Another incredible Cabot Trail Relay Weekend has come and gone. This was the 35th running of this epic event. I have recaps of my Road Hammer Women’s years at the relay and so it felt important to add the Old Hammer version to the vault of my race recaps. Jarvis also enjoys writing race recaps but he says that he is writing it one leg per year at a time so it will be ready to be published in 16 years.
It was a pleasure to pull this together for the team with contributions from Jarvis,Tony and Drew woven through. I write these mostly for myself and for my teammates but am happy to share with whoever wants to read it.
This team was spearheaded and expertly led by Drew Moore with a unique blend of enthusiasm and fierce determination from the start. After the Road Hammer Women won the women’s division twice in 2 appearances, it became known that the Masters Division of the relay isn’t gendered. A Masters Team is simply a team of age 40+ runners, no matter the gender of the runner. And thus, the most competitive masters team that the Road Hammers could assemble was assembled. It included 3 women. The Old Hammers emerged. In pursuit of the Toronto Harriers all-men’s Masters Team.
By Drew: -the idea of a fast masters Hammers team originated with Nick McBride and was picked up by Doran. The recruitment process taught me that there is so much depth at the Masters level of the Hanmers
Every year into both my masters running career and into raising a fierce athlete daughter, I become more of a warrior for women’s sports (transwomen are women). From the beginning, I loved being a part of this team that held women athletes in such high respect. A team hardly ever brings its original roster with its original leg assignments to the start line of the relay. Too much life happens over the course of the training cycle. But when the Old Hammers released the roster and leg assignments, the 3 of us women were running the first 3 legs. That’s not a team that includes women hidden and scattered in the line up. That’s a team making a statement. Here we are. Here to win. With these women. Initially, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Did it up the performance pressure for me? But the guys I run with every Saturday were so pumped about the line up with the women leading that I absorbed their energy for it and made their enthusiasm for this my own. Pressure is a privilege and all that. I was all in.
We all worked hard to prepare.
Instead of a leg by leg performance type recap here, I’m going to go with an “under the hood,” or more appropriate for running life, “under the carbon plates” recap of the moments that, for me, the relay is really about. It’s a weekend of hundreds of little moments of team camaraderie that make up this incredible team experience, doing what you love with your people.
My team car for the weekend included Matt, Mike T and Jarvis. That’s a fun car. It was Jarvis’s first relay experience. If you are lucky to share a friendship with Jarvis, you know his enthusiasm and joy for everything is both as large as he is and 100% infectious. I can’t wait to see the relay through his first time experience.
We set off for the trail with a stop in Antigonish because the fast men have given fair warning that church spaghetti dinner is not enough food for a fast man. Antigonish was dinner #1. Anyone who follows Jarvis’ socials will understand the need for this.
When we arrived on Unama’ki/Cape Breton, we were treated with a driving guided tour of the Island courtesy of Jarvis Googoo. Especially wonderful given that we were driving through his community of We’koqma’q First Nation. We hung on every work of Indigenous history from Jarvis as we drove. And then the tour quickly became equal parts Mi’kmaw history and equal parts history of all vacant lots between Canso and Baddeck. Much to our enjoyment. Thank you, Jarvis.
By Jarvis: The drive up, there, and back was a ride of good chats, laughs, difficult topics and fun ones, and getting to know others on the team. It was also a personal delight to be able to give a bit of a Mi’kmaw cultural tour/history lesson as we were driving near/through my home community of We’koqma’q.
The guided tour ended with a sweeping presentation of Hunter’s Mountain. But here we be like: “Yes, Jarvis! We know that it’s Hunter’s Mountain! That’s where you are running leg 17 on Sunday!” Now it’s Jarvis’s turn to learn something. He’s now learned that he is running over Hunter’s Mountain. He launches into a cultural lesson for us about how the Mi’kmaq hunt moose on Hunter’s Mountain. Moose is ti’am in Mi’kmaw. He himself has hunted there.
As both a friend and relay veteran, I’ve been trying to help Jarvis prepare for the relay. As in understanding that it’s hard to practice our pre-race routines. Or sleep.
