While standing at the top of Little White Mountain, Reid Roberts felt his competitive instincts slam into gear.
Roberts, a 40-year-old Prince George resident and a well-known teacher at D.P. Todd secondary school, was at the halfway point of the Scorched Sole 50-kilometre running race. For the all-terrain test, held Saturday on the outskirts of Kelowna, his goal had been a top-10 finish. But, when he arrived at the peak of the mountain, he chatted briefly with a fellow competitor and got some startling news.
At that moment, only one other runner was ahead of them.
"I was like, 'Are you kidding me?'" Roberts said with a laugh.
"It totally went from a 50K run to a 50K race. I had this huge adrenaline rush and grabbed the number (that proved I reached the turnaround point). And this other guy, one of the organizers, he came up behind me and said, 'You guys have to make sure you take in the view and enjoy it while you're up here,' and in my mind I was thinking, 'Forget that, we're racing now.' So I just bolted hard going down. I was going through the snow just sliding. My legs felt fresh. I felt like I was at the beginning of the race."
See Wednesday's Citizen for more.
