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Getting Acquainted with the Horror Genre
Disclaimer: BEWARE OF SPOILERS.
So I read Stephen King’s Night Shift in March and was left with questions.
Stephen King is the horror author I was hearing about most growing up and walking past in the library because horror was a no-no back then, said to be demonic. So I never thought to read it until I was an adult and gave myself permission to read whatever I want. (There were no African authors I knew of who wrote horror and Black-American authors were not on my radar yet. Libraries, bookstores and street corners where some vendors sell used books were still full of white Western writers even in my African city -this is still the case. And I wasn’t on the Internet.) Even then, only this year did I read a Stephen King.
Night Shift seemed like a good idea because it’s a collection of short stories. It would provide me with a range of angles and styles with which he writes his stories, I reasoned. In terms of his style of writing short stories, I wasn’t disappointed at all. Sometimes people write short story collections like they’re an afterthought. However, I found each story in Night Shift felt full, well thought-out and… complete? Like a whole entire project. Whereas people reserve that energy for novels and novellas, usually.
My questions began as I read on and realised ground zero for the violence in almost every story was the woman. One cannot help but notice these things if you belong to that group of people. There was even a story where a man made a deal with somebody but he was told if he reneged, his wife (and child, if I remember correctly) would be harmed to varying degrees depending on how many times he reneged. And another where a man lost his wife and daughter to vampires but was saved from his own demise by other men. A woman in a factory whose machinery had gone rogue died a gory, brutal death. Etcetera. It was an exhibit of mostly female deaths.
Even when the guy also died at the end, her death was graphic and detailed. It was like the men were making all the decisions and the women -mostly- were facing the consequences. Except in stories where there weren’t really any women in that particular story. I ended up almost preferring those. (The deaths were generally gentler, weren’t they.)
The women were stereotypical, mostly. But so were the men. Everyone was fitting neatly somewhat into how 1950s white American roles and domestic life have been popularised on screen. And I was not used to reading that kind of fiction or those kinds of characters.
As much as I enjoyed his skill in the construction of the stories, I began to struggle as the book went on. Sometimes I’d put it down and ended up taking longer than I thought to finish it. Until… the one story I thoroughly enjoyed: I Know What You Need. That one… The construction of course, the characters, the underlying meanings, the pacing, the suspense even… I was thinking about it long after I finished the book. So good.
This story was simply a breath of fresh air. The female characters were finally well fleshed out, in my opinion, and they were critical thinkers. One helped the other out. And the leading lady did not die in the end. She was human enough yet she figured stuff out and walked away victorious. I was so happy to read that story because, not only did I get to experience a writing style I was enjoying, I also got to root for the story.
The questions flooded in at that point. Why had he chosen to write the female characters in all the other stories the way he did, then? Because of this, the stories ended up sounding somewhat similar. Is that how horror was traditionally written? One distinct, active group of people. Another distinct, especially tortured, passive group of people.
And then I realised maybe there were machinations of the horror genre that I just wasn’t privy to. So I went on YouTube to find an explanation because it really felt like there was inside information I was missing. I was genuinely puzzled. That one story totally transformed how I experienced that book. And I am aware there are cultural norms and conditioning that allows men to think of women a certain way and this shows up in art. But I don’t know. I think I wanted an explanation for the flatness/similarity that occurred before and after that one story. An analysis for how people enjoy this.
I found a gem of a video by Sinead Hanna. And immediately, the horror genre was brought to life for me. I also began to identify some more differences between the stories; the point of each story. I think I understand the tropes now and what they’re doing with the women. Which I don’t necessarily agree with but I suppose each genre expresses or worked through discriminatory programming in its own way. From Sinead Hanna’s video, I even found out what on earth ‘the final girl’ is -a term I first met in a title by Grady Hendrix (still to be read) The Final Girl Support Group. It makes sense now who they are and why they’d need a support group! I had no idea that was a whole thing.
Definitely, I’m starting to understand why horror fascinates some people. They’re not just titillated by fear for unknown reasons (my somewhat judgmental take before I started really thinking about the genre)… It’s not even always about fear.
I’ve since made (another) list of horror authors to explore -including authors from all kinds of cultures around the world. Usually, I do this to see how different people interpret different ideas and it’s also a good way to continue to shift my own perspective slowly towards decolonisation. I start with whoever introduced the genre or idea to me and then I go to all kinds of roots of storytelling. It’s working well so far.
It would be good to decide this year horror is the previously unfamiliar genre I’m exploring. Fantasy, next year. Sci-fi, 2028. It turns out it’s not enough to read the books. A bit more research makes things doubly fun. Sometimes a well done video from a member of the fandom is a fantastic way to sink teeth into what makes readers love what they love. It feels like going crazy over a book with a friend. Or slowly coming to a realisation or understanding via someone else’s palpable excitement.
Recommendation:
Horror Short Stories by African Writers (PS: This is also a good link to use to find African literary magazines.)
#BookReview #bookReview #books #Decolonisation #Decolonization #fiction #Horror #NightShift #Reading #SineadHanna #StephenKing #Writing #WritingStyles -
Getting Acquainted with the Horror Genre
Disclaimer: BEWARE OF SPOILERS.
So I read Stephen King’s Night Shift in March and was left with questions.
Stephen King is the horror author I was hearing about most growing up and walking past in the library because horror was a no-no back then, said to be demonic. So I never thought to read it until I was an adult and gave myself permission to read whatever I want. (There were no African authors I knew of who wrote horror and Black-American authors were not on my radar yet. Libraries, bookstores and street corners where some vendors sell used books were still full of white Western writers even in my African city -this is still the case. And I wasn’t on the Internet.) Even then, only this year did I read a Stephen King.
Night Shift seemed like a good idea because it’s a collection of short stories. It would provide me with a range of angles and styles with which he writes his stories, I reasoned. In terms of his style of writing short stories, I wasn’t disappointed at all. Sometimes people write short story collections like they’re an afterthought. However, I found each story in Night Shift felt full, well thought-out and… complete? Like a whole entire project. Whereas people reserve that energy for novels and novellas, usually.
My questions began as I read on and realised ground zero for the violence in almost every story was the woman. One cannot help but notice these things if you belong to that group of people. There was even a story where a man made a deal with somebody but he was told if he reneged, his wife (and child, if I remember correctly) would be harmed to varying degrees depending on how many times he reneged. And another where a man lost his wife and daughter to vampires but was saved from his own demise by other men. A woman in a factory whose machinery had gone rogue died a gory, brutal death. Etcetera. It was an exhibit of mostly female deaths.
Even when the guy also died at the end, her death was graphic and detailed. It was like the men were making all the decisions and the women -mostly- were facing the consequences. Except in stories where there weren’t really any women in that particular story. I ended up almost preferring those. (The deaths were generally gentler, weren’t they.)
The women were stereotypical, mostly. But so were the men. Everyone was fitting neatly somewhat into how 1950s white American roles and domestic life have been popularised on screen. And I was not used to reading that kind of fiction or those kinds of characters.
As much as I enjoyed his skill in the construction of the stories, I began to struggle as the book went on. Sometimes I’d put it down and ended up taking longer than I thought to finish it. Until… the one story I thoroughly enjoyed: I Know What You Need. That one… The construction of course, the characters, the underlying meanings, the pacing, the suspense even… I was thinking about it long after I finished the book. So good.
This story was simply a breath of fresh air. The female characters were finally well fleshed out, in my opinion, and they were critical thinkers. One helped the other out. And the leading lady did not die in the end. She was human enough yet she figured stuff out and walked away victorious. I was so happy to read that story because, not only did I get to experience a writing style I was enjoying, I also got to root for the story.
The questions flooded in at that point. Why had he chosen to write the female characters in all the other stories the way he did, then? Because of this, the stories ended up sounding somewhat similar. Is that how horror was traditionally written? One distinct, active group of people. Another distinct, especially tortured, passive group of people.
And then I realised maybe there were machinations of the horror genre that I just wasn’t privy to. So I went on YouTube to find an explanation because it really felt like there was inside information I was missing. I was genuinely puzzled. That one story totally transformed how I experienced that book. And I am aware there are cultural norms and conditioning that allows men to think of women a certain way and this shows up in art. But I don’t know. I think I wanted an explanation for the flatness/similarity that occurred before and after that one story. An analysis for how people enjoy this.
I found a gem of a video by Sinead Hanna. And immediately, the horror genre was brought to life for me. I also began to identify some more differences between the stories; the point of each story. I think I understand the tropes now and what they’re doing with the women. Which I don’t necessarily agree with but I suppose each genre expresses or worked through discriminatory programming in its own way. From Sinead Hanna’s video, I even found out what on earth ‘the final girl’ is -a term I first met in a title by Grady Hendrix (still to be read) The Final Girl Support Group. It makes sense now who they are and why they’d need a support group! I had no idea that was a whole thing.
Definitely, I’m starting to understand why horror fascinates some people. They’re not just titillated by fear for unknown reasons (my somewhat judgmental take before I started really thinking about the genre)… It’s not even always about fear.
I’ve since made (another) list of horror authors to explore -including authors from all kinds of cultures around the world. Usually, I do this to see how different people interpret different ideas and it’s also a good way to continue to shift my own perspective slowly towards decolonisation. I start with whoever introduced the genre or idea to me and then I go to all kinds of roots of storytelling. It’s working well so far.
It would be good to decide this year horror is the previously unfamiliar genre I’m exploring. Fantasy, next year. Sci-fi, 2028. It turns out it’s not enough to read the books. A bit more research makes things doubly fun. Sometimes a well done video from a member of the fandom is a fantastic way to sink teeth into what makes readers love what they love. It feels like going crazy over a book with a friend. Or slowly coming to a realisation or understanding via someone else’s palpable excitement.
Recommendation:
Horror Short Stories by African Writers (PS: This is also a good link to use to find African literary magazines.)
#BookReview #bookReview #books #Decolonisation #Decolonization #fiction #Horror #NightShift #Reading #SineadHanna #StephenKing #Writing #WritingStyles -
Misterio Shader Brushes for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Affinity, and Procreate
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Pixelbuddha’s latest release challenges everything designers think they know about digital shading. The Misterio shader brushes arrive at a moment when most digital artists still wrestle with flat, lifeless gradients. Meanwhile, the demand for tactile, authentic texture has never been higher. These 18 brushes don’t just add noise to your artwork. Instead, they introduce what we’ll call Cryptographic Shading — a methodology where each stroke reveals information gradually, building atmospheric depth through calculated randomness.
Download the brushes from Creative MarketWhat Makes Misterio Shader Brushes Different From Traditional Digital Brushes?
Most brush packs throw tools at designers without philosophy. Consequently, artists accumulate hundreds of brushes they never use. The Misterio collection operates differently. It presents a curated system built on a principle we can define as Textural Intentionality — the idea that every mark should contribute to narrative depth rather than decorative noise.
The collection splits into two distinct families. First, fifteen noise brushes form the foundation. These tools manipulate light-shadow interplay through controlled chaos. Second, three pressure brushes respond to stylus dynamics with remarkable sensitivity. However, Adobe Illustrator users should note that pressure brushes remain incompatible with that platform.
This division isn’t arbitrary. Furthermore, it reflects a deeper understanding of how designers actually work. Noise brushes establish an atmospheric foundation. Pressure brushes add gestural authenticity. Together, they create what we term Layered Authenticity — the visual quality that separates professional work from amateur attempts.
Pixelbuddha’s Misterio Shader Brushes for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, and Procreate Download the brushes from Creative MarketThe Science Behind Shader Brush Technology
Traditional digital shading relies on algorithmic gradients. These produce mathematically perfect transitions that paradoxically feel artificial. The human eye evolved to read natural light scattering. Consequently, perfectly smooth gradients trigger subtle cognitive dissonance.
Misterio brushes solve this through strategic imperfection. Each noise brush contains carefully calibrated irregularity patterns. Moreover, these patterns simulate how light actually behaves in physical media. Paint absorbs into paper fibers unevenly. Graphite catches on the tooth texture randomly. Digital tools typically erase these “flaws.” The Misterio approach embraces them.
Cross-Platform Compatibility: Why Universal Tools Matter Now
The shader brushes work across four major platforms: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator (CC and CS6), Affinity (both vector and raster modes), and Procreate. This compatibility matters more than specifications suggest.
Modern creative workflows rarely stay within a single application. A logo starts in Illustrator. Therefore, textures get added in Photoshop. Final touches happen in Procreate during client meetings. Designers who maintain consistent tools across platforms save cognitive energy. They develop muscle memory once, rather than learning different brushes for each program.
Additionally, cross-platform tools future-proof your workflow. Software changes constantly. However, a brush set that works everywhere reduces platform dependency. You’re investing in capability rather than software-specific tricks.
Understanding the Fifteen Noise Brushes
The noise brush collection deserves closer examination. These aren’t random texture generators. Instead, each brush embodies specific materiality concepts.
Some replicate paper grain interaction. Others simulate charcoal dust distribution. Several mimic watercolor bloom patterns. The variety enables what we call Material Code-Switching — the ability to shift between different physical media references within purely digital work.
This matters because contemporary design increasingly values hybrid aesthetics. Clients want digital efficiency with analog warmth. They expect quick turnarounds without sacrificing tactile quality. Noise brushes bridge this contradiction effectively.
Furthermore, these brushes enhance depth perception through subtle texture variation. Flat color areas feel closer to viewers. Textured regions recede visually. By controlling texture density, designers manipulate spatial relationships without traditional perspective techniques.
The Three Pressure Brushes: Gestural Intelligence
Pressure sensitivity transforms digital brushes from stamps into instruments. The three pressure brushes in Misterio respond to stylus pressure with sophisticated nuance. Light touches create delicate marks. Heavy pressure produces bold, dense strokes. This range enables genuine gestural expression.
Many designers underestimate pressure brushes. They assume any pressure-sensitive tool works similarly. Actually, implementation quality varies dramatically. Poor pressure curves feel mushy or abrupt. Well-designed curves feel like natural extensions of hand movement.
