Holy shit. Jen Segger finished Badwater in 9th place overall and was the 5th female! 32:37:57 was her time.  I don’t think I’ve run 32 hours this year!  Way to go, Jen!!! You rock!  You’re an inspiration to everyone and congratulations on ripping it up?

Did you leaving anything in the tank for the MOMAR in 11 days???

The MOMAR Squamish Course Director, Jen Segger, is down in Death Valley running the Badwater race.  This is one of the toughest races in the world with a course that stretches 217km through the scorching dessert sun of 55c temperatures.

This is a race that you only accepts the best of the best and you have to apply to get one of the 80 spots. Jen is the youngest female to ever make it in.  She’s running strong and as of now she sits in 9th spot (possibly 7th — the results aren’t that clear).

I think Jen is hoping to make a go at the 28 hour course record!  She started the race yesterday at 10am so she’ll be finishing around 2-4pm today.  You can follow her progress at www.badwater.com.

GO JEN GO!!!

The blogosphere is alive with great post race stories from the MOMAR Squamish!  There’s nothing like getting the story straight from the horse’s mouth.  Grab a coffee, a beer or a protein shake and settle in for a play by play account of how it all went down at the front of the pack.

• Team Helly Hansen / MOMAR captain Gary Robbins details how he uses a broken shoelace to deak out the followers. GO.
• Team Helly Hansen / MOMAR navigator Todd Nowack writes about hardtails and navigation — he even admits to small mistakes on the nav! GO.
• Elm Health’s Sarah Seads writes about being the first female across the line and lessons learned along the way. GO.
• Team Helly Hansen Vancouver Island’s Justin Mark tells the tale of how sweet the MOMAR victory feels. GO.
• Team Helly Hansen Vancouver Island’s Kristenn Magneson writes about losing a bike shoe in the trek. GO.
• Course Designer Jen Segger-Gigg details the great feeling of having designed on killer course. GO.

And if you prefer the old school way of getting your news then you can check out the Whistler Question, SNAP Magazine, and the Pique for awesome post race coverage.

Thanks to everyone for telling your stories!  You are an inspiration to us all!

If I missed any blog reports please let me know and I’ll post it up.

I just arrived home from a fantastic weekend up in Whistler and Squamish that was filled with live music, good food, incredible XC riding, and a lot of time running in circles.

Friday morning I left home and headed north. My first stop was at The Rack Stop (MOMAR’s newest sponsor) where Steve the Owner hooked me up with a complete Thule rack system for the top on my new van. The system includes two Big Mouth bike racks and a Glide and Set kayak rack. It took Sam and Charles at the Rack Stop less than 45 minutes to install and then I was back on the road up to Whistler.

I was up in Whistler to check out the Telus Ski and Snowboard Festival and to watch Julian Marley perform. As I was walking by Citta’s, the HairFarmers (photo above) were playing live. This is the band that will be rocking the MOMAR After-Party on May 10th. They were playing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and the crowd was going nuts! Anyway, I wasn’t able to stay too long as I had to get back to Squamish and get going on finalizing plans for the upcoming MOMAR.

I met course designer, Jen Segger-Gigg, at 10am on Saturday and our plan for the day was to map out the entire orienteering section. This is an area that has a lot of great trails but none of which shows up on the existing local trail map. The GPS was working great but it was a challenge getting every trail and road mapped out. We ended up traveling over 20km for the day (lots of back and forth) and it was great to see these relatively undiscovered trails and some of the crazy stunts.

For those of you that are racing the MOMAR, you can expect this stage to be at least 10km. There are places where you will get really turned around if you’re not paying attention. It was a pretty tiring day and we spent over seven hours on the mapping, but now we have this race stage all ready to go. The great thing about this area is that few locals know these trails so this should level out the playing field and reduce the homefield advantage.

SIDENOTE: I have to mention this excellent Japanese restaurant that we went to after. It’s called Sushi Sen and it’s in Garibaldi Highlands. Check it out.

Today we met and rode over 20km of amazing single-track and did some trail running in a really cool forest. Part of the ride was in snow that will hopefully be gone in three weeks. The MOMAR Berg Bike held up awesome on the flowy trails of Squamish which I’m liking almost as much as the trails on Tzouhalem in Duncan. This is actually the final week for the Berg before it is disassembled and reborn as a dually! More on that in a future blog post though.

The last thing that Jen showed me was the rappel site. Holy crap! It was pretty FREAKY! I couldn’t look over. 100′ up with an awesome view of the Squamish Valley. Wow!

Thanks to Jen for the amazing weekend on the trails! Racers entered in the Squamish MOMAR are really going to love this course. Big thanks to Howe Sound Inn and Brewery for setting me up for the weekend in their first class rooms. It’s always a treat to stay there. Good times!

Photo: Me and Jen at one of the many view points

Photo: The MOMAR Berg in the Snow

Team Helly Hansen / MOMAR’s Gary Robbins and Todd Nowack at last year’s MOMAR Squamish. Photo by Tony Austin

Here’s a quick list of some adventurous blog worthy reading:

+ Gary Robbins writes about his triumphs at the Diez Vista 50km Trail Run
+ On the flip side, Todd Nowack describes race lessons learned at the same run
+ Jen Segger-Gigg writes about her new love… paddleboards
+ Read Lina Augaitis‘ great postrace report following her 3rd place finish at the Baja Travesia