“No hunting allowed on Sunday, Jarvis. Just running.” 😉 One more piece of prep.
“You may hunt Toronto Harriers,” add the guys.
We hit the spaghetti dinner and enjoy some team time as Chris, Tony, Denise and Aaron all roll in. Soon it will be time to head back to our team meeting our Fearless Leader and to connect with Doug, Kharim and Graeme. Brian, Jon and Sarah will arrive a little later.
Tony and Jarvis are sitting together at the end of the church spaghetti table. They are talking about bagels. How many bagels Tony has already eaten today. The number is both impressive and incredulous. The conversation wanders into other training details. Between Tony and Jarvis. We love Tony for his dedication and passion about tiny training details- his enthusiasm pushes all of us to be better. The intensity of said training conversation climbs. Eventually, I decide that they need to be separated. Time to go.
We hit up Needs to get bagels for our car. There are none. We blame Tony.
By Jarvis: The Friday night team meeting, albeit intended to be a serious one, was quite exciting for me. It felt like going into a big game and the team captain (Drew) was giving a run-down of details, rules, doing double Legs, and getting last minute supplies.
We set off for the relay at 6:20am. Our stalwart captain is ready for the day.
There’s been some debate among some men about when to shave their heads for race day. Jarvis has chosen to do a shake out run with Chris and Tony instead of spending that time shaving his head.
“No head shaving in the car.” More prep.
For me, one of the joys of the relay is driving along the relay, and getting in and out at the finish/start lines. You get to see your friends at their best and hope to shout a word of encouragement (and/or some chirps, same-same). In a road race, we all race at the same time. Here at the relay, we get to watch each other take on the field of runners and the leg itself- the terrain is your competition as much as the field is.
By Jarvis: I definitely learned that the “team work” isn’t just about a runner doing a Leg for the team. It’s also supporting them before or afterwards. Whether you’re shouting encouragement (and losing your voice a bit), offering to drive for the regular driver, handing out fuel, playing music to cheer on your teammates, and or coordinating drop-offs and pick-ups, it’s an overall team effort.
Graeme gets us started off with a solid leg 1, getting the job done. We have some team laughs behind the scenes as Doug drives Graeme’s Porsche. It’s the leg-within-a-leg. Good material for the encouragement/chirping shouts.
Drew has an awesome battle on Leg 2 with Coach Lee and the Toronto Harriers Masters Runner. It’s his first of what will be a double-leg relay. Drew’s powerful finish places us where we hope to be through 2 legs. In my car, we are having fun playing our curated playlist. Everyone sent me their favorite pump up songs. Some were….. surprising. I tell the team that they have ruined my Apple Music Channel with their excessive amounts of techno music and they had all better run fast to make this worth it. Drew runs fast enough to make it worth it.
Denise takes the trail next on leg 3, our OG Queen. It’s a pleasure to see her and New Brunswick’s Queen Paula Keating out there doing queen things- running fast and placing high for their teams. There are only 2 young female varsity runners who place ahead of them. I play Denise her Thunderstruck on repeat and give her a bow. And a photobomb for good measure.
It’s always a pleasure to run with Denise on a relay team. My roots with her go deeper than anyone else on the team, back to the late 2000s, when I started training with Cliff Matthews and joined her too. Last year at the banquet, I sat with Denise, happy and sleep-drived tears streaming down my face as she was awarded her plaque for completing all of the legs of the relay. An achievement many years of life in the making. I love seeing that the program still holds 2 separate Denise Robson course records on 2 legs. This year, one would fall and the leg 17 record will endure as Denise’s. Let the record show that this is an authentic record from 2006, run on the same course as present-day leg 17. Confirmation comes from the race director too, not just Erin on the Love Training More blog.
By Jarvis: a highlight came on this leg, with our Hammer Teammates Marc and Leslie, who were running for team Eastern Z Descendants. Leslie ran leg 3. We happened upon Marc on the side of the road, singing karaoke for Leslie. With his full karaoke set up. That was a sweet surprise.