Misterio’s pressure brushes demonstrate refined curve design. The response feels intuitive rather than requiring mental adjustment. Consequently, designers can focus on artistic decisions instead of tool management. This psychological shift proves more valuable than technical specifications suggest.
Introducing the Veil Technique: A New Shader Methodology
Through extensive testing, a particular working method emerged. We call it the Veil Technique. This approach layers noise brushes at varying opacities to build cumulative atmospheric effects.
Traditional shading adds highlights and shadows directly. The Veil Technique instead builds translucent texture layers. Each layer subtly modifies underlying tones. After several passes, complex tonal relationships emerge organically. The result resembles traditional media more closely than standard digital rendering.
Here’s how it works practically. Start with base colors blocked in flatly. Next, select a noise brush and reduce opacity to 15-20%. Then, build up texture gradually through multiple strokes. Finally, use pressure brushes for accent marks and focal emphasis.
This methodology encourages patient layering over instant results. Moreover, it produces work that withstands close inspection. Zooming reveals texture detail rather than exposing digital flatness.
Why Adobe Illustrator Users Face Limitations
The pressure brush incompatibility with Illustrator deserves explanation. Illustrator operates fundamentally differently from raster-based programs. It calculates vector mathematics rather than manipulating pixel grids. Pressure sensitivity requires raster-based rendering that Illustrator doesn’t natively support for brushes.
This limitation doesn’t diminish the collection’s value for Illustrator users. The fifteen noise brushes still function perfectly. They add crucial texture to vector work. However, designers seeking full gestural control should work in Photoshop, Affinity Designer’s raster mode, or Procreate for those elements.
Interestingly, this restriction encourages beneficial workflow segmentation. Keep vector work clean and geometric in Illustrator. Add organic texture in raster programs. This separation often produces stronger final results than trying to accomplish everything in one application.
Affinity Designer: The Overlooked Advantage
Affinity Designer’s dual vector-raster capability creates unique opportunities. Designers can switch between modes without changing applications. Therefore, Misterio brushes gain special utility in Affinity workflows.
Work vectorially for structure and scalability. Then, switch to raster mode for texture application. This approach combines both worlds efficiently. Furthermore, Affinity’s performance often exceeds Adobe alternatives on identical hardware.
The shader brushes perform identically across Affinity’s modes. This consistency eliminates the common problem of brushes behaving differently between programs. Designers develop confident muscle memory faster.
Procreate Integration: Mobile Workflow Revolution
Procreate transformed iPad illustration from a novelty to a professional tool. The Misterio shader brushes extend this capability further. Mobile design work no longer means compromising on texture quality.
Many designers now start projects on iPad during commutes or travel. Consequently, having identical brushes across desktop and mobile platforms maintains workflow consistency. Sketches begun in Procreate transfer seamlessly to Photoshop for refinement.
Additionally, Procreate’s brush engine handles the Misterio collection exceptionally well. Pressure response feels natural. Noise patterns display accurately even on smaller screens. This reliable performance encourages genuine mobile productivity rather than mere sketching.
The Mystery Metaphor: Philosophy Meets Function
Pixelbuddha named this collection deliberately. Mystery implies gradual revelation. Each brush stroke reveals partial information. Full understanding emerges through accumulated marks. This metaphor extends beyond marketing into actual usage patterns.
Working with these brushes encourages exploratory experimentation. Designers discover unexpected texture combinations. Random variations produce happy accidents. The tools reward curiosity over rigid planning.
Moreover, the mystery theme acknowledges creative truth. Great work often surprises its creator. Rigid control produces predictable results. Controlled chaos enables discovery. The Misterio brushes facilitate this productive uncertainty.
Predicting Future Shader Brush Evolution
Looking forward, several trends seem inevitable. First, AI will increasingly generate base imagery. However, human-applied texture will remain valuable for adding authenticity signals. Consequently, high-quality shader brushes become more important rather than obsolete.
Second, cross-platform compatibility will grow more critical. Designers will expect tools that work everywhere without friction. Collections like Misterio establish this standard for competitors to match.
Third, brushes will incorporate more sophisticated pressure curves and tilt responsiveness. Current tools only scratch the surface of stylus capability. Future iterations will likely offer deeper customization while maintaining intuitive defaults.
Practical Application: Logo Design Case Study
Consider logo design workflows. Traditional approaches keep logos purely vector for scalability. However, many contemporary brands embrace subtle texture. This creates presentation challenges.
Using Misterio brushes, designers can create textured logo variations efficiently. Design the core mark in Illustrator. Then, export to Photoshop and apply noise brushes selectively. The texture adds warmth without compromising the vector original.
Furthermore, this approach enables context-appropriate variations. Digital applications use clean vectors. Print materials incorporate texture for tactile appeal. The shader brushes make creating these variations quick rather than laborious.
Editorial Illustration: Where Shaders Shine
Editorial illustration demands rapid turnaround without sacrificing quality. Misterio brushes excel in this environment. They add professional polish quickly.
Illustrators can establish mood through texture choices. Gritty noise patterns suit dystopian themes. Subtle grain adds vintage sophistication. The fifteen-brush variety provides enough range without overwhelming decision-making.
Additionally, the brushes help meet tight deadlines. Instead of laboriously building texture manually, designers apply sophisticated shading in minutes. This efficiency matters when publications demand same-day revisions.
The Economics of Premium Brush Collections
Quality tools require investment. However, premium brush collections often deliver better value than free alternatives. Free brushes typically lack consistency and refinement. They require extensive testing to find usable options.
Premium collections like Misterio offer curated quality. Every brush serves a specific purpose. Consequently, designers save time on experimentation. Time savings quickly offset financial costs for working professionals.
Moreover, consistent quality across a collection enables reliable workflow development. Designers can create repeatable processes using known tools. This predictability proves invaluable when managing multiple projects simultaneously.
Community Response and Professional Adoption
Early adopters report significant workflow improvements. Many designers note reduced time spent achieving professional texture quality. Others appreciate the cross-platform consistency, enabling flexible working arrangements.
Professional illustrators particularly value the pressure brush responsiveness. These tools enable genuine gestural expression that cheaper alternatives fail to match. Consequently, the finished work exhibits more authentic mark-making qualities.
Download the brushes from Creative MarketThe design community increasingly recognizes that tool quality matters. Software subscriptions cost hundreds annually. Investing in premium brushes that enhance capabilities across all projects makes financial sense.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):
Are Misterio shader brushes compatible with older Photoshop versions?
The brushes work with recent Photoshop versions. However, very old versions may experience compatibility issues. Adobe CC users should encounter no problems.
Can beginners use these brushes effectively?
Absolutely. Moreover, quality tools often help beginners learn faster. The brushes produce professional results with basic application. This encourages continued experimentation and skill development.
Do the noise brushes slow down program performance?
Not significantly. Modern computers handle these brushes easily. However, extremely large canvas sizes with many layers might experience a slight slowdown on older hardware.
Why are pressure brushes incompatible with Illustrator?
Illustrator’s vector-based architecture doesn’t support the raster-based calculations required for pressure-sensitive brushes. This represents fundamental software design rather than brush collection limitations.
How do Misterio brushes compare to Photoshop’s default texture brushes?
Default brushes provide basic functionality. Misterio offers significantly more refined texture quality and better pressure response. The difference becomes obvious in finished work.
Can these brushes replace all other texture tools?
No single collection handles every situation. However, Misterio covers the majority of common shading needs. Most designers find them sufficient for everyday projects.
What file formats do the brushes use?
The collection includes appropriate formats for each supported platform. Photoshop receives .ABR files, Illustrator gets .AI brush files, and so forth. Installation follows standard procedures for each application.
Do updates or new brushes get added over time?
Pixelbuddha’s update policy varies by product. Check their website for specific information about the Misterio collection’s long-term support plans.
Don’t hesitate to find other professional design templates here at WE AND THE COLOR.
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“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”*…
Physicists believe a third class of particles – anyons – could exist, but only in 2D. As Elay Shech asks, what kind of existence is that?…
Everything around you – from tables and trees to distant stars and the great diversity of animal and plant life – is built from a small set of elementary particles. According to established scientific theories, these particles fall into two basic and deeply distinct categories: bosons and fermions.
Bosons are sociable. They happily pile into the same quantum state, that is, the same combination of quantum properties such as energy level, like photons do when they form a laser. Fermions, by contrast, are the introverts of the particle world. They flat out refuse to share a quantum state with one another. This reclusive behaviour is what forces electrons to arrange themselves in layered atomic shells, ultimately giving rise to the structure of the periodic table and the rich chemistry it enables.
At least, that’s what we assumed. In recent years, evidence has been accumulating for a third class of particles called ‘anyons’. Their name, coined by the Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, gestures playfully at their refusal to fit into the standard binary of bosons and fermions – for anyons, anything goes. If confirmed, anyons wouldn’t just add a new member to the particle zoo. They would constitute an entirely novel category – a new genus – that rewrites the rules for how particles move, interact, and combine. And those strange rules might one day engender new technologies.
Although none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons, it is possible to engineer environments that give rise to them and potentially harness their power. We now think that some anyons wind around one another, weaving paths that store information in a way that’s unusually hard to disturb. That makes them promising candidates for building quantum computers – machines that could revolutionise fields like drug discovery, materials science, and cryptography. Unlike today’s quantum systems that are easily disturbed, anyon-based designs may offer built-in protection and show real promise as building blocks for tomorrow’s computers.
Philosophically, however, there’s a wrinkle in the story. The theoretical foundations make it clear that anyons are possible only in two dimensions, yet we inhabit a three-dimensional world. That makes them seem, in a sense, like fictions. When scientists seek to explore the behaviours of complicated systems, they use what philosophers call ‘idealisations’, which can reveal underlying patterns by stripping away messy real-world details. But these idealisations may also mislead. If a scientific prediction depends entirely on simplification – if it vanishes the moment we take the idealisation away – that’s a warning sign that something has gone wrong in our analysis.
So, if anyons are possible only through two-dimensional idealisations, what kind of reality do they actually possess? Are they fundamental constituents of nature, emergent patterns, or something in between? Answering these questions means venturing into the quantum world, beyond the familiar classes of particles, climbing among the loops and holes of topology, detouring into the strange physics of two-dimensional flatland – and embracing the idea that apparently idealised fictions can reveal deeper truths…
[Shech explains anyons, and considers the various strategies for making sense of them. (They”paraparticles” like anyons don’t actually exit. Or we simply lack the theoretical framwork and experimental work to follow to find them. Or in ultra-thin materials physics, we’ve already found them.) Considering the latter two possibilities, he concludes…]
So, if anyons exist, what kind of existence is it? None of the elementary particles are anyons. Instead, physicists appeal to the notion of ‘quasiparticles’, in which large numbers of electrons or atoms interact in complex ways and behave, collectively, like a simpler object you can track with novel behaviours.
Picture fans doing ‘the wave’ in a stadium. The wave travels around the arena as if it’s a single thing, even though it’s really just people standing and sitting in sequence. In a solid, the coordinated motion of many particles can act the same way – forming a ripple or disturbance that moves as if it were its own particle. Sometimes, the disturbance centres on an individual particle, like an electron trying to move through a material. As it bumps into nearby atoms and other electrons, they push back, creating a kind of ‘cloud’ around it. The electron plus its cloud behave like a single, heavier, slower particle with new properties. That whole package is also treated as a quasiparticle.
Some quasiparticles behave like bosons or fermions. But for others, when two of them trade places, the system’s quantum state picks up a built-in marker that isn’t limited to the two familiar settings. It can take on intermediate values, which means novel quantum statistics. If the theories describing these systems are right, then the quasiparticles in question aren’t just behaving oddly, they are anyons: the third type of particles.
In other words, while none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons – physicists have never ‘seen’ an anyon in isolation – we can engineer environments that give rise to emergent quasiparticles portraying the quantum statistics of anyons. In this sense, anyons have been experimentally confirmed. But there are different kinds of anyons, and there is still active work being done on the more exotic anyons that we hope to harness for quantum computers.
But even so, are quasiparticles, like anyons, really real? That depends. Some philosophers argue that existence depends on scale. Zoom in close enough, and it makes little sense to talk about tables or trees – those objects show up only at the human scale. In the same way, some particles exist only in certain settings. Anyons don’t appear in the most fundamental theories, but they show up in thin, flat systems where they are the stable patterns that help explain real, measurable effects. From this point of view, they’re as real as anything else we use to explain the world.
Others take a more radical stance. They argue that quasiparticles, fields and even elementary particles aren’t truly real: they’re just useful labels. What really exists is not stuff but structure: relations and patterns. So ‘anyons’ are one way we track the relevant structure when a system is effectively two-dimensional.
Questions about reality take us deep into philosophy, but they also open the door to a broader enquiry: what does the story of anyons reveal about the role of idealisations and fictions in science? Why bother playing in flatland at all?
Often, idealisations are seen as nothing more than shortcuts. They strip away details to make the mathematics manageable, or serve as teaching tools to highlight the essentials, but they aren’t thought to play a substantive role in science. On this view, they’re conveniences, not engines of discovery.
But the story of anyons shows that idealisations can do far more. They open up new possibilities, sharpen our understanding of theory, clarify what a phenomenon is supposed to be in the first place, and sometimes even point the way to new science and engineering.
The first payoff is possibility: idealisation lets us explore a theory’s ‘what ifs’, the range of behaviours it allows even if the world doesn’t exactly realise them. When we move to two dimensions, quantum mechanics suddenly permits a new kind of particle choreography. Not just a simple swap, but wind-and-weave novel rules for how particles can combine and interact. Thinking in this strictly two-dimensional setting is not a parlour trick. It’s a way to see what the theory itself makes possible.
