Who you Calling a Fat Ass

From Friday's Globe and Mail

January 25, 2008 at 8:42 AM EST

Who you calling Fat Ass?
Forget the funny name. This runner's club will cover 72 kilometres in sub-zero temperatures just for beer, haggis and the hell of it
PATRICK WHITE

VANCOUVER — Tales of hikers lost in Lynn Valley after nightfall saturate the logs of North Shore Search and Rescue. Every winter, without fail, a few veer off course and spend a winter night flirting with hypothermia on the cliff-strewn mountainsides that flank Vancouver to the north.

This time of year there's an extra wrinkle: "Hazardous winter conditions," warns the ranger's stern voice on the park information line. "Expect snow and ice on all of our trails."

Such were the conditions on Wednesday when an accountant, a contractor and a computer programmer, among others, suited up in running tights, sneakers and headlamps at 9 p.m. to trot the trail.

"Is this dangerous?" they are asked of jogging the eight-kilometre circuit in a -2 C chill.

"Depends what you call dangerous," says the programmer, Colin Freeland, 38, who totes a cellphone and a space blanket just in case.

"Lots of spots for banging toes and twisting ankles," says the contractor, John Machray, 55, who has already run 10 kilometres from home just to get to the trailhead. "It's sloppy and slippery, rocky and rooty."

With that, they're off, crunching up the dark, frost-hardened trail, each puffing columns of vapour, each assured in the company of their fellow maniacs.

Call them fat asses. The term has become a badge of honour in Vancouver's running community, where members of a burgeoning group called Club Fat Ass have garnered a reputation for their hijinks off the beaten trail.

"We're known for excessive running followed by excessive beer drinking," Mr. Machray says.

Their events, or "informal endurance sports parties," have become legend for reasons the race names alone explain: New Year's Day Fat Ass 50 Run and Freeze Your Fat Ass Swim, Ann's Get Your Fat Ass Off The Couch Run, Pure Foolishness 72K.

The fat ass concept started in California during the late seventies. An ultra-marathoner named Joe Oakes organized an informal 50-mile run and figured the name Fat Ass 50 would make it less intimidating.

The no-frills concept spread to Vancouver in 1993, when Ean Jackson inaugurated the New Year's Day Fat Ass 50 as a torturous hangover antidote for friends.

"I wanted it to be no frills and no charge," says Mr. Jackson, 50. "It was my gift to my buddies on New Year's Day."

The fat asses soon took to the Web, using it to organize runs without the hassles of registration, fees and formal prizes. "If you just put it on the Web, you can keep it small and keep it simple," Mr. Jackson says. "You don't need $150, you're not going to get a T-shirt."

Fat asses don't get rewarded for best times either. Instead, prizes might go to the runner who ventured farthest off course, suffered the worst injury or picked up the most garbage.

Club members now hold more than 50 free oddball events a year.

Some runs are less structured than others.

In 2003, four fat asses set out to conquer the 180-kilometre stretch of rock and salal between Desolation Sound and Saltery Bay along the Sunshine Coast.

"We almost got killed the first year," says Mr. Jackson, one member of the foursome. "We got lost. Real lost. The local community told us it couldn't be run."

The next year they returned, and Mr. Jackson completed the course in two days.

"I ran the whole thing on rice pudding and beef jerky," he says.

Tonight's run is a short affair leading up to next week's seven-hour Run For the Haggis (kilts, scotch and fake Scottish accents encouraged at the after party) and the Capilano Canyon Night Run - Mardi Gras on Feb. 16, for which costumes are optional.

Back in the Lynn Valley, the five runners keep a tight formation, hemmed in by trickling brooks and towering second-growth evergreens that block out the waning moon.

At the top, the path gets slippery. They carefully pick their way down a set of ice-covered stairs.

Mr. Freeland normally runs the loop in about 55 minutes. Tonight the time will be longer. But that's okay.

"Part of the beauty of CFA is that nobody really cares how fast you are," says Karl Jensen, 58, still sore after completing the Pure Foolishness 72K last weekend in about 14 hours. This March he plans to run a 100-miler with Mr. Machray.

"The times are on the honour system. There's nobody waiting at the finish line with a stopwatch, so you can run as slow as you want for as far as you want. We call it the roll-your-own model."

It's that informality that attracted Penny Jakobsen, 43, a Vancouver mother of four, to the club last August. She joined up the first time she saw the club's bright red T-shirts with the slogan, "I may be a fat ass but I'm in front of you" emblazoned across the back.

"I thought it would be intimidating at first with all these serious athletes, but they're just as serious about having a good time," Ms. Jakobsen says.

With many of the most active members ranging into their 50s and 60s, she saw her fellow club members more as inspiration than intimidation.

When the Lynn Valley runners finally make it back to the trailhead, Mr. Machray pulls out a Caramilk bar and explains the age range.

"Age doesn't matter in ultra running," he says. "We have women in their 60s and guys in their 20s."

The accountant, Ron Adams, 59, adds that the combination of slow speeds and spongy trails strengthens connective tissues in ways that road running does not.

"It's extreme sports for old folks," says Mr. Machray, before finishing his Caramilk and padding quickly into the night. "Only another 10 kilometres to go."