Revelstoke mountain runner Justin Nicholas finished second in the men’s solo division in the TranSelkirks Run, held Aug. 27-31 in the mountains above Revelstoke. Nicholas finished the five stages with a combined time of 17:33:44.7.
The approximately 160-kilometre, five-stage race sees top competitors tackle challenging climbs and descents on local mountains, including Mackenzie, Cartier, Revelstoke and Macpherson.
Kevin Gravina from Golden, Colorado finished first in the men’s solo with a time of 16:48:25.5. Stephanie Weigel Ibasco finished first in the women’s solo at 19:59:53.2. For full results from the race, see the TranSelkirks Run results webpage here.
A Revelstoke runner topped the podium in the Run 3 open, in which racers competed over three stages of the five-stage race. Kirsty Bennett finished the first three stages with a time of 12:25:23.4, which was the best time in the men’s and women’s solo events for competitors who raced only three stages.
Justin Nicholas’s emerging mountain running career is featured in the September issue of Revelstoke Mountaineer Magazine. Here is the feature from the September issue:
Forest firefighter sets Pulaski aside to focus on international competition
By Alex Cooper
Running comes naturally to Justin Nicholas. He entered his first race in 2009, not long after breaking both his ankles in a university stunt gone wrong, just to see if he could run 25 kilometres. The next year he entered the 50-kilometre race at the same event and won. His time of about seven hours wasn’t particularly fast, especially by his current standards, but it was enough to place him on top.
“It occurred to me you don’t need to be fast to do this, you just need to keep going,” he told me over coffee at the Modern on a smoky day in August.
It’s a simple way of looking at things for someone who flies up and down mountains faster than most people do on flats. He recently shattered the course record in the 45-kilometre Idaho Peak ultra-marathon, finishing in a blistering 3:28:26 – 25 minutes faster than the old mark.
Before that, he competed for Team Canada at the World Mountain Running Championships.
Nicholas, who just turned 30, grew up in Kelowna. He recalled entering a few short races as a kid, but he didn’t take up running until he started studying forestry at the University of British Columbia. Despite his early successes, it wasn’t a sport he was interested in pursuing.
“I wasn’t interested in training. Running multiple days of the week has never been that enticing to me because I have a lot of things I’d rather be doing,” he said. “That was the way I treated it the first five or six years – let’s see how well I can do without really trying. It’s a very immature way of approaching things, but that’s what I was comfortable with.”
Instead, he ended up in Revelstoke in 2012 to work as a wildfire fighter. The extensive training and long days gave him the endurance and grit required for running long distances. It helped him succeed despite a lack of formal training.
“I still understood that when I was running it was clunky and hardworking; it wasn’t smooth and impressive. I would succeed through grit and not through talent,” he said. “That’s not a nice way to perform all the time. It’s having to make things as hard as it can possibly be because you’re not prepared.”
Running appeals to Nicholas because of its simplicity and how it allows him to move through the mountains quickly, running distances in hours that many people would spend several days on. I first met him while mountain biking the 38-kilometre Larch Hills Traverse. He was the only member of the group on foot and he had no problem keeping up with the leaders.
Despite his speed, Nicholas was hesitant to take it to the next level until this year when he decided to take a break from firefighting. It was at the urging of friends and his own newfound maturity that he decided to focus on running. “I felt I could only listen to people say I need to try harder for so long.”
In March, Nicholas left the Revelstoke winter behind and headed to Victoria and California to hit the dirt. He returned to Revelstoke in May and on the way home he entered a 50-kilometre race in Kalamalka Park. After a steady start he picked up the pace and wound up in third place with a time of 4:22:50.5. On the way home he learned he made the Canadian team for the Long Distance Mountain Running Championships in Karpacz, Poland in June. “It was a change in mindset that this should be fast and as long as you’re constantly fueling, everything should go according to plan,” he said.
Dressed in a red Team Canada jersey, Nicholas was sporting a big smile in the race when he crashed on a slippery cobblestone descent, ending his competition.
“It was very impressive to race with people that fast,” he said. “It was obviously the most talented field I’d done any athletic sport with.”
Nicholas’ focus has earned him a small sponsorship from Universal Footwear, who provides him with gear and race fees.
His big race this summer was supposed to be the Fat Dog 120, a 192-kilometre race near Manning Provincial Park with 8,600 metres of elevation gain. He’d been running 160 kilometres per week in preparation and was all ready to go when the race was canceled at the last minute due to wildfires.
For Nicholas, long-distance trail running is at least as much a mental battle as it is physical. He knows what kind of shape he’s in, so when considering long races, it’s a matter of battling through the lows.
“I was very worried this weekend about my mental shape, because I don’t think it can ever be good enough,” he said. “It has to be so strong. That doesn’t mean you never get low. It’s just understanding how to deal with those times, when you’ve convinced yourself to quit.”
The cancellation had Nicholas contemplating the rest of his season. He spent the race weekend running around Revelstoke, including a traverse from Mount Mackenzie to Mount Cartier and pondered options such as the five-day TranSelkirks Run stage race.
What’s next for Nicholas? When asked if he wanted to return to the world championships, he said he was undecided, but “there’s a good chance I’ll want to.”
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