That same detour through flatland also assists us in understanding the theory better. Idealised cases turn up the contrast knobs. In three dimensions, particle exchanges blur into just two familiar options of bosons and fermions. In two dimensions, the picture sharpens. By simplifying the world, the idealisation makes the theory’s structure visible to the naked eye.
Idealisation also helps us pin down what a phenomenon really is. It separates difference-makers from distractions. In the anyon case, the flat setting reveals what would count as a genuine signature, say, a lasting memory of the winding of particles, and what would be a mere lookalike that ordinary bosons or fermions could mimic. It also highlights contrasts with other theoretical possibilities: paraparticles, for example, don’t depend on a two-dimensional world, but anyons seem to. That contrast helps identify what belongs to the essence of anyons and what does not. When we return to real materials, we know what to look for and what to ignore.
Finally, idealisations don’t just help us read a theory – they help write the next one. If experiments keep turning up signatures that seem to exist only in flatland, then what began as an idealisation becomes a compass for discovery. A future theory must build that behaviour into its structure as a genuine, non-idealised possibility. Sometimes, that means showing how real materials effectively enforce the ideal constraint, such as true two-dimensionality. Other times, it means uncovering a new mechanism that reproduces the same exchange behaviour without the fragile assumptions of perfect flatness. In both cases, idealisation serves as a guide for theory-building. It tells us which features must survive, which can bend, and where to look for the next, more general theory.
So, when we venture into flatland to study anyons, we’re not just simplifying – we’re exploring the boundaries where mathematics, matter and reality meet. The journey from fiction to fact may be strange, but it’s also how science moves forward…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Playing in flatland,” from @elayshech.bsky.social in @aeon.co.
Pair with: “Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard?“
* Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
###
As we brood over the bondaries of “being” (and knowing), we might spare a thought for Bertand Russell; he died on this date in 1970. A philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual, he influenced mathematics, logic, and several areas of analytic philosophy.
He was one of the early 20th century’s prominent logicians and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore, and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British “revolt against idealism“. Together with his former teacher Alfred North Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt [if ultimately unsuccessful, pace Godel] to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic. Russell’s article “On Denoting” is considered a “paradigm of philosophy.”
#anyons #being #BertrandRussell #culture #existence #history #logic #Mathematics #particlePhysics #philosophy #Physics #Science -
“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”*…
Physicists believe a third class of particles – anyons – could exist, but only in 2D. As Elay Shech asks, what kind of existence is that?…
Everything around you – from tables and trees to distant stars and the great diversity of animal and plant life – is built from a small set of elementary particles. According to established scientific theories, these particles fall into two basic and deeply distinct categories: bosons and fermions.
Bosons are sociable. They happily pile into the same quantum state, that is, the same combination of quantum properties such as energy level, like photons do when they form a laser. Fermions, by contrast, are the introverts of the particle world. They flat out refuse to share a quantum state with one another. This reclusive behaviour is what forces electrons to arrange themselves in layered atomic shells, ultimately giving rise to the structure of the periodic table and the rich chemistry it enables.
At least, that’s what we assumed. In recent years, evidence has been accumulating for a third class of particles called ‘anyons’. Their name, coined by the Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, gestures playfully at their refusal to fit into the standard binary of bosons and fermions – for anyons, anything goes. If confirmed, anyons wouldn’t just add a new member to the particle zoo. They would constitute an entirely novel category – a new genus – that rewrites the rules for how particles move, interact, and combine. And those strange rules might one day engender new technologies.
Although none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons, it is possible to engineer environments that give rise to them and potentially harness their power. We now think that some anyons wind around one another, weaving paths that store information in a way that’s unusually hard to disturb. That makes them promising candidates for building quantum computers – machines that could revolutionise fields like drug discovery, materials science, and cryptography. Unlike today’s quantum systems that are easily disturbed, anyon-based designs may offer built-in protection and show real promise as building blocks for tomorrow’s computers.
Philosophically, however, there’s a wrinkle in the story. The theoretical foundations make it clear that anyons are possible only in two dimensions, yet we inhabit a three-dimensional world. That makes them seem, in a sense, like fictions. When scientists seek to explore the behaviours of complicated systems, they use what philosophers call ‘idealisations’, which can reveal underlying patterns by stripping away messy real-world details. But these idealisations may also mislead. If a scientific prediction depends entirely on simplification – if it vanishes the moment we take the idealisation away – that’s a warning sign that something has gone wrong in our analysis.
So, if anyons are possible only through two-dimensional idealisations, what kind of reality do they actually possess? Are they fundamental constituents of nature, emergent patterns, or something in between? Answering these questions means venturing into the quantum world, beyond the familiar classes of particles, climbing among the loops and holes of topology, detouring into the strange physics of two-dimensional flatland – and embracing the idea that apparently idealised fictions can reveal deeper truths…
[Shech explains anyons, and considers the various strategies for making sense of them. (They”paraparticles” like anyons don’t actually exit. Or we simply lack the theoretical framwork and experimental work to follow to find them. Or in ultra-thin materials physics, we’ve already found them.) Considering the latter two possibilities, he concludes…]
So, if anyons exist, what kind of existence is it? None of the elementary particles are anyons. Instead, physicists appeal to the notion of ‘quasiparticles’, in which large numbers of electrons or atoms interact in complex ways and behave, collectively, like a simpler object you can track with novel behaviours.
Picture fans doing ‘the wave’ in a stadium. The wave travels around the arena as if it’s a single thing, even though it’s really just people standing and sitting in sequence. In a solid, the coordinated motion of many particles can act the same way – forming a ripple or disturbance that moves as if it were its own particle. Sometimes, the disturbance centres on an individual particle, like an electron trying to move through a material. As it bumps into nearby atoms and other electrons, they push back, creating a kind of ‘cloud’ around it. The electron plus its cloud behave like a single, heavier, slower particle with new properties. That whole package is also treated as a quasiparticle.
Some quasiparticles behave like bosons or fermions. But for others, when two of them trade places, the system’s quantum state picks up a built-in marker that isn’t limited to the two familiar settings. It can take on intermediate values, which means novel quantum statistics. If the theories describing these systems are right, then the quasiparticles in question aren’t just behaving oddly, they are anyons: the third type of particles.
In other words, while none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons – physicists have never ‘seen’ an anyon in isolation – we can engineer environments that give rise to emergent quasiparticles portraying the quantum statistics of anyons. In this sense, anyons have been experimentally confirmed. But there are different kinds of anyons, and there is still active work being done on the more exotic anyons that we hope to harness for quantum computers.
But even so, are quasiparticles, like anyons, really real? That depends. Some philosophers argue that existence depends on scale. Zoom in close enough, and it makes little sense to talk about tables or trees – those objects show up only at the human scale. In the same way, some particles exist only in certain settings. Anyons don’t appear in the most fundamental theories, but they show up in thin, flat systems where they are the stable patterns that help explain real, measurable effects. From this point of view, they’re as real as anything else we use to explain the world.
Others take a more radical stance. They argue that quasiparticles, fields and even elementary particles aren’t truly real: they’re just useful labels. What really exists is not stuff but structure: relations and patterns. So ‘anyons’ are one way we track the relevant structure when a system is effectively two-dimensional.
Questions about reality take us deep into philosophy, but they also open the door to a broader enquiry: what does the story of anyons reveal about the role of idealisations and fictions in science? Why bother playing in flatland at all?
Often, idealisations are seen as nothing more than shortcuts. They strip away details to make the mathematics manageable, or serve as teaching tools to highlight the essentials, but they aren’t thought to play a substantive role in science. On this view, they’re conveniences, not engines of discovery.
But the story of anyons shows that idealisations can do far more. They open up new possibilities, sharpen our understanding of theory, clarify what a phenomenon is supposed to be in the first place, and sometimes even point the way to new science and engineering.
The first payoff is possibility: idealisation lets us explore a theory’s ‘what ifs’, the range of behaviours it allows even if the world doesn’t exactly realise them. When we move to two dimensions, quantum mechanics suddenly permits a new kind of particle choreography. Not just a simple swap, but wind-and-weave novel rules for how particles can combine and interact. Thinking in this strictly two-dimensional setting is not a parlour trick. It’s a way to see what the theory itself makes possible.
That same detour through flatland also assists us in understanding the theory better. Idealised cases turn up the contrast knobs. In three dimensions, particle exchanges blur into just two familiar options of bosons and fermions. In two dimensions, the picture sharpens. By simplifying the world, the idealisation makes the theory’s structure visible to the naked eye.
Idealisation also helps us pin down what a phenomenon really is. It separates difference-makers from distractions. In the anyon case, the flat setting reveals what would count as a genuine signature, say, a lasting memory of the winding of particles, and what would be a mere lookalike that ordinary bosons or fermions could mimic. It also highlights contrasts with other theoretical possibilities: paraparticles, for example, don’t depend on a two-dimensional world, but anyons seem to. That contrast helps identify what belongs to the essence of anyons and what does not. When we return to real materials, we know what to look for and what to ignore.
Finally, idealisations don’t just help us read a theory – they help write the next one. If experiments keep turning up signatures that seem to exist only in flatland, then what began as an idealisation becomes a compass for discovery. A future theory must build that behaviour into its structure as a genuine, non-idealised possibility. Sometimes, that means showing how real materials effectively enforce the ideal constraint, such as true two-dimensionality. Other times, it means uncovering a new mechanism that reproduces the same exchange behaviour without the fragile assumptions of perfect flatness. In both cases, idealisation serves as a guide for theory-building. It tells us which features must survive, which can bend, and where to look for the next, more general theory.
So, when we venture into flatland to study anyons, we’re not just simplifying – we’re exploring the boundaries where mathematics, matter and reality meet. The journey from fiction to fact may be strange, but it’s also how science moves forward…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Playing in flatland,” from @elayshech.bsky.social in @aeon.co.
Pair with: “Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard?“
* Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
###
As we brood over the bondaries of “being” (and knowing), we might spare a thought for Bertand Russell; he died on this date in 1970. A philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual, he influenced mathematics, logic, and several areas of analytic philosophy.
He was one of the early 20th century’s prominent logicians and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore, and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British “revolt against idealism“. Together with his former teacher Alfred North Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt [if ultimately unsuccessful, pace Godel] to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic. Russell’s article “On Denoting” is considered a “paradigm of philosophy.”
#anyons #being #BertrandRussell #culture #existence #history #logic #Mathematics #particlePhysics #philosophy #Physics #Science -
“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”*…
Physicists believe a third class of particles – anyons – could exist, but only in 2D. As Elay Shech asks, what kind of existence is that?…
Everything around you – from tables and trees to distant stars and the great diversity of animal and plant life – is built from a small set of elementary particles. According to established scientific theories, these particles fall into two basic and deeply distinct categories: bosons and fermions.
Bosons are sociable. They happily pile into the same quantum state, that is, the same combination of quantum properties such as energy level, like photons do when they form a laser. Fermions, by contrast, are the introverts of the particle world. They flat out refuse to share a quantum state with one another. This reclusive behaviour is what forces electrons to arrange themselves in layered atomic shells, ultimately giving rise to the structure of the periodic table and the rich chemistry it enables.
At least, that’s what we assumed. In recent years, evidence has been accumulating for a third class of particles called ‘anyons’. Their name, coined by the Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, gestures playfully at their refusal to fit into the standard binary of bosons and fermions – for anyons, anything goes. If confirmed, anyons wouldn’t just add a new member to the particle zoo. They would constitute an entirely novel category – a new genus – that rewrites the rules for how particles move, interact, and combine. And those strange rules might one day engender new technologies.
Although none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons, it is possible to engineer environments that give rise to them and potentially harness their power. We now think that some anyons wind around one another, weaving paths that store information in a way that’s unusually hard to disturb. That makes them promising candidates for building quantum computers – machines that could revolutionise fields like drug discovery, materials science, and cryptography. Unlike today’s quantum systems that are easily disturbed, anyon-based designs may offer built-in protection and show real promise as building blocks for tomorrow’s computers.
Philosophically, however, there’s a wrinkle in the story. The theoretical foundations make it clear that anyons are possible only in two dimensions, yet we inhabit a three-dimensional world. That makes them seem, in a sense, like fictions. When scientists seek to explore the behaviours of complicated systems, they use what philosophers call ‘idealisations’, which can reveal underlying patterns by stripping away messy real-world details. But these idealisations may also mislead. If a scientific prediction depends entirely on simplification – if it vanishes the moment we take the idealisation away – that’s a warning sign that something has gone wrong in our analysis.
So, if anyons are possible only through two-dimensional idealisations, what kind of reality do they actually possess? Are they fundamental constituents of nature, emergent patterns, or something in between? Answering these questions means venturing into the quantum world, beyond the familiar classes of particles, climbing among the loops and holes of topology, detouring into the strange physics of two-dimensional flatland – and embracing the idea that apparently idealised fictions can reveal deeper truths…
[Shech explains anyons, and considers the various strategies for making sense of them. (They”paraparticles” like anyons don’t actually exit. Or we simply lack the theoretical framwork and experimental work to follow to find them. Or in ultra-thin materials physics, we’ve already found them.) Considering the latter two possibilities, he concludes…]
So, if anyons exist, what kind of existence is it? None of the elementary particles are anyons. Instead, physicists appeal to the notion of ‘quasiparticles’, in which large numbers of electrons or atoms interact in complex ways and behave, collectively, like a simpler object you can track with novel behaviours.
Picture fans doing ‘the wave’ in a stadium. The wave travels around the arena as if it’s a single thing, even though it’s really just people standing and sitting in sequence. In a solid, the coordinated motion of many particles can act the same way – forming a ripple or disturbance that moves as if it were its own particle. Sometimes, the disturbance centres on an individual particle, like an electron trying to move through a material. As it bumps into nearby atoms and other electrons, they push back, creating a kind of ‘cloud’ around it. The electron plus its cloud behave like a single, heavier, slower particle with new properties. That whole package is also treated as a quasiparticle.