Cape Smokey, leg 4, is one of the most iconic sections of the relay, where teams gather at the summit to bang rocks in unison on the guard rails to bring runners over the summit. It’s Doug’s turn.
In a 7am bathroom line, our team had been talking about Japanese Relay Races and how they are a huge deal and companies will offer runners lucrative sponsorships to race for their teams. I file this knowledge away. Fast forward 5 hours, the team is gathered at the peak of Smokey, waiting for Doug to crest the mountain. He’s racing much younger Johnny. It’s going to be a fierce fight to the top.
I have Doug’s song ready to play. We listened to the whole playlist in the car on the drive up. Doug’s selection of “Rock n Roll Will Take You to the Mountain” by Skrillex cracks us up. Is this what calm and serene Doug has raging in his head while kicking all of our butts with a peaceful smile every Wednesday morning at 6am? We agree that we now know more about Doug Hayami.
The top of Smokey is quite crowded. If you are cranking your music, everyone is listening to it. It’s a lot of everyone here. I am laughing that we are about to ruin the atmosphere for all of these people. Also, the water stop across from us is trying to play “The Night That Paddy Murphy Died” and when I crank the Skrillex I simultaneously ruin the atmosphere and also the water stop. Oh, but it’s not all ruined! Immediately, the young Maine-iacs next to us start rocking out to the beat.
“I guess it IS good running music!” says Matt.
Works for Doug, he comes charging up the mountain, looking dangerous with Johnny, both of them hot on the Cape Breton Road Runner. We’ve entered a pretty close 3-way race with both the Toronto Harriers and the Cape Breton Road Runners. Both of these teams have shown up to win. So did we.
As we drive down the mountain, I yell to Doug that he is running so fast that Japanese companies are calling for his relay sponsorship.
Leg 5 belongs to me next. I am not exactly emotionally prepared for this. I was meant to do leg 2. On Friday morning, I was away from my phone for about 2 hours, and when I picked it back up, I had about 25 texts. “What happened?!”
What happened was that we lost a runner to their kid’s daycare illness, setting off a cascade of leg changes, sending me to leg 5. This is relay life. I had studied leg 2 on Strava. I didn’t know leg 5 and didn’t have any time to do any recon. All that is available is the shrunk down elevation map on the website/program. And the comical description to go with. This is ok. All that you can do at the relay anyway is be as strong as you can on the up hills, take a risk on the downhills and run as fast as you can when it’s flat. I set out to do that.
By Drew: Leg 5. It was from this point on that things were going to get interesting. Cape Breton’s four fastest runners had finished their first legs so we weren’t going to see any of them again until after midnight. Now was our time to chip away at their lead. Erin was originally supposed to run Leg 2 for us but I moved her to Leg 5 so that I could have more time between my two legs. Both legs are over 17k long with rolling hills. A very atmospheric fog had settled on the trail, and Erin went to war. Because this is a longer leg, we got to see the runners a few times. The Harrier runner was running a fair distance ahead. After a few more runners was the Cape Breton runner, with Erin a couple of hundred metres behind him.
The second time we saw them, I could hear the CB runner’s breathing was sounding ragged. We waited for Erin and I told her that he was about to start slowing down and now was the time to close with him. We kept driving but not far so we could watch how things would unfold. Within less than 2km Erin had closed the 200m gap and we got to witness the best move made over the whole weekend. Erin closed on him in textbook style, hitting him with pace as she went by and immediately gapping him. It was beautiful racing and she drove it all the way to the end of the leg.
Back to Erin Narrator Voice (that was a treat, to read someone else’s version of what went down).
Leg 5 is excellent for friend support. Most people are present. I enjoy my friends so much here. Thank you all. I quickly enter a no-man’s land. The front of the field is far ahead. Colleen and Meaghan are both running this leg. Alan is calling it the Queen leg for all 3 of us out there. Before the gun goes, I am encouraging Meaghan and Colleen to race each other to the death so that I can swoop in and take it when they kill each other. The field settles quickly. I can’t see the fastest men and Meaghan and Colleen ahead. The X Woman is ahead too. Everyone else is far behind me. That’s ok, I got this, as is, and run on with the mantra of “Team. Needs. You.”
