Squamish 50k race review
Just finished the Squamish 50k and wanted to share about it since I didn’t find much about it when I was preparing for it. By the time I found out about it, the race was full so we volunteered last year to get the opportunity to race it this year, so it was a goal race of mine for a long time. That might play into some of my thoughts so just wanted to preface it with that!
This is a VERY well organized race!! There were about 500 people on the start line, but the race is so well set up that it really didn’t feel like that many people. It starts out with a short road section, then heads into the woods near Alice Lake which were majestic. Some climbing there, not too steep or technical- mostly flowing hills that were fairly smooth. Then we headed into some very fun downhill into the first aid station
After that there’s a short road section and you head into Galactic which is a steady steep climb uphill. Someone gave me the best advice the day before the race “don’t spend it all on Galactic” which turned out to be super helpful.
I was expecting sweeping mountain views at the top but didn’t really see much. There were some mountains off in the distance to the side, but no major view points
The downhill section after Galactic was pretty insane!! My husband ran the 50 miler the day before and gave me the advice to go slow when you see the yellow signs for “trail change ahead” and that there’s some places where you will want to hug a tree. You can tell where that is because the trees have had some love and are all rubbed off where others have hugged them.
After the sketchy portion there’s some fun downhill heading into CapU aid station at mile 15.5 - but this is NOT halfway!!
After CapU, there’s a steady 5 mile climb uphill through some mountain bike trails. The trail is pretty but it wound up being a tough section because it was just relentless switchbacks
Then we came to mile 21.5 and you think “phew” but the final miles still have several climbs that are overall not as steep but are significant, mixed with some fun downhill.
At mile 30 there’s a steady climb up to a view of the chief that was sneaky and almost did me in. My recollection of it was small runable sections mixed with rock slab uphill scrambling (but I was very fatigued at this point)
Finally we descended down to the end of the trail and from there it was a little over a mile on the road
Total distance based on my Garmin was 32.4 miles
Overall it is a great race. I was a little disappointed about the lack of views given how absolutely astonishingly beautiful the town of Squamish is and thought there’d be more water/mountain views, but maybe that’s because I’ve been anticipating this race for over a year. It was a lot more hiking than running for me, but that is probably just based on experience. The trails were definitely fun!!