Some quasiparticles behave like bosons or fermions. But for others, when two of them trade places, the system’s quantum state picks up a built-in marker that isn’t limited to the two familiar settings. It can take on intermediate values, which means novel quantum statistics. If the theories describing these systems are right, then the quasiparticles in question aren’t just behaving oddly, they are anyons: the third type of particles.
In other words, while none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons – physicists have never ‘seen’ an anyon in isolation – we can engineer environments that give rise to emergent quasiparticles portraying the quantum statistics of anyons. In this sense, anyons have been experimentally confirmed. But there are different kinds of anyons, and there is still active work being done on the more exotic anyons that we hope to harness for quantum computers.
But even so, are quasiparticles, like anyons, really real? That depends. Some philosophers argue that existence depends on scale. Zoom in close enough, and it makes little sense to talk about tables or trees – those objects show up only at the human scale. In the same way, some particles exist only in certain settings. Anyons don’t appear in the most fundamental theories, but they show up in thin, flat systems where they are the stable patterns that help explain real, measurable effects. From this point of view, they’re as real as anything else we use to explain the world.
Others take a more radical stance. They argue that quasiparticles, fields and even elementary particles aren’t truly real: they’re just useful labels. What really exists is not stuff but structure: relations and patterns. So ‘anyons’ are one way we track the relevant structure when a system is effectively two-dimensional.
Questions about reality take us deep into philosophy, but they also open the door to a broader enquiry: what does the story of anyons reveal about the role of idealisations and fictions in science? Why bother playing in flatland at all?
Often, idealisations are seen as nothing more than shortcuts. They strip away details to make the mathematics manageable, or serve as teaching tools to highlight the essentials, but they aren’t thought to play a substantive role in science. On this view, they’re conveniences, not engines of discovery.
But the story of anyons shows that idealisations can do far more. They open up new possibilities, sharpen our understanding of theory, clarify what a phenomenon is supposed to be in the first place, and sometimes even point the way to new science and engineering.
The first payoff is possibility: idealisation lets us explore a theory’s ‘what ifs’, the range of behaviours it allows even if the world doesn’t exactly realise them. When we move to two dimensions, quantum mechanics suddenly permits a new kind of particle choreography. Not just a simple swap, but wind-and-weave novel rules for how particles can combine and interact. Thinking in this strictly two-dimensional setting is not a parlour trick. It’s a way to see what the theory itself makes possible.
That same detour through flatland also assists us in understanding the theory better. Idealised cases turn up the contrast knobs. In three dimensions, particle exchanges blur into just two familiar options of bosons and fermions. In two dimensions, the picture sharpens. By simplifying the world, the idealisation makes the theory’s structure visible to the naked eye.
Idealisation also helps us pin down what a phenomenon really is. It separates difference-makers from distractions. In the anyon case, the flat setting reveals what would count as a genuine signature, say, a lasting memory of the winding of particles, and what would be a mere lookalike that ordinary bosons or fermions could mimic. It also highlights contrasts with other theoretical possibilities: paraparticles, for example, don’t depend on a two-dimensional world, but anyons seem to. That contrast helps identify what belongs to the essence of anyons and what does not. When we return to real materials, we know what to look for and what to ignore.
Finally, idealisations don’t just help us read a theory – they help write the next one. If experiments keep turning up signatures that seem to exist only in flatland, then what began as an idealisation becomes a compass for discovery. A future theory must build that behaviour into its structure as a genuine, non-idealised possibility. Sometimes, that means showing how real materials effectively enforce the ideal constraint, such as true two-dimensionality. Other times, it means uncovering a new mechanism that reproduces the same exchange behaviour without the fragile assumptions of perfect flatness. In both cases, idealisation serves as a guide for theory-building. It tells us which features must survive, which can bend, and where to look for the next, more general theory.
So, when we venture into flatland to study anyons, we’re not just simplifying – we’re exploring the boundaries where mathematics, matter and reality meet. The journey from fiction to fact may be strange, but it’s also how science moves forward…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Playing in flatland,” from @elayshech.bsky.social in @aeon.co.
Pair with: “Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard?“
* Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
###
As we brood over the bondaries of “being” (and knowing), we might spare a thought for Bertand Russell; he died on this date in 1970. A philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual, he influenced mathematics, logic, and several areas of analytic philosophy.
He was one of the early 20th century’s prominent logicians and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore, and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British “revolt against idealism“. Together with his former teacher Alfred North Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt [if ultimately unsuccessful, pace Godel] to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic. Russell’s article “On Denoting” is considered a “paradigm of philosophy.”
#anyons #being #BertrandRussell #culture #existence #history #logic #Mathematics #particlePhysics #philosophy #Physics #Science -
“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”*…
Physicists believe a third class of particles – anyons – could exist, but only in 2D. As Elay Shech asks, what kind of existence is that?…
Everything around you – from tables and trees to distant stars and the great diversity of animal and plant life – is built from a small set of elementary particles. According to established scientific theories, these particles fall into two basic and deeply distinct categories: bosons and fermions.
Bosons are sociable. They happily pile into the same quantum state, that is, the same combination of quantum properties such as energy level, like photons do when they form a laser. Fermions, by contrast, are the introverts of the particle world. They flat out refuse to share a quantum state with one another. This reclusive behaviour is what forces electrons to arrange themselves in layered atomic shells, ultimately giving rise to the structure of the periodic table and the rich chemistry it enables.
At least, that’s what we assumed. In recent years, evidence has been accumulating for a third class of particles called ‘anyons’. Their name, coined by the Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, gestures playfully at their refusal to fit into the standard binary of bosons and fermions – for anyons, anything goes. If confirmed, anyons wouldn’t just add a new member to the particle zoo. They would constitute an entirely novel category – a new genus – that rewrites the rules for how particles move, interact, and combine. And those strange rules might one day engender new technologies.
Although none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons, it is possible to engineer environments that give rise to them and potentially harness their power. We now think that some anyons wind around one another, weaving paths that store information in a way that’s unusually hard to disturb. That makes them promising candidates for building quantum computers – machines that could revolutionise fields like drug discovery, materials science, and cryptography. Unlike today’s quantum systems that are easily disturbed, anyon-based designs may offer built-in protection and show real promise as building blocks for tomorrow’s computers.
Philosophically, however, there’s a wrinkle in the story. The theoretical foundations make it clear that anyons are possible only in two dimensions, yet we inhabit a three-dimensional world. That makes them seem, in a sense, like fictions. When scientists seek to explore the behaviours of complicated systems, they use what philosophers call ‘idealisations’, which can reveal underlying patterns by stripping away messy real-world details. But these idealisations may also mislead. If a scientific prediction depends entirely on simplification – if it vanishes the moment we take the idealisation away – that’s a warning sign that something has gone wrong in our analysis.
So, if anyons are possible only through two-dimensional idealisations, what kind of reality do they actually possess? Are they fundamental constituents of nature, emergent patterns, or something in between? Answering these questions means venturing into the quantum world, beyond the familiar classes of particles, climbing among the loops and holes of topology, detouring into the strange physics of two-dimensional flatland – and embracing the idea that apparently idealised fictions can reveal deeper truths…
[Shech explains anyons, and considers the various strategies for making sense of them. (They”paraparticles” like anyons don’t actually exit. Or we simply lack the theoretical framwork and experimental work to follow to find them. Or in ultra-thin materials physics, we’ve already found them.) Considering the latter two possibilities, he concludes…]
So, if anyons exist, what kind of existence is it? None of the elementary particles are anyons. Instead, physicists appeal to the notion of ‘quasiparticles’, in which large numbers of electrons or atoms interact in complex ways and behave, collectively, like a simpler object you can track with novel behaviours.
Picture fans doing ‘the wave’ in a stadium. The wave travels around the arena as if it’s a single thing, even though it’s really just people standing and sitting in sequence. In a solid, the coordinated motion of many particles can act the same way – forming a ripple or disturbance that moves as if it were its own particle. Sometimes, the disturbance centres on an individual particle, like an electron trying to move through a material. As it bumps into nearby atoms and other electrons, they push back, creating a kind of ‘cloud’ around it. The electron plus its cloud behave like a single, heavier, slower particle with new properties. That whole package is also treated as a quasiparticle.
Some quasiparticles behave like bosons or fermions. But for others, when two of them trade places, the system’s quantum state picks up a built-in marker that isn’t limited to the two familiar settings. It can take on intermediate values, which means novel quantum statistics. If the theories describing these systems are right, then the quasiparticles in question aren’t just behaving oddly, they are anyons: the third type of particles.
In other words, while none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons – physicists have never ‘seen’ an anyon in isolation – we can engineer environments that give rise to emergent quasiparticles portraying the quantum statistics of anyons. In this sense, anyons have been experimentally confirmed. But there are different kinds of anyons, and there is still active work being done on the more exotic anyons that we hope to harness for quantum computers.
But even so, are quasiparticles, like anyons, really real? That depends. Some philosophers argue that existence depends on scale. Zoom in close enough, and it makes little sense to talk about tables or trees – those objects show up only at the human scale. In the same way, some particles exist only in certain settings. Anyons don’t appear in the most fundamental theories, but they show up in thin, flat systems where they are the stable patterns that help explain real, measurable effects. From this point of view, they’re as real as anything else we use to explain the world.
Others take a more radical stance. They argue that quasiparticles, fields and even elementary particles aren’t truly real: they’re just useful labels. What really exists is not stuff but structure: relations and patterns. So ‘anyons’ are one way we track the relevant structure when a system is effectively two-dimensional.
Questions about reality take us deep into philosophy, but they also open the door to a broader enquiry: what does the story of anyons reveal about the role of idealisations and fictions in science? Why bother playing in flatland at all?
Often, idealisations are seen as nothing more than shortcuts. They strip away details to make the mathematics manageable, or serve as teaching tools to highlight the essentials, but they aren’t thought to play a substantive role in science. On this view, they’re conveniences, not engines of discovery.
But the story of anyons shows that idealisations can do far more. They open up new possibilities, sharpen our understanding of theory, clarify what a phenomenon is supposed to be in the first place, and sometimes even point the way to new science and engineering.
The first payoff is possibility: idealisation lets us explore a theory’s ‘what ifs’, the range of behaviours it allows even if the world doesn’t exactly realise them. When we move to two dimensions, quantum mechanics suddenly permits a new kind of particle choreography. Not just a simple swap, but wind-and-weave novel rules for how particles can combine and interact. Thinking in this strictly two-dimensional setting is not a parlour trick. It’s a way to see what the theory itself makes possible.
That same detour through flatland also assists us in understanding the theory better. Idealised cases turn up the contrast knobs. In three dimensions, particle exchanges blur into just two familiar options of bosons and fermions. In two dimensions, the picture sharpens. By simplifying the world, the idealisation makes the theory’s structure visible to the naked eye.
Idealisation also helps us pin down what a phenomenon really is. It separates difference-makers from distractions. In the anyon case, the flat setting reveals what would count as a genuine signature, say, a lasting memory of the winding of particles, and what would be a mere lookalike that ordinary bosons or fermions could mimic. It also highlights contrasts with other theoretical possibilities: paraparticles, for example, don’t depend on a two-dimensional world, but anyons seem to. That contrast helps identify what belongs to the essence of anyons and what does not. When we return to real materials, we know what to look for and what to ignore.
Finally, idealisations don’t just help us read a theory – they help write the next one. If experiments keep turning up signatures that seem to exist only in flatland, then what began as an idealisation becomes a compass for discovery. A future theory must build that behaviour into its structure as a genuine, non-idealised possibility. Sometimes, that means showing how real materials effectively enforce the ideal constraint, such as true two-dimensionality. Other times, it means uncovering a new mechanism that reproduces the same exchange behaviour without the fragile assumptions of perfect flatness. In both cases, idealisation serves as a guide for theory-building. It tells us which features must survive, which can bend, and where to look for the next, more general theory.
So, when we venture into flatland to study anyons, we’re not just simplifying – we’re exploring the boundaries where mathematics, matter and reality meet. The journey from fiction to fact may be strange, but it’s also how science moves forward…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Playing in flatland,” from @elayshech.bsky.social in @aeon.co.
Pair with: “Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard?“
* Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
###
As we brood over the bondaries of “being” (and knowing), we might spare a thought for Bertand Russell; he died on this date in 1970. A philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual, he influenced mathematics, logic, and several areas of analytic philosophy.
He was one of the early 20th century’s prominent logicians and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore, and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British “revolt against idealism“. Together with his former teacher Alfred North Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt [if ultimately unsuccessful, pace Godel] to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic. Russell’s article “On Denoting” is considered a “paradigm of philosophy.”
#anyons #being #BertrandRussell #culture #existence #history #logic #Mathematics #particlePhysics #philosophy #Physics #Science -
“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”*…
Physicists believe a third class of particles – anyons – could exist, but only in 2D. As Elay Shech asks, what kind of existence is that?…
Everything around you – from tables and trees to distant stars and the great diversity of animal and plant life – is built from a small set of elementary particles. According to established scientific theories, these particles fall into two basic and deeply distinct categories: bosons and fermions.
Bosons are sociable. They happily pile into the same quantum state, that is, the same combination of quantum properties such as energy level, like photons do when they form a laser. Fermions, by contrast, are the introverts of the particle world. They flat out refuse to share a quantum state with one another. This reclusive behaviour is what forces electrons to arrange themselves in layered atomic shells, ultimately giving rise to the structure of the periodic table and the rich chemistry it enables.
At least, that’s what we assumed. In recent years, evidence has been accumulating for a third class of particles called ‘anyons’. Their name, coined by the Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, gestures playfully at their refusal to fit into the standard binary of bosons and fermions – for anyons, anything goes. If confirmed, anyons wouldn’t just add a new member to the particle zoo. They would constitute an entirely novel category – a new genus – that rewrites the rules for how particles move, interact, and combine. And those strange rules might one day engender new technologies.
