By Lorne Eckersley
Eight years ago Candi Huscroft was the subject of a feature in I Love Creston magazine. Then 35, she was preparing for the dream of so many long-distance runners—the Boston Marathon.
She did complete the marathon, every 42,200 metres of it, and in a respectable time, too. But that accomplishment also led to the end of one passion and the beginning of another, although she didn’t know it at the time.
Huscroft still runs today, but she has largely abandoned the flat pavement so common in marathons and 10km races in favour of mountain trails. Hang out on 16th Avenue North early in the morning and chances are you will see her coming down from Goat Mountain, ponytail bouncing, smile on her face and engaged in conversation with a running pal, usually Bruce Walker, her partner in life, too. By the time they get back to her house on Hillside Street, Candi and Bruce will have covered about 10km, and gained about 500 metres in altitude.
The shift from pavement to rock trails came at the invitation of her friend, Ryan McEwen. When he first arrived in Creston, McEwen started looking for other runners, and was introduced to Huscroft. Her first response to his suggestion to run on mountain trails was to say no—she loved the competitive world she had found a place in. But she decided to give it a try and it was love at first run.
The change was dramatic. Running on pavement and level ground doesn’t require too much concentration.
“My mind would always be racing, too,” she said. “I would be thinking about what my kids were doing, what I had to do next, whatever worries I started out with just stayed with me as I ran. It was definitely not a mental escape.”
Trail running, she found, was entirely different. Soon she was covering long distances without thinking about anything more than the terrain and whatever obstacles the trail might offer.
“You really have to focus, or you get into trouble—not that I haven’t had my share of face-plants,” she laughed.
When she was running long distances she had joined a local running group organized by Gwen Telling. It was at Telling’s urging that she joined the Creston Rotary Club, and five years ago she took over Telling’s role as race director for the club’s annual Rotary Blue Heron Half Marathon. The two also organized the first and only Thompson Challenge, in which competitors ran a route from Canyon Park to the top of Thompson Mountain, across the Rim trail and back down to Canyon Park..
“The Thompson Challenge came out of a training run I used a lot and always envisioned as a race. It features spectacular running lines along the ridge. That race was also a Rotary fundraiser.”
While she had made friends as a pavement runner, she found that trail running put more focus on co-operation and support than on competition.
“I liked still being able to set goals and work hard, but not be obsessed with winning,” she said. “The loneliest I ever felt was being in a marathon with 40,000 other runners. Everyone is in their own world.”
Many of those runners wore earbuds to listen to music, and were constantly checking their time, monitoring their food and water intake, always aware of where they were in relation to others.
“Running on the flat is so routine, and it is really hard on the muscles and joints, those same repetitive movements, over and over,” she said. “On the trail I am really in the moment. And it seems counterintuitive, but it’s actually much easier on the joints, the motion isn’t nearly as jarring.”
One of Huscroft’s closest friends, Nancy Walker, had been her marathon training buddy, but has since moved to Ontario. Now they reunite for mountain races. And she still also often runs with McEwen.
“He is the perfect soul to run with,” she smiled.
Early in her trail running years Huscroft often teamed up with friends to train for ultras—races of 50km or more, or even 24-hours or more. She did a 125km trail race in Grand Cache and finished The Fat Dog ultra through the Cascade Mountain Range in Manning Park in 25 hours.
When Huscroft ran the Boston Marathon it was on a record hot day, with the temperature peaking at 34 degrees C, “and it was awful.” Last October she did a 16-hour run with Bruce and Nancy, on a triangular circuit known as R2R2R (Rim to rim to rim) in the Grand Canyon. The highest temperature? 45 degrees C. The group started out in the dark, using headlamps, and finished in the dark, headlamps turned back on. It wasn’t a race, just a run for the personal satisfaction of doing it.
“R2R2R is on most ultra runners’ bucket list,” she said.
Her work in a dental office made participating in any race, flat or trail, a challenge.
“When you work in a dentist’s office the dentist’s time off is your time off.”
More than once Huscroft ran a marathon or ultra-long-distance trail run only to rush back to Creston and get back to work the next day.
She hasn’t run competitively for four years, partially because of work and parenting responsibilities (her two sons are now in their teens), but now also because she has left her dental career to take up studies at Nelson’s Kootenay Columbia College of Integrated Health Sciences, where her focus is on nutrition.
Her planned summer job, leading hiking expeditions in the Selkirk Mountains near Ainsworth for the internationally-renowned Mountain Trek Fitness Retreat and Health Spa, is uncertain right now, given the global pandemic. But if motherhood gave her the equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree in life, trail running has bumped that real world education to doctorate level.
“Trail running is really very much like life,” Huscroft said. “You learn that it’s okay to be in discomfort. You just face it head on.”
Looking back, she now says that trail running versus road running is like country life versus city life.
“We know each other, we support each other, everyone helps others out—even in a competitive race you put the needs of others ahead of yourself.”