a living love letter,” he said. “It’s just this constant flashback of memories that remind me of how lucky I am to live here and have that in the backyard.”