Although none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons, it is possible to engineer environments that give rise to them and potentially harness their power. We now think that some anyons wind around one another, weaving paths that store information in a way that’s unusually hard to disturb. That makes them promising candidates for building quantum computers – machines that could revolutionise fields like drug discovery, materials science, and cryptography. Unlike today’s quantum systems that are easily disturbed, anyon-based designs may offer built-in protection and show real promise as building blocks for tomorrow’s computers.
Philosophically, however, there’s a wrinkle in the story. The theoretical foundations make it clear that anyons are possible only in two dimensions, yet we inhabit a three-dimensional world. That makes them seem, in a sense, like fictions. When scientists seek to explore the behaviours of complicated systems, they use what philosophers call ‘idealisations’, which can reveal underlying patterns by stripping away messy real-world details. But these idealisations may also mislead. If a scientific prediction depends entirely on simplification – if it vanishes the moment we take the idealisation away – that’s a warning sign that something has gone wrong in our analysis.
So, if anyons are possible only through two-dimensional idealisations, what kind of reality do they actually possess? Are they fundamental constituents of nature, emergent patterns, or something in between? Answering these questions means venturing into the quantum world, beyond the familiar classes of particles, climbing among the loops and holes of topology, detouring into the strange physics of two-dimensional flatland – and embracing the idea that apparently idealised fictions can reveal deeper truths…
[Shech explains anyons, and considers the various strategies for making sense of them. (They”paraparticles” like anyons don’t actually exit. Or we simply lack the theoretical framwork and experimental work to follow to find them. Or in ultra-thin materials physics, we’ve already found them.) Considering the latter two possibilities, he concludes…]
So, if anyons exist, what kind of existence is it? None of the elementary particles are anyons. Instead, physicists appeal to the notion of ‘quasiparticles’, in which large numbers of electrons or atoms interact in complex ways and behave, collectively, like a simpler object you can track with novel behaviours.
Picture fans doing ‘the wave’ in a stadium. The wave travels around the arena as if it’s a single thing, even though it’s really just people standing and sitting in sequence. In a solid, the coordinated motion of many particles can act the same way – forming a ripple or disturbance that moves as if it were its own particle. Sometimes, the disturbance centres on an individual particle, like an electron trying to move through a material. As it bumps into nearby atoms and other electrons, they push back, creating a kind of ‘cloud’ around it. The electron plus its cloud behave like a single, heavier, slower particle with new properties. That whole package is also treated as a quasiparticle.
Some quasiparticles behave like bosons or fermions. But for others, when two of them trade places, the system’s quantum state picks up a built-in marker that isn’t limited to the two familiar settings. It can take on intermediate values, which means novel quantum statistics. If the theories describing these systems are right, then the quasiparticles in question aren’t just behaving oddly, they are anyons: the third type of particles.
In other words, while none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons – physicists have never ‘seen’ an anyon in isolation – we can engineer environments that give rise to emergent quasiparticles portraying the quantum statistics of anyons. In this sense, anyons have been experimentally confirmed. But there are different kinds of anyons, and there is still active work being done on the more exotic anyons that we hope to harness for quantum computers.
But even so, are quasiparticles, like anyons, really real? That depends. Some philosophers argue that existence depends on scale. Zoom in close enough, and it makes little sense to talk about tables or trees – those objects show up only at the human scale. In the same way, some particles exist only in certain settings. Anyons don’t appear in the most fundamental theories, but they show up in thin, flat systems where they are the stable patterns that help explain real, measurable effects. From this point of view, they’re as real as anything else we use to explain the world.
Others take a more radical stance. They argue that quasiparticles, fields and even elementary particles aren’t truly real: they’re just useful labels. What really exists is not stuff but structure: relations and patterns. So ‘anyons’ are one way we track the relevant structure when a system is effectively two-dimensional.
Questions about reality take us deep into philosophy, but they also open the door to a broader enquiry: what does the story of anyons reveal about the role of idealisations and fictions in science? Why bother playing in flatland at all?
Often, idealisations are seen as nothing more than shortcuts. They strip away details to make the mathematics manageable, or serve as teaching tools to highlight the essentials, but they aren’t thought to play a substantive role in science. On this view, they’re conveniences, not engines of discovery.
But the story of anyons shows that idealisations can do far more. They open up new possibilities, sharpen our understanding of theory, clarify what a phenomenon is supposed to be in the first place, and sometimes even point the way to new science and engineering.
The first payoff is possibility: idealisation lets us explore a theory’s ‘what ifs’, the range of behaviours it allows even if the world doesn’t exactly realise them. When we move to two dimensions, quantum mechanics suddenly permits a new kind of particle choreography. Not just a simple swap, but wind-and-weave novel rules for how particles can combine and interact. Thinking in this strictly two-dimensional setting is not a parlour trick. It’s a way to see what the theory itself makes possible.
That same detour through flatland also assists us in understanding the theory better. Idealised cases turn up the contrast knobs. In three dimensions, particle exchanges blur into just two familiar options of bosons and fermions. In two dimensions, the picture sharpens. By simplifying the world, the idealisation makes the theory’s structure visible to the naked eye.
Idealisation also helps us pin down what a phenomenon really is. It separates difference-makers from distractions. In the anyon case, the flat setting reveals what would count as a genuine signature, say, a lasting memory of the winding of particles, and what would be a mere lookalike that ordinary bosons or fermions could mimic. It also highlights contrasts with other theoretical possibilities: paraparticles, for example, don’t depend on a two-dimensional world, but anyons seem to. That contrast helps identify what belongs to the essence of anyons and what does not. When we return to real materials, we know what to look for and what to ignore.
Finally, idealisations don’t just help us read a theory – they help write the next one. If experiments keep turning up signatures that seem to exist only in flatland, then what began as an idealisation becomes a compass for discovery. A future theory must build that behaviour into its structure as a genuine, non-idealised possibility. Sometimes, that means showing how real materials effectively enforce the ideal constraint, such as true two-dimensionality. Other times, it means uncovering a new mechanism that reproduces the same exchange behaviour without the fragile assumptions of perfect flatness. In both cases, idealisation serves as a guide for theory-building. It tells us which features must survive, which can bend, and where to look for the next, more general theory.
So, when we venture into flatland to study anyons, we’re not just simplifying – we’re exploring the boundaries where mathematics, matter and reality meet. The journey from fiction to fact may be strange, but it’s also how science moves forward…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Playing in flatland,” from @elayshech.bsky.social in @aeon.co.
Pair with: “Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard?“
* Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
###
As we brood over the boundaries of “being” (and knowing), we might spare a thought for Bertand Russell; he died on this date in 1970. A philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual, he influenced mathematics, logic, and several areas of analytic philosophy.
He was one of the early 20th century’s prominent logicians and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore, and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British “revolt against idealism“. Together with his former teacher Alfred North Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt [if ultimately unsuccessful, pace Godel] to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic. Russell’s article “On Denoting” is considered a “paradigm of philosophy.”
#anyons #being #BertrandRussell #culture #existence #history #logic #Mathematics #particlePhysics #philosophy #Physics #Science -
#извинити #generated by #ChatGPT
Но мы вроде все тут азиаточек любим, поэтому нейровысер выложу невозбранно? (Но мне лично не нравится стиль, в котором гопота это написала).
Один из самых узнаваемых внешних признаков восточных азиатов — эпикантус, он же "узкие глаза". Но если посмотреть шире, в этнической эстетике азиатских народов целый комплекс черт: гладкие прямые волосы, плоское лицо, высокие скулы, небольшой нос, широкая нижняя челюсть и мягкие контуры лица. Что интересно: эта внешность и сформирована эволюцией, и при этом сейчас — один из эталонов мировой моды и поп-культуры.
🧬 Генетика эпикантуса и формы глаз
Форма глаз — результат взаимодействия десятков генов. Ключевые среди них:
- PAX6 — главный дирижёр развития глаз.
- EDAR V370A — мутация, широко распространённая у восточных азиатов, влияет сразу на множество черт: форму лица, плотность костей, волосы, железы и даже зубы [2].
Эпикантус защищал глаз от мороза, ветра и солнца в условиях древнего Севера — оттуда и начался путь становления восточноазиатского морфотипа.
💇♀️ Прямые, жёсткие, густые волосы: от генов к иконам стиля
Если вы когда-нибудь пытались добиться «азиатской чёлки», знаете, насколько дисциплинированны эти волосы: прямые, плотные, с характерным блеском. И снова виноват EDAR.
Мутация EDAR V370A, характерная почти исключительно для восточных азиатов, изменяет структуру волосяного фолликула. В результате волосы растут толще, прямее и жёстче, чем у представителей других рас. У европейцев волосы часто волнистые или мягкие — у азиатов же прямая прическа чаще всего естественная, а не результат выпрямления.
Эта же мутация влияет на развитие кожи и лицевых костей — так что "азиатская внешность" — это буквально один генетический ансамбль.
🧊 Плоское лицо и скулы: холодная адаптация, модная эстетика
Плоское лицо с высокими скулами — еще одна особенность, закрепившаяся в результате адаптации к холодному климату. Лицо с выдвинутыми вперёд частями (как у кроманьонцев) сильнее теряет тепло и более уязвимо на морозе. А плоское, "сплющенное" лицо лучше сохраняет тепло, особенно если рядом — узкие глазные щели, подкожный жир в орбите и минимальный носовой выступ.
Сегодня такие лица воспринимаются как эстетика свежести и чистоты: без резких черт, без теней — будто уже обработано в бьюти-фильтре. Именно поэтому азиатская внешность стала такой влиятельной в мире K-beauty, моды и TikTok-трендов.
🧬 Эпигенетика: почему это не просто «раса»
Важно понимать: внешность — это не "жёсткая" генетика. Даже у представителей одной народности черты могут быть разными в зависимости от эпигенетических факторов: температуры, питания, стрессов, уровня солнечного излучения, условий беременности. Эти влияния могут "включать" или "глушить" одни и те же гены — и со временем даже передаваться по наследству.
🌏 Иконография азиатской красоты
Сегодня эстетика "азиаточек" — это не только вопрос биологии, но и социальной мифологии. Гладкая кожа, аккуратные черты, грациозность, "кукольность" — всё это активно эксплуатируется индустрией красоты. Но если отбросить коммерцию, за этим стоит мощный культурный архетип: сочетание силы и мягкости, сдержанности и выразительности, вековой укоренённости и технологичной современности.
Источники:
Shaham, O. et al. (2013). Pax6: a multi-level regulator of ocular development. Progress in Retinal and Eye Research, 32, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.preteyeres.2012.08.002
Kamberov, Y.G. et al. (2013). Modeling recent human evolution in mice by expression of a selected EDAR variant. Cell, 152(4), 691-702. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2013.01.016
Lee, Y.H. et al. (2010). Association between FOXE1 gene polymorphisms and facial morphology in East Asians. Annals of Human Genetics, 74(5), 407–414.
Feil, R., & Fraga, M. F. (2012). Epigenetics and the environment: emerging patterns and implications. Nature Reviews Genetics, 13(2), 97–109. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3142
Hanihara, T. (2000). Frontal and facial flatness of major human populations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 111(1), 105–134.
Красота, как мы видим, — это не только в глазах смотрящего, но и в генах, климате и тысячах лет эволюции. Удивительно, как когда-то практичные адаптации к холоду стали мировым эстетическим трендом.
...Но и у меня есть еще 500 символов 😉
Поэтому опрос азиаточки это?: -
The Bad Thing 50K – Race Recap – Racing Smarter, Not Harder
I almost quit running altogether.
From 2009 to 2018, I did well in school. But I struggled to be smart when it came to running. After hitting the final straw with a torn hamstring in 2018, I took four years to fall back in love with the sport. Normally love like this would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same traps, especially since I only fell back in love as a coping mechanism.
Just a little over a year ago, I left a job I loved for greater money and career progression. For some reason, I never anticipated how much of my identity, community and love for my own self had been built around that job. So when I left, the decision naturally devastated me, and my two best friends.
About a month into the devastation, we tried to have brunch together. It went horribly wrong. Later that day I tried to find something in life that I could cling onto and remembered a dream I had in high school of becoming an ultra runner.
After a quick google search, the first race to pop up was The Bad Thing 50k, which I recognized from a book I had in high school. I decided to give myself a full year to train for the event and make sure I was ready to run the obscene distance.
Naturally, love like that would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same trap. I went too hard, too fast, without any knowledge of fuelling whatsoever, and made the Plantar Fasciitis I already had at that point explode. While cycling on the sidelines of the sport, I discovered the Golden Trail World Series and realized that ‘Trail Running’ was a thing.
It sounded perfect for me. It also sounded like what I had already done my entire running career, having grown up next to Medway Valley in London.
I started to research more and more, and The Bad Thing fell slightly off my radar as I devised my plan to get back healthy and start racing.
In my first year of competitive ultramarathon/trail running, I wanted to run the most competitive trail races in Ontario.
When devising my 2023 scheme, The Bad Thing 50k, being so late in the year, felt like somewhat of an afterthought. Sulphur Springs, being the most competitive and professionalized would be my ‘A’ race. Falling Water, being the most adjacent to my own strengths of downhill and technical trail running, would be my ‘B’ race. Tally in the Valley 6-hour, being a unique format, would be something fun I tacked into the mix. Notice anything missing? The Bad Thing remained an afterthought.
But after Sulphur Springs, it only took a few conversations with my coach Brett Hornig to forego Tally in the Valley and sign up for The Bad Thing later in the year instead, ensuring I’d have more time to focus on running my best race at Falling Water. Leading into August, everything played out as planned.
Fast forward to the months leading up to The Bad Thing, and I had a few things on my mind. Times were historically slower. Matt Farquharson had run the two fastest times (both in the 4h16-4h20 range). Together (for a few seconds), we ran 3h46 at Sulphur Springs. So something wasn’t quite aligning.