I’m not the strongest hill runner so I maximize what I can on the downs and flats. A runner in blue is coming back to me, ever so slightly. I ask Denise if they are dying and she says “maybe.” That’s enough hope for me.
Also keeping my hope alive is my support car. The speaker was connected to my phone and the guys can’t get it to work. So they do the next best thing.
Jarvis is now driving and as he passes, he is shouting my song lyrics at me.
“ERIN! FIRE ON UP” lol. In his booming loud and joyful voice. It’s even better than hearing the song.
Next time he drives by:
“ERIN! EYE OF THE TIGER. THE FIGHTER.”
That’s Roar by Katy Perry, of course.
The runner in blue is coming back to me more. I think it’s the X-women.
A little closer.
It’s a dude.
It’s 12km. I asked Matt to support me with Gatorade at 12km.. He’s there. I have been looking forward to this since 10km. The retreating runner is there but not within reach.
I get to Matt and grab my Gatorade and he’s got unexpected instructions for me:
“ERIN! It’s the Cape Breton Road Runner in front of you. He’s dying. You can get him.”
Now, this eye of the tiger-fighter is FIRED UP. This is eff-ing happening. I am catching this dude.
I run by Drew, Doug and Kharim. Drew’s pointing a sign to me: #1. For me. Let’s eff-ing go. Get the runner. That’s what I understand. Apparently he’s holding a actual sign that he made it for Denise and I. I don’t see the sign. I just understand the assignment. Make. It. Happen.
I’ve got him now. I close the gap. I riffle through my mental race tactic options. Sit and draft then pass? No. I choose “blast by him with authority.” As I do it, I say a few words to him in my smoothest and more perky voice possible so he might think that I am feeling awesome. Then I set to work to put as much distance between him and I as possible.
Alan and Ryan drive past me here and I absorb their enthusiasm as evidence that I’m good.
12-14km: I am on a mission to grow this gap. I am not aware that I’m about to hit a 2km long hill. I’ve burned more matches than I intended from 12-14km but I don’t want this guy catching me. As a female runner, if I am equally matched with this man, I can’t let it come down to the last 400m. He’ll get me. All I can do is to get over it as best as possible. Keep pushing with everything that’s left. I know that I have at least a 500m downhill finish. It ends up being nearly 1km down to finish. Drew calls the last km sign for me and is yelling queen things. And F bombs. My last 2 splits are 3:57/km and 3:40/km. I hold him off and finish happy.
Mike’s turn next. He’s also been bumped to a leg without any emotional prep, except he summarizes this one well: “it’s all guts, no glory.” Hard. But not the glory of Smokey, North or Mackenzie, the named mountain legs.
We think he runs it pretty gloriously. We get our songs right. We get our shouting right too- not song lyrics, but about Archie, his son. He has a cracking finish. Afterwards, he can’t stop talking about how hard it was but that’s the leg. It’s truly hard.
Jarvis and crew have a cracking time here too, digging into the food truck. Ask Jarvis about the French Fries. It’s time to swap some runners around in cars to manage our night legs. Matt, Jarvis and I drive ahead to Cheticamp for a most unusual night’s sleep for my car. Matt and I both have alarms set for 1:15am for Matt’s Leg 13.
By Jarvis: Leg 6 that ended at Cabot High had a food truck (Stand & Stuff Your Face) that served the best fries that I may have ever had. I didn’t stop talking about them for the rest of Saturday and on the drive back to the city on Sunday.
While we are sleeping (“sleeping”): a lot goes down.
Sarah has an awesome debut on leg 7, taking first female. Her song is “Are you Ready for It” by TayTay and Sarah was ready for it.
Brian puts on a masters show on leg 8. He tells us afterwards that he completes most of his training alone and that it was nice to be reminded how much better it is to be with great runners and people. His solo training doesn’t hold him back here. Except in producing a photo for me, lol.
