Category: Races
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Ultra-Trail Harricana 42K – Training Plan
The UTHC 42K is one of the biggest and best events in any calendar year inside Canada’s trail and ultra running scene. It’s a beautiful course with varying terrain, mixing and matching runnable sections with technical mud and steep climbs, and typically quite competitive. This training plan can also go hand-and-hand with a different, 42K…
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Quebec Mega Trail 50K – Training Plan
The Quebec Mega Trail 50K is one of the biggest and best events in any calendar year inside Canada’s trail and ultra running scene. It’s an incredibly demanding course with both steep mountains and steep competition, making it a premium feature on the World Trail Majors and often National Championship circuit. This training plan includes:…
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Sulphur Springs 50K – Training Plan
Sulphur Springs is one of the biggest and best events in any calendar year inside Canada’s trail and ultra running scene. It’s an incredibly runnable race with several distances to choose from, making it accessible to road and trail runners alike. This training plan includes: A log for you to track your runs and cross-training,…
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Weekly Newsletter – My fuelling secrets in 2025
Fuelling is one of the three most essential facets to getting better as an athlete (alongside proper training and recovery). And it’s equally essential to aiding the training and recovery process both in the prehab and rehab in between runs. Not to mention all the fuelling that needs to happen during the thing itself. With…
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Trail du Coureur des Bois de Duchesnay 34K Race Recap – Mud Wars & Water Slides
If you combined all of the mud and water on every single one of my trail races so far and tripled the number, it wouldn’t compare to Trail de Duchesnay on Sunday. And I’ve run on some super muddy courses. Falling Water was torn apart and super slippery; The Bad Thing rained throughout, turning bridges…
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Gorge Waterfalls 30K Race Recap – Penguins 🐧
I wasn’t meant to be in this race. I mean, to the extent where my bib still said ’50K’ on the day. While 30K might not ever be my race distance of choice, I felt fortunate to even make it to the start-line. Seven months of dealing with this injury on and off has taught…
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ITRA Rankings are so silly silly
I woke up to an email this morning. A ‘congratulations!!’ email. Not one where I won a trip. In fact, not one where I won anything at all. But it WAS a congratulations email. A congratulations email where I was ranked 16th in Canada for 2024 based on ITRA’s metrics. That is to say, via…
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How I fuel for training and races with XACT Nutrition
In the puzzle to become the best trail runner that I can be, I’m often running through the numbers and experimenting with nutrition to identify what works best for my body. High-carb fuelling has been something I’ve experimented with through diligent practice across the past two years, and essential to both my training and recovery…
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The smartest runner always wins
In trail running, it’s not always the fastest, fittest runner that wins. Quite often, it’s the smartest runner. The one that knows how to use a course to serve their own strengths. Here is why Elhousine Elazzaoui remains the front runner to win the Golden Trail World Series this year, and why smarts often outwit…
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Ending my year in September
I’ve long been an advocate that the year should start in September. But this time around, I am ending my year in September. No Bromont for me and no Defi des Couleurs for me.
Rhys Desmond 