Seeing the elevation profile and the amount of road time, I wasn’t sure why times were historically slower. Was it the early start with the headlamp? Did they make you come to a complete stop at aid stations to mark your bib number? Was the trail really that ‘Bad’? I wasn’t sure, but I thought a 4-hour finish and course record could be within reach.
At the same time, I knew that I ran so hard at Falling Water (and Sulphur Springs) that my legs eventually exploded and I couldn’t really walk after either race. I knew that I had missed a few key runs in The Bad Thing block with illness, that the old hamstring hadn’t been particularly happy, and my abductor on the other side constantly knocked on the door to try and join the party.
A smarter race strategy I thought, would be to hold back a bit in the first 30k, stay strong but slower on the technical bit from 30-40k, and then hammer the final 10k on the roads. To some extent, that’s exactly what I did.
A group of us started at the front around 4:40/km pace, keeping consistent with slightly above what I intended to average. Eventually Matt Suda and I peeled away. I told him I’d take the lead when we hit the trail, using the excuse that I had the brighter headlamp.
Feeling comfortable, I got lost for the first time, thinking that a pink flag was pointing me to the left rather than the right. I quickly realized my mistake and turned back. At that time, Matt passed me. But thinking myself to be some trail technicality wizard, I hadn’t anticipated that the gap I put on Matt might have only been a few seconds. So when we hit the road, I started to stress that Matt had actually gone the wrong way himself and cut off some of the course.
It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him when we hit the next section of trail, and I told him to stay confident and politely asked that he let me by (I knew it was narrow for the next 2k or so and that I wouldn’t be able to politely pass him). He politely obliged, and I immediately wiped out on a bridge. It had been raining (possibly snowing?) for the whole race…and the two weeks leading up to the event. The conditions weren’t amazing. Not muddy. The leaves covered all that up. But the tight turns and excessive stairs were slippery, and the bridges were basically un-runnable.
Again, the worse the conditions the better for me. So I felt confident I could make a nice gap on Matt after picking myself back up from the embarrassment.
Then Matt did something I didn’t quite expect.
When we hit a flat section of the trail, he caught back up and put on a surge. He was breathing heavily so I could tell he didn’t want to overtake, but just hang on. I responded by comfortably putting on the fastest kilometre of my entire day, before easing into The Bad Thing Hill. At the top, I had to wait a bit for the bracelet and for them to take down my bib number. Maybe that perturbed me a bit and I sent it back down in what Strava thinks is the second fastest descent ever (oops).
The next bit was technical and I knew I could continue to increase my gap. But at the same time, the leaves entirely covered the trail, and the amount of white blazes and pink flags didn’t make up for that from a navigation perspective. That, combined with Matt’s flat speed, allowed him to catch back up again.
“I was just thinking of you.” I said, before we hit another technical section and I again made a little separation. The cat and mouse game continued for a while until we hit the next flat section. At that point he wasn’t breathing as heavily as before.
“Do you want to go, or stay?” I asked, thinking of Elhousine Elazzaoui from the Golden Trail circuit, who always clings onto second and stays there with the lead runner.
“I’m comfortable staying here.” He said, referring to the pace/effort. I said the same. Psychologically, I could tell that gave him the confidence to make his first big move of the day. We hit the roads at Ben Miller Inn and he took the lead for the second time in the race.I checked the watch to see that I had averaged 4:58/km across the first 25km, and was very much still on course-record pace. Meanwhile, Matt opened about thirty-seconds on me on the road, until the 100m of downhill stairs at the start of the next trail section allowed me to reduce the gap entirely. But that didn’t entirely matter, because we had reached another impasse – and one where I could not pass.
“This is going to get very interesting if you keep making moves like that on the road.” I said, before we mused about the flatness of London’s trails. Moments later, he took us 5-metres off trail, and I capitalized on the moment to pass him. At that point, I’m fairly positive that he took a break to use the washroom. I knew I was fine, and I knew that I could make enough of a gap that I likely wouldn’t see him again.
It was a dangerous decision. For all the back and forth, I likely would have chilled even more in the first half, had I not had him pushing me. So making a gap would be risky, as it would mean I’d have no one pushing me on the trails until I gave him the chance of catching back up on the road for the final 10k.
Coming so close to the aid station, it felt like the right call. AND THEN they didn’t have anything with electrolytes. Luckily, thanks to some smarts from Brett, I had a final bottle of just powder that I could fill up with water, plus two XACT Nutrition Bars and two gels (although I could only locate one!). I knew I’d be fine for the next 10k, but worried I didn’t have enough for the final 10k. I’d been doing close to 80-90g of carbohydrates per hour at the time, and knew that would tail off in the final 10k when I needed it most.
I downed some coca-cola and orange crush for the first time since childhood and made my way into the most technical bit of the course. I also figured out how to go to the washroom without slowing down, which felt like the coolest accomplishment of the day.
Since working with Brett, I’ve made an active effort to focus on the long-term rather than the short-term, and be smarter about every aspect of the sport. At Sulphur Springs, I probably would have been willing to die out there. I simply never stopped pressing on the gas.
But on this particular day, somewhere along the way, I got comfortable. I chilled out thinking I had executed everything I wanted to, and was going to get that course record. I think this is where I took it too slow, staying safe on the bits that were dangerous, hiking more of the uphills than I needed to, and taking some extra time to fuel with oranges and bananas at the 40k aid station. I had an extra gel somewhere in my pack, but I couldn’t remember where. In my deprived state of mind, I didn’t think to rid myself all of the garbage to find it.
I was too focused on what the feelings were going to be like at the end of the race and long afterward, and not focused enough on how much I actually had left in me to push. And even though it was only a few seconds here and there, I wasn’t stopping for the right things (like to find that gel rather than to eat an orange).
The 25k runners started to fuel me on, which provided a nice boost until I hit the road and prepared to hammer.
But then my heart rate immediately got high at the increased pace/effort, and I worried that I wouldn’t sustain that pace without enough carbohydrates. So I stayed comfortable until I picked up a final gel at a surprise aid station at 45k. At that point, I wanted to hammer it to the line, but wasn’t fully confident that I only had 5k to go. In my mind and the data I’d seen, the race would be closer to 52k, and the record would still be attainable (notoriously not great at math).
From 45k to 52k, I fought a battle in my mind of not wanting my hamstrings to blow up, but also wanting to lay down the hammer like my university cross-country days. I wanted to try using the washroom again without slowing down, but I also wanted to speed up faster than the last time I figured it out. I wanted to break the course record, but also wanted to walk after the race this time.
Safe to say, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts in my mind, and instead of hammering, I cruised at a pace that I probably could have held onto for several more kilometres.
That only solidified what I had been heading toward, a 52k day where I wouldn’t break Matt’s record (although we had different starting locations and I ran faster by pace, I think our days are really comparable.)
By the time I hit the river at 50k, the course record had gone. The shock of the knee-deep cold water caused my legs to buckle to a halt and the first hamstring cramps of the day. So by the time I escaped the shackles of the river, I cruised to the finish in a fashion I can’t really remember ever doing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always given an all-out effort to the line of any race I’ve ever done. Even at Falling Water, knowing I was going to finish second, I murdered myself with a 3:20/km finish – a pace I didn’t even know I had in me for flat workouts.
This time, I simply clapped for the volunteers and spectators all the way across the Halloween decorations until the line.
It resulted in a 4-hour-22-minute finish – what I amount to be the third fastest time ever (excluding the 2020 COVID year which was a significantly different course). I felt happy enough that according to our watches and Strava data, that I had run faster by pace than Matt’s two course-record times. But I still felt like I could have given more if I really wanted to break the time. Maybe I got too complacent in the second-half about how smart I had been up to that point and chilled too much. Maybe I would have benefited from one other runner to push me more in the second-half (either in front or behind).
Either way, I walked away happy with the effort, but slightly disappointed with the time, even though I won and had nothing to be truly upset about. Sometimes racing smarter isn’t always racing harder, and that will be an important lesson ahead of a big 2024!
It’s been a cool first year in the sport and I’ve learned so much that continues to set me up for long-term success. Now I just need to figure out when I can make risks in these events and when it’s safe to focus on the short-term as opposed to the long-term. This sets up an exciting 2024, where I’ll compete in my first international race since university cross country. I’m coming for you, Gorge.
Thank you again to Brett Hornig and XACT Nutrition for the support leading into this event. Thanks also to Race Huron and Jeremiah, for a really cool community feel to the event and making this day happen! & of course to Matt Suda for the push in the first half. I will be back some time in the future at the very least for the 25k, hunting down John’s new record instead.
Thanks for reading & see you soon!
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The Bad Thing 50K – Race Recap – Racing Smarter, Not Harder
I almost quit running altogether.
From 2009 to 2018, I did well in school. But I struggled to be smart when it came to running. After hitting the final straw with a torn hamstring in 2018, I took four years to fall back in love with the sport. Normally love like this would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same traps, especially since I only fell back in love as a coping mechanism.
Just a little over a year ago, I left a job I loved for greater money and career progression. For some reason, I never anticipated how much of my identity, community and love for my own self had been built around that job. So when I left, the decision naturally devastated me, and my two best friends.
About a month into the devastation, we tried to have brunch together. It went horribly wrong. Later that day I tried to find something in life that I could cling onto and remembered a dream I had in high school of becoming an ultra runner.
After a quick google search, the first race to pop up was The Bad Thing 50k, which I recognized from a book I had in high school. I decided to give myself a full year to train for the event and make sure I was ready to run the obscene distance.
Naturally, love like that would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same trap. I went too hard, too fast, without any knowledge of fuelling whatsoever, and made the Plantar Fasciitis I already had at that point explode. While cycling on the sidelines of the sport, I discovered the Golden Trail World Series and realized that ‘Trail Running’ was a thing.
It sounded perfect for me. It also sounded like what I had already done my entire running career, having grown up next to Medway Valley in London.
I started to research more and more, and The Bad Thing fell slightly off my radar as I devised my plan to get back healthy and start racing.
In my first year of competitive ultramarathon/trail running, I wanted to run the most competitive trail races in Ontario.
When devising my 2023 scheme, The Bad Thing 50k, being so late in the year, felt like somewhat of an afterthought. Sulphur Springs, being the most competitive and professionalized would be my ‘A’ race. Falling Water, being the most adjacent to my own strengths of downhill and technical trail running, would be my ‘B’ race. Tally in the Valley 6-hour, being a unique format, would be something fun I tacked into the mix. Notice anything missing? The Bad Thing remained an afterthought.
But after Sulphur Springs, it only took a few conversations with my coach Brett Hornig to forego Tally in the Valley and sign up for The Bad Thing later in the year instead, ensuring I’d have more time to focus on running my best race at Falling Water. Leading into August, everything played out as planned.
Fast forward to the months leading up to The Bad Thing, and I had a few things on my mind. Times were historically slower. Matt Farquharson had run the two fastest times (both in the 4h16-4h20 range). Together (for a few seconds), we ran 3h46 at Sulphur Springs. So something wasn’t quite aligning.
Seeing the elevation profile and the amount of road time, I wasn’t sure why times were historically slower. Was it the early start with the headlamp? Did they make you come to a complete stop at aid stations to mark your bib number? Was the trail really that ‘Bad’? I wasn’t sure, but I thought a 4-hour finish and course record could be within reach.
At the same time, I knew that I ran so hard at Falling Water (and Sulphur Springs) that my legs eventually exploded and I couldn’t really walk after either race. I knew that I had missed a few key runs in The Bad Thing block with illness, that the old hamstring hadn’t been particularly happy, and my abductor on the other side constantly knocked on the door to try and join the party.
A smarter race strategy I thought, would be to hold back a bit in the first 30k, stay strong but slower on the technical bit from 30-40k, and then hammer the final 10k on the roads. To some extent, that’s exactly what I did.
A group of us started at the front around 4:40/km pace, keeping consistent with slightly above what I intended to average. Eventually Matt Suda and I peeled away. I told him I’d take the lead when we hit the trail, using the excuse that I had the brighter headlamp.
Feeling comfortable, I got lost for the first time, thinking that a pink flag was pointing me to the left rather than the right. I quickly realized my mistake and turned back. At that time, Matt passed me. But thinking myself to be some trail technicality wizard, I hadn’t anticipated that the gap I put on Matt might have only been a few seconds. So when we hit the road, I started to stress that Matt had actually gone the wrong way himself and cut off some of the course.
It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him when we hit the next section of trail, and I told him to stay confident and politely asked that he let me by (I knew it was narrow for the next 2k or so and that I wouldn’t be able to politely pass him). He politely obliged, and I immediately wiped out on a bridge. It had been raining (possibly snowing?) for the whole race…and the two weeks leading up to the event. The conditions weren’t amazing. Not muddy. The leaves covered all that up. But the tight turns and excessive stairs were slippery, and the bridges were basically un-runnable.
Again, the worse the conditions the better for me. So I felt confident I could make a nice gap on Matt after picking myself back up from the embarrassment.
Then Matt did something I didn’t quite expect.
When we hit a flat section of the trail, he caught back up and put on a surge. He was breathing heavily so I could tell he didn’t want to overtake, but just hang on. I responded by comfortably putting on the fastest kilometre of my entire day, before easing into The Bad Thing Hill. At the top, I had to wait a bit for the bracelet and for them to take down my bib number. Maybe that perturbed me a bit and I sent it back down in what Strava thinks is the second fastest descent ever (oops).
The next bit was technical and I knew I could continue to increase my gap. But at the same time, the leaves entirely covered the trail, and the amount of white blazes and pink flags didn’t make up for that from a navigation perspective. That, combined with Matt’s flat speed, allowed him to catch back up again.
“I was just thinking of you.” I said, before we hit another technical section and I again made a little separation. The cat and mouse game continued for a while until we hit the next flat section. At that point he wasn’t breathing as heavily as before.
“Do you want to go, or stay?” I asked, thinking of Elhousine Elazzaoui from the Golden Trail circuit, who always clings onto second and stays there with the lead runner.