Aaron and Alan from the mixed Hammers battle each other and North Mountain. We have all gotten to watch the rise of Aaron’s marathon success over the last few years and he uses it to rise over this mountain.
Jon and Lucas from the mixed team crush Mackenzie Mountain. No surprise here. Jon’s been crushing the Old Hammer team all winter on our Sunday team hill runs.
Doug doesn’t need any Skrillex on his second leg, #11, as he nails French Mountain and most of the field.
This leads us to leg 12, possibly the most anticipated battle of the relay. No, it’s not between the Old Hammers and the other 2 masters teams. It’s between our Old Hammer Kharim and Mixed Hammer Young Gun Ryan and it’s been fueled by bookie Chris and a fiery men’s group chat.
I can’t wait to get to the leg 12 finish line. I find Ryan leaning against the wall at Coop. Kharim is nowhere in sight.
As I walk up to Ryan and he’s calling out to me, “Kharim kicked my butt!!”
I watch and laugh as Ryan walks around telling everyone. “Kharim kicked my butt.”
It was a battle for the ages between these two. They 100% got the best out of themselves pushing each other to each drop their best performances- with a finish kick to hold off the taunting all-female team “the boys.” Many of the Old Hammers name this as one of the highlights of the relay.
We get the full postmortem from Ryan. “I ran 3:50/km and it wasn’t even enough!!!” Ryan is in 2am disbelief.
Matt and I ask about Kharim. Where even is he? Ryan tells us that he placed 4th overall and then said he had to keep moving or he was going to seize up.
Matt: “That’s the most Old Hammer thing I have heard all day.”
Maybe except for Kharim’s post run text following my group chat live update:
Now it’s Matt’s turn. My 2am disbelief is that when I asked Matt if he had taken any caffeine, he said, “Yes. 400.” (!!!!!).
Matt and Katie (mixed team) and Adam (fun team) set off. It’s a truly stunning night. Clear. 9 degrees. No wind. I have to serve the 25 minutes wait period and watch as all of the other cars leave the Cheticamp Coop parking lot. Now it’s 2:30am and I am sitting alone in my car, enjoying a buffet of pretzels, fuzzy peaches and sour patch kids. It’s truly weird. When I can leave without breaking the rules, I take off, eager to yell at Matt that the world needs to see what 400mg of caffeine can do in a race.
The world gets to see. Or at least the small section of the world that is awake in Belle Cote at 3am. As I wait at the finish line, I am having a random conversation with a random Halifax runner I’ve never met before about how 3am doesn’t exist for humans. Like you might stay up late at the bar until 2am. Or get up really early with a 4 on the clock. But 3am is not for humans. Except for tonight. Leg 13 runners take one for the team. It’s a hard time to run.
Next, I snap a rare 3:28am pic of friends Tony and Chris at the beginning of leg 14. Tony first, Chris next. I’m glad to see Tony before he sets off. I am sad to miss Chris’ leg because he’s one of the Old Hammers friends who pushes me to believe harder in myself.
Jarvis, preparing for leg 17, is still asleep back in Cheticamp so Matt and I drive back. We have about 90 minutes to rest and then we’re back on the road at 6am. We proceed to have a very silly and sleep deprived conversation in the car about spam. It lasts about 15 minutes.
Actually, I think this conversation ends when we erupt in laughter when we drive by the Old Hammers Water Stop. It’s now into leg 16, past 7am. Our guys are standing around, finalizing the cups of water, looking supremely serious. About to aggressively push water on the passing runners. “TAKE YOUR HYDRATION” It’s funny in the way that something is funny when you’ve hardly slept. This water stop is now titled “Aggressive Hydration Station.”
We park to cheer Drew. I pull “owner of the playlist privilege” and play “All I Do is Win” for him. He appears, running in a pack with the Toronto Harrier and the Cape Breton Road Runner, on his second leg, fast as hell for the team. That’s winning. He goes 100% full send, 4th place, ahead of the Harrier, and hot on the Cape Breton Road Runners’ tail.