“I’m comfortable staying here.” He said, referring to the pace/effort. I said the same. Psychologically, I could tell that gave him the confidence to make his first big move of the day. We hit the roads at Ben Miller Inn and he took the lead for the second time in the race.I checked the watch to see that I had averaged 4:58/km across the first 25km, and was very much still on course-record pace. Meanwhile, Matt opened about thirty-seconds on me on the road, until the 100m of downhill stairs at the start of the next trail section allowed me to reduce the gap entirely. But that didn’t entirely matter, because we had reached another impasse – and one where I could not pass.
“This is going to get very interesting if you keep making moves like that on the road.” I said, before we mused about the flatness of London’s trails. Moments later, he took us 5-metres off trail, and I capitalized on the moment to pass him. At that point, I’m fairly positive that he took a break to use the washroom. I knew I was fine, and I knew that I could make enough of a gap that I likely wouldn’t see him again.
It was a dangerous decision. For all the back and forth, I likely would have chilled even more in the first half, had I not had him pushing me. So making a gap would be risky, as it would mean I’d have no one pushing me on the trails until I gave him the chance of catching back up on the road for the final 10k.
Coming so close to the aid station, it felt like the right call. AND THEN they didn’t have anything with electrolytes. Luckily, thanks to some smarts from Brett, I had a final bottle of just powder that I could fill up with water, plus two XACT Nutrition Bars and two gels (although I could only locate one!). I knew I’d be fine for the next 10k, but worried I didn’t have enough for the final 10k. I’d been doing close to 80-90g of carbohydrates per hour at the time, and knew that would tail off in the final 10k when I needed it most.
I downed some coca-cola and orange crush for the first time since childhood and made my way into the most technical bit of the course. I also figured out how to go to the washroom without slowing down, which felt like the coolest accomplishment of the day.
Since working with Brett, I’ve made an active effort to focus on the long-term rather than the short-term, and be smarter about every aspect of the sport. At Sulphur Springs, I probably would have been willing to die out there. I simply never stopped pressing on the gas.
But on this particular day, somewhere along the way, I got comfortable. I chilled out thinking I had executed everything I wanted to, and was going to get that course record. I think this is where I took it too slow, staying safe on the bits that were dangerous, hiking more of the uphills than I needed to, and taking some extra time to fuel with oranges and bananas at the 40k aid station. I had an extra gel somewhere in my pack, but I couldn’t remember where. In my deprived state of mind, I didn’t think to rid myself all of the garbage to find it.
I was too focused on what the feelings were going to be like at the end of the race and long afterward, and not focused enough on how much I actually had left in me to push. And even though it was only a few seconds here and there, I wasn’t stopping for the right things (like to find that gel rather than to eat an orange).
The 25k runners started to fuel me on, which provided a nice boost until I hit the road and prepared to hammer.
But then my heart rate immediately got high at the increased pace/effort, and I worried that I wouldn’t sustain that pace without enough carbohydrates. So I stayed comfortable until I picked up a final gel at a surprise aid station at 45k. At that point, I wanted to hammer it to the line, but wasn’t fully confident that I only had 5k to go. In my mind and the data I’d seen, the race would be closer to 52k, and the record would still be attainable (notoriously not great at math).
From 45k to 52k, I fought a battle in my mind of not wanting my hamstrings to blow up, but also wanting to lay down the hammer like my university cross-country days. I wanted to try using the washroom again without slowing down, but I also wanted to speed up faster than the last time I figured it out. I wanted to break the course record, but also wanted to walk after the race this time.
Safe to say, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts in my mind, and instead of hammering, I cruised at a pace that I probably could have held onto for several more kilometres.
That only solidified what I had been heading toward, a 52k day where I wouldn’t break Matt’s record (although we had different starting locations and I ran faster by pace, I think our days are really comparable.)
By the time I hit the river at 50k, the course record had gone. The shock of the knee-deep cold water caused my legs to buckle to a halt and the first hamstring cramps of the day. So by the time I escaped the shackles of the river, I cruised to the finish in a fashion I can’t really remember ever doing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always given an all-out effort to the line of any race I’ve ever done. Even at Falling Water, knowing I was going to finish second, I murdered myself with a 3:20/km finish – a pace I didn’t even know I had in me for flat workouts.
This time, I simply clapped for the volunteers and spectators all the way across the Halloween decorations until the line.
It resulted in a 4-hour-22-minute finish – what I amount to be the third fastest time ever (excluding the 2020 COVID year which was a significantly different course). I felt happy enough that according to our watches and Strava data, that I had run faster by pace than Matt’s two course-record times. But I still felt like I could have given more if I really wanted to break the time. Maybe I got too complacent in the second-half about how smart I had been up to that point and chilled too much. Maybe I would have benefited from one other runner to push me more in the second-half (either in front or behind).
Either way, I walked away happy with the effort, but slightly disappointed with the time, even though I won and had nothing to be truly upset about. Sometimes racing smarter isn’t always racing harder, and that will be an important lesson ahead of a big 2024!
It’s been a cool first year in the sport and I’ve learned so much that continues to set me up for long-term success. Now I just need to figure out when I can make risks in these events and when it’s safe to focus on the short-term as opposed to the long-term. This sets up an exciting 2024, where I’ll compete in my first international race since university cross country. I’m coming for you, Gorge.
Thank you again to Brett Hornig and XACT Nutrition for the support leading into this event. Thanks also to Race Huron and Jeremiah, for a really cool community feel to the event and making this day happen! & of course to Matt Suda for the push in the first half. I will be back some time in the future at the very least for the 25k, hunting down John’s new record instead.
Thanks for reading & see you soon!
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Get inspired and join my email list!
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Weekly Newsletter – The Magic of 2-Minute Hills
I love hill workouts in every form.
From 3-minute hills to 10-minute hills to 90-second hills, I LOVE MY HILLS.
There’s so much magic in a hill workout for trail running, as you get the muscle breakdown of all the downhills on your rest and recovery; and get to practice pushing harder in…
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025How I’ve become a better trail runner by running less on trails
I knew I needed to prioritize my “speed” in 2025 to get faster. But I didn’t realize how quickly we could make cosmic changes just from more of an emphasis on one thing: Road running (i.e. running economy and efficiency).
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025The importance of mobility work for trail runners & injury-prone athletes
As I’ve continued to endure injuries even despite the diligent attention to this piece of the puzzle, I’ve reflected on how I can make sure my mobility is properly attended to as much as my runs. Here are my best tips for prioritizing mobility, and why it’s so essential for trail runners and injury-prone athletes…
by Rhys DesmondApril 29, 2025April 29, 2025#MatthewFarquharson #MyJourney #RaceHuron #RaceRecaps #Races #Running #TheBadThing #TheBadThing50k #UltraRunning
-
The Bad Thing 50K – Race Recap – Racing Smarter, Not Harder
I almost quit running altogether.
From 2009 to 2018, I did well in school. But I struggled to be smart when it came to running. After hitting the final straw with a torn hamstring in 2018, I took four years to fall back in love with the sport. Normally love like this would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same traps, especially since I only fell back in love as a coping mechanism.
Just a little over a year ago, I left a job I loved for greater money and career progression. For some reason, I never anticipated how much of my identity, community and love for my own self had been built around that job. So when I left, the decision naturally devastated me, and my two best friends.
About a month into the devastation, we tried to have brunch together. It went horribly wrong. Later that day I tried to find something in life that I could cling onto and remembered a dream I had in high school of becoming an ultra runner.
After a quick google search, the first race to pop up was The Bad Thing 50k, which I recognized from a book I had in high school. I decided to give myself a full year to train for the event and make sure I was ready to run the obscene distance.
Naturally, love like that would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same trap. I went too hard, too fast, without any knowledge of fuelling whatsoever, and made the Plantar Fasciitis I already had at that point explode. While cycling on the sidelines of the sport, I discovered the Golden Trail World Series and realized that ‘Trail Running’ was a thing.
It sounded perfect for me. It also sounded like what I had already done my entire running career, having grown up next to Medway Valley in London.
I started to research more and more, and The Bad Thing fell slightly off my radar as I devised my plan to get back healthy and start racing.
In my first year of competitive ultramarathon/trail running, I wanted to run the most competitive trail races in Ontario.
When devising my 2023 scheme, The Bad Thing 50k, being so late in the year, felt like somewhat of an afterthought. Sulphur Springs, being the most competitive and professionalized would be my ‘A’ race. Falling Water, being the most adjacent to my own strengths of downhill and technical trail running, would be my ‘B’ race. Tally in the Valley 6-hour, being a unique format, would be something fun I tacked into the mix. Notice anything missing? The Bad Thing remained an afterthought.
But after Sulphur Springs, it only took a few conversations with my coach Brett Hornig to forego Tally in the Valley and sign up for The Bad Thing later in the year instead, ensuring I’d have more time to focus on running my best race at Falling Water. Leading into August, everything played out as planned.
Fast forward to the months leading up to The Bad Thing, and I had a few things on my mind. Times were historically slower. Matt Farquharson had run the two fastest times (both in the 4h16-4h20 range). Together (for a few seconds), we ran 3h46 at Sulphur Springs. So something wasn’t quite aligning.
Seeing the elevation profile and the amount of road time, I wasn’t sure why times were historically slower. Was it the early start with the headlamp? Did they make you come to a complete stop at aid stations to mark your bib number? Was the trail really that ‘Bad’? I wasn’t sure, but I thought a 4-hour finish and course record could be within reach.
At the same time, I knew that I ran so hard at Falling Water (and Sulphur Springs) that my legs eventually exploded and I couldn’t really walk after either race. I knew that I had missed a few key runs in The Bad Thing block with illness, that the old hamstring hadn’t been particularly happy, and my abductor on the other side constantly knocked on the door to try and join the party.
A smarter race strategy I thought, would be to hold back a bit in the first 30k, stay strong but slower on the technical bit from 30-40k, and then hammer the final 10k on the roads. To some extent, that’s exactly what I did.
A group of us started at the front around 4:40/km pace, keeping consistent with slightly above what I intended to average. Eventually Matt Suda and I peeled away. I told him I’d take the lead when we hit the trail, using the excuse that I had the brighter headlamp.
Feeling comfortable, I got lost for the first time, thinking that a pink flag was pointing me to the left rather than the right. I quickly realized my mistake and turned back. At that time, Matt passed me. But thinking myself to be some trail technicality wizard, I hadn’t anticipated that the gap I put on Matt might have only been a few seconds. So when we hit the road, I started to stress that Matt had actually gone the wrong way himself and cut off some of the course.
It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him when we hit the next section of trail, and I told him to stay confident and politely asked that he let me by (I knew it was narrow for the next 2k or so and that I wouldn’t be able to politely pass him). He politely obliged, and I immediately wiped out on a bridge. It had been raining (possibly snowing?) for the whole race…and the two weeks leading up to the event. The conditions weren’t amazing. Not muddy. The leaves covered all that up. But the tight turns and excessive stairs were slippery, and the bridges were basically un-runnable.
Again, the worse the conditions the better for me. So I felt confident I could make a nice gap on Matt after picking myself back up from the embarrassment.
Then Matt did something I didn’t quite expect.
When we hit a flat section of the trail, he caught back up and put on a surge. He was breathing heavily so I could tell he didn’t want to overtake, but just hang on. I responded by comfortably putting on the fastest kilometre of my entire day, before easing into The Bad Thing Hill. At the top, I had to wait a bit for the bracelet and for them to take down my bib number. Maybe that perturbed me a bit and I sent it back down in what Strava thinks is the second fastest descent ever (oops).
The next bit was technical and I knew I could continue to increase my gap. But at the same time, the leaves entirely covered the trail, and the amount of white blazes and pink flags didn’t make up for that from a navigation perspective. That, combined with Matt’s flat speed, allowed him to catch back up again.
“I was just thinking of you.” I said, before we hit another technical section and I again made a little separation. The cat and mouse game continued for a while until we hit the next flat section. At that point he wasn’t breathing as heavily as before.
“Do you want to go, or stay?” I asked, thinking of Elhousine Elazzaoui from the Golden Trail circuit, who always clings onto second and stays there with the lead runner.
“I’m comfortable staying here.” He said, referring to the pace/effort. I said the same. Psychologically, I could tell that gave him the confidence to make his first big move of the day. We hit the roads at Ben Miller Inn and he took the lead for the second time in the race.I checked the watch to see that I had averaged 4:58/km across the first 25km, and was very much still on course-record pace. Meanwhile, Matt opened about thirty-seconds on me on the road, until the 100m of downhill stairs at the start of the next trail section allowed me to reduce the gap entirely. But that didn’t entirely matter, because we had reached another impasse – and one where I could not pass.
“This is going to get very interesting if you keep making moves like that on the road.” I said, before we mused about the flatness of London’s trails. Moments later, he took us 5-metres off trail, and I capitalized on the moment to pass him. At that point, I’m fairly positive that he took a break to use the washroom. I knew I was fine, and I knew that I could make enough of a gap that I likely wouldn’t see him again.
It was a dangerous decision. For all the back and forth, I likely would have chilled even more in the first half, had I not had him pushing me. So making a gap would be risky, as it would mean I’d have no one pushing me on the trails until I gave him the chance of catching back up on the road for the final 10k.
Coming so close to the aid station, it felt like the right call. AND THEN they didn’t have anything with electrolytes. Luckily, thanks to some smarts from Brett, I had a final bottle of just powder that I could fill up with water, plus two XACT Nutrition Bars and two gels (although I could only locate one!). I knew I’d be fine for the next 10k, but worried I didn’t have enough for the final 10k. I’d been doing close to 80-90g of carbohydrates per hour at the time, and knew that would tail off in the final 10k when I needed it most.
I downed some coca-cola and orange crush for the first time since childhood and made my way into the most technical bit of the course. I also figured out how to go to the washroom without slowing down, which felt like the coolest accomplishment of the day.
Since working with Brett, I’ve made an active effort to focus on the long-term rather than the short-term, and be smarter about every aspect of the sport. At Sulphur Springs, I probably would have been willing to die out there. I simply never stopped pressing on the gas.
But on this particular day, somewhere along the way, I got comfortable. I chilled out thinking I had executed everything I wanted to, and was going to get that course record. I think this is where I took it too slow, staying safe on the bits that were dangerous, hiking more of the uphills than I needed to, and taking some extra time to fuel with oranges and bananas at the 40k aid station. I had an extra gel somewhere in my pack, but I couldn’t remember where. In my deprived state of mind, I didn’t think to rid myself all of the garbage to find it.
I was too focused on what the feelings were going to be like at the end of the race and long afterward, and not focused enough on how much I actually had left in me to push. And even though it was only a few seconds here and there, I wasn’t stopping for the right things (like to find that gel rather than to eat an orange).
The 25k runners started to fuel me on, which provided a nice boost until I hit the road and prepared to hammer.
But then my heart rate immediately got high at the increased pace/effort, and I worried that I wouldn’t sustain that pace without enough carbohydrates. So I stayed comfortable until I picked up a final gel at a surprise aid station at 45k. At that point, I wanted to hammer it to the line, but wasn’t fully confident that I only had 5k to go. In my mind and the data I’d seen, the race would be closer to 52k, and the record would still be attainable (notoriously not great at math).
From 45k to 52k, I fought a battle in my mind of not wanting my hamstrings to blow up, but also wanting to lay down the hammer like my university cross-country days. I wanted to try using the washroom again without slowing down, but I also wanted to speed up faster than the last time I figured it out. I wanted to break the course record, but also wanted to walk after the race this time.
Safe to say, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts in my mind, and instead of hammering, I cruised at a pace that I probably could have held onto for several more kilometres.
That only solidified what I had been heading toward, a 52k day where I wouldn’t break Matt’s record (although we had different starting locations and I ran faster by pace, I think our days are really comparable.)
By the time I hit the river at 50k, the course record had gone. The shock of the knee-deep cold water caused my legs to buckle to a halt and the first hamstring cramps of the day. So by the time I escaped the shackles of the river, I cruised to the finish in a fashion I can’t really remember ever doing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always given an all-out effort to the line of any race I’ve ever done. Even at Falling Water, knowing I was going to finish second, I murdered myself with a 3:20/km finish – a pace I didn’t even know I had in me for flat workouts.
This time, I simply clapped for the volunteers and spectators all the way across the Halloween decorations until the line.
It resulted in a 4-hour-22-minute finish – what I amount to be the third fastest time ever (excluding the 2020 COVID year which was a significantly different course). I felt happy enough that according to our watches and Strava data, that I had run faster by pace than Matt’s two course-record times. But I still felt like I could have given more if I really wanted to break the time. Maybe I got too complacent in the second-half about how smart I had been up to that point and chilled too much. Maybe I would have benefited from one other runner to push me more in the second-half (either in front or behind).
Either way, I walked away happy with the effort, but slightly disappointed with the time, even though I won and had nothing to be truly upset about. Sometimes racing smarter isn’t always racing harder, and that will be an important lesson ahead of a big 2024!
It’s been a cool first year in the sport and I’ve learned so much that continues to set me up for long-term success. Now I just need to figure out when I can make risks in these events and when it’s safe to focus on the short-term as opposed to the long-term. This sets up an exciting 2024, where I’ll compete in my first international race since university cross country. I’m coming for you, Gorge.
Thank you again to Brett Hornig and XACT Nutrition for the support leading into this event. Thanks also to Race Huron and Jeremiah, for a really cool community feel to the event and making this day happen! & of course to Matt Suda for the push in the first half. I will be back some time in the future at the very least for the 25k, hunting down John’s new record instead.
Thanks for reading & see you soon!
Enter your email address
Get inspired and join my email list!
Get in touch!YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY…
Weekly Newsletter – The Magic of 2-Minute Hills
I love hill workouts in every form.
From 3-minute hills to 10-minute hills to 90-second hills, I LOVE MY HILLS.
There’s so much magic in a hill workout for trail running, as you get the muscle breakdown of all the downhills on your rest and recovery; and get to practice pushing harder in…
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025How I’ve become a better trail runner by running less on trails
I knew I needed to prioritize my “speed” in 2025 to get faster. But I didn’t realize how quickly we could make cosmic changes just from more of an emphasis on one thing: Road running (i.e. running economy and efficiency).
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025The importance of mobility work for trail runners & injury-prone athletes
As I’ve continued to endure injuries even despite the diligent attention to this piece of the puzzle, I’ve reflected on how I can make sure my mobility is properly attended to as much as my runs. Here are my best tips for prioritizing mobility, and why it’s so essential for trail runners and injury-prone athletes…
by Rhys DesmondApril 29, 2025April 29, 2025#MatthewFarquharson #MyJourney #RaceHuron #RaceRecaps #Races #Running #TheBadThing #TheBadThing50k #UltraRunning
-
The Bad Thing 50K – Race Recap – Racing Smarter, Not Harder
I almost quit running altogether.
From 2009 to 2018, I did well in school. But I struggled to be smart when it came to running. After hitting the final straw with a torn hamstring in 2018, I took four years to fall back in love with the sport. Normally love like this would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same traps, especially since I only fell back in love as a coping mechanism.
Just a little over a year ago, I left a job I loved for greater money and career progression. For some reason, I never anticipated how much of my identity, community and love for my own self had been built around that job. So when I left, the decision naturally devastated me, and my two best friends.
About a month into the devastation, we tried to have brunch together. It went horribly wrong. Later that day I tried to find something in life that I could cling onto and remembered a dream I had in high school of becoming an ultra runner.
After a quick google search, the first race to pop up was The Bad Thing 50k, which I recognized from a book I had in high school. I decided to give myself a full year to train for the event and make sure I was ready to run the obscene distance.
Naturally, love like that would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same trap. I went too hard, too fast, without any knowledge of fuelling whatsoever, and made the Plantar Fasciitis I already had at that point explode. While cycling on the sidelines of the sport, I discovered the Golden Trail World Series and realized that ‘Trail Running’ was a thing.
It sounded perfect for me. It also sounded like what I had already done my entire running career, having grown up next to Medway Valley in London.
I started to research more and more, and The Bad Thing fell slightly off my radar as I devised my plan to get back healthy and start racing.
In my first year of competitive ultramarathon/trail running, I wanted to run the most competitive trail races in Ontario.
When devising my 2023 scheme, The Bad Thing 50k, being so late in the year, felt like somewhat of an afterthought. Sulphur Springs, being the most competitive and professionalized would be my ‘A’ race. Falling Water, being the most adjacent to my own strengths of downhill and technical trail running, would be my ‘B’ race. Tally in the Valley 6-hour, being a unique format, would be something fun I tacked into the mix. Notice anything missing? The Bad Thing remained an afterthought.
But after Sulphur Springs, it only took a few conversations with my coach Brett Hornig to forego Tally in the Valley and sign up for The Bad Thing later in the year instead, ensuring I’d have more time to focus on running my best race at Falling Water. Leading into August, everything played out as planned.
Fast forward to the months leading up to The Bad Thing, and I had a few things on my mind. Times were historically slower. Matt Farquharson had run the two fastest times (both in the 4h16-4h20 range). Together (for a few seconds), we ran 3h46 at Sulphur Springs. So something wasn’t quite aligning.
Seeing the elevation profile and the amount of road time, I wasn’t sure why times were historically slower. Was it the early start with the headlamp? Did they make you come to a complete stop at aid stations to mark your bib number? Was the trail really that ‘Bad’? I wasn’t sure, but I thought a 4-hour finish and course record could be within reach.
At the same time, I knew that I ran so hard at Falling Water (and Sulphur Springs) that my legs eventually exploded and I couldn’t really walk after either race. I knew that I had missed a few key runs in The Bad Thing block with illness, that the old hamstring hadn’t been particularly happy, and my abductor on the other side constantly knocked on the door to try and join the party.
A smarter race strategy I thought, would be to hold back a bit in the first 30k, stay strong but slower on the technical bit from 30-40k, and then hammer the final 10k on the roads. To some extent, that’s exactly what I did.
A group of us started at the front around 4:40/km pace, keeping consistent with slightly above what I intended to average. Eventually Matt Suda and I peeled away. I told him I’d take the lead when we hit the trail, using the excuse that I had the brighter headlamp.
Feeling comfortable, I got lost for the first time, thinking that a pink flag was pointing me to the left rather than the right. I quickly realized my mistake and turned back. At that time, Matt passed me. But thinking myself to be some trail technicality wizard, I hadn’t anticipated that the gap I put on Matt might have only been a few seconds. So when we hit the road, I started to stress that Matt had actually gone the wrong way himself and cut off some of the course.
It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him when we hit the next section of trail, and I told him to stay confident and politely asked that he let me by (I knew it was narrow for the next 2k or so and that I wouldn’t be able to politely pass him). He politely obliged, and I immediately wiped out on a bridge. It had been raining (possibly snowing?) for the whole race…and the two weeks leading up to the event. The conditions weren’t amazing. Not muddy. The leaves covered all that up. But the tight turns and excessive stairs were slippery, and the bridges were basically un-runnable.
Again, the worse the conditions the better for me. So I felt confident I could make a nice gap on Matt after picking myself back up from the embarrassment.
Then Matt did something I didn’t quite expect.
When we hit a flat section of the trail, he caught back up and put on a surge. He was breathing heavily so I could tell he didn’t want to overtake, but just hang on. I responded by comfortably putting on the fastest kilometre of my entire day, before easing into The Bad Thing Hill. At the top, I had to wait a bit for the bracelet and for them to take down my bib number. Maybe that perturbed me a bit and I sent it back down in what Strava thinks is the second fastest descent ever (oops).
The next bit was technical and I knew I could continue to increase my gap. But at the same time, the leaves entirely covered the trail, and the amount of white blazes and pink flags didn’t make up for that from a navigation perspective. That, combined with Matt’s flat speed, allowed him to catch back up again.
“I was just thinking of you.” I said, before we hit another technical section and I again made a little separation. The cat and mouse game continued for a while until we hit the next flat section. At that point he wasn’t breathing as heavily as before.
“Do you want to go, or stay?” I asked, thinking of Elhousine Elazzaoui from the Golden Trail circuit, who always clings onto second and stays there with the lead runner.
“I’m comfortable staying here.” He said, referring to the pace/effort. I said the same. Psychologically, I could tell that gave him the confidence to make his first big move of the day. We hit the roads at Ben Miller Inn and he took the lead for the second time in the race.I checked the watch to see that I had averaged 4:58/km across the first 25km, and was very much still on course-record pace. Meanwhile, Matt opened about thirty-seconds on me on the road, until the 100m of downhill stairs at the start of the next trail section allowed me to reduce the gap entirely. But that didn’t entirely matter, because we had reached another impasse – and one where I could not pass.
“This is going to get very interesting if you keep making moves like that on the road.” I said, before we mused about the flatness of London’s trails. Moments later, he took us 5-metres off trail, and I capitalized on the moment to pass him. At that point, I’m fairly positive that he took a break to use the washroom. I knew I was fine, and I knew that I could make enough of a gap that I likely wouldn’t see him again.
It was a dangerous decision. For all the back and forth, I likely would have chilled even more in the first half, had I not had him pushing me. So making a gap would be risky, as it would mean I’d have no one pushing me on the trails until I gave him the chance of catching back up on the road for the final 10k.
Coming so close to the aid station, it felt like the right call. AND THEN they didn’t have anything with electrolytes. Luckily, thanks to some smarts from Brett, I had a final bottle of just powder that I could fill up with water, plus two XACT Nutrition Bars and two gels (although I could only locate one!). I knew I’d be fine for the next 10k, but worried I didn’t have enough for the final 10k. I’d been doing close to 80-90g of carbohydrates per hour at the time, and knew that would tail off in the final 10k when I needed it most.
I downed some coca-cola and orange crush for the first time since childhood and made my way into the most technical bit of the course. I also figured out how to go to the washroom without slowing down, which felt like the coolest accomplishment of the day.
Since working with Brett, I’ve made an active effort to focus on the long-term rather than the short-term, and be smarter about every aspect of the sport. At Sulphur Springs, I probably would have been willing to die out there. I simply never stopped pressing on the gas.
But on this particular day, somewhere along the way, I got comfortable. I chilled out thinking I had executed everything I wanted to, and was going to get that course record. I think this is where I took it too slow, staying safe on the bits that were dangerous, hiking more of the uphills than I needed to, and taking some extra time to fuel with oranges and bananas at the 40k aid station. I had an extra gel somewhere in my pack, but I couldn’t remember where. In my deprived state of mind, I didn’t think to rid myself all of the garbage to find it.
I was too focused on what the feelings were going to be like at the end of the race and long afterward, and not focused enough on how much I actually had left in me to push. And even though it was only a few seconds here and there, I wasn’t stopping for the right things (like to find that gel rather than to eat an orange).
The 25k runners started to fuel me on, which provided a nice boost until I hit the road and prepared to hammer.
But then my heart rate immediately got high at the increased pace/effort, and I worried that I wouldn’t sustain that pace without enough carbohydrates. So I stayed comfortable until I picked up a final gel at a surprise aid station at 45k. At that point, I wanted to hammer it to the line, but wasn’t fully confident that I only had 5k to go. In my mind and the data I’d seen, the race would be closer to 52k, and the record would still be attainable (notoriously not great at math).
From 45k to 52k, I fought a battle in my mind of not wanting my hamstrings to blow up, but also wanting to lay down the hammer like my university cross-country days. I wanted to try using the washroom again without slowing down, but I also wanted to speed up faster than the last time I figured it out. I wanted to break the course record, but also wanted to walk after the race this time.
Safe to say, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts in my mind, and instead of hammering, I cruised at a pace that I probably could have held