It’s finally Jarvis’s turn. There’s a minor hiccup on the way to the gun. Just our car’s 3rd hiccup. First, my car keys slipped through a hole in my hockey pants and I couldn’t find them…. They were trapped in the liner of the pants. Next, Mike grabbed his fast shoes from the car to drive ahead to his leg 6. Except he grabbed my much smaller easy run shoes, disguised in an identical vaporfly bag. Now Jarvis notices that he has his casual shoes on. Not his race shoes. Back to the car. Shoes on. Ready for flight.
Gathered in a circle of hammer friends, they ask me if Jarvis is all set. I say, “Yes, he’s all set.” and add, as forever team mom, “My son Jarvis is all set.” To which Ryan looks crestfallen. I need to add, “It’s ok, you’re still my son too.”
Ryan: “Ok, cause I was gonna get jealous”
We can’t wait to see Jarvis take on the Glory Leg. Though you don’t get to see much of this leg. He’s racing a stacked field, including Julie-Anne Staehli, a Canadian Olympian.
Seeing Jarvis charge down the glory chute, grin as wide as can be, is everything we hoped for.
He’s pumped up at the finish line. His brothers surprise him there. He can hardly speak, says he is so hoarse now. I ask him if that’s because he was yelling out there on the course the whole time. “Yes…..” he replies sheepishly.
By Jarvis: I probably should’ve read more on the Leg descriptions, but because I was given the final one, I just presumed that it was the easiest. It’s got the glory for sure with the wild finish, but you’ll need to earn it especially with that dirt road. Also, getting edged out by two seconds to an Olympian is a career highlight I’ll cherish. Seeing one of my best friends and my brother was a great surprise at the finish line, and I loved being able to introduce them to team members who were there.
It’s time to gather for the banquet. We don’t know yet where we have landed in the master’s field. It’s close. On some legs, we beat the Toronto Harriers and the Cape Breton Road Runners. On some legs, they beat us. Whatever the outcome, we gave it our all. It was a valiant effort.
Our valiant effort gives us the 3rd place master’s team. 7th overall.
After 276km of racing, 17 legs, 24 hour relays, only 16 minutes separate the 3 masters teams.
The average race time for the 3 master teams were as follows:
- 1:03:07 (Toronto Harriers)
- 1:03:27 (Cape Breton Road Runners)
- 1:03:50 (Old Hammers)
A gap of 43 seconds per leg.
This is remarkable.
We finished behind only the top 3 men’s teams, the winning mixed team (yay Road Hammers) and these 2 masters teams.
It was really special to chase this goal alongside this awesome team. The masters division is only going to get more competitive and years from now, it will be cool to say we were part of the historic year that kicked off the fierce competition.
By Drew: As captain, I had a wonderful feeling of contentment sitting at the Sunday banquet. I loved looking around and seeing the bonds we had all formed, listening to the banter. It was particularly special for me to be sitting next to Denise, reflecting on past Cabots, her own goals moving forward, and listening to the history of the relay together. It was really nice. I knew by the time of the banquet that we were close but probably hadn’t broken the record or won, but we put in a real, honest effort, and I felt very content. Next year we’ll get it.
A massive thank you goes to our Captain Drew. He joked a lot about the struggles of getting 17 runners over 40 of a certain calibre who all belong to the same club to the start line but it performed his role leading up to the relay seamlessly and kept all of us motivated about the task at hand. The relay itself was where I watched him really shine as a captain. He was so supportive and uplifting to every single runner, whether they had the race they wanted to or not.
Mike said it well, “we didn’t get the win but it was still a win for the weekend.”
By Tony: my favourite part of the weekend beside the Kharim and Ryan battle was the way everyone on the team supported each other. We are all driven competitors, working together for a common goal and would do anything for each other to achieve success.
One of my favorite running quotes is from Lauren Fleshman, pro runners’ training journals. It’s super simple. It just reads: “Those of us who are lucky enough become masters runners.”
We are lucky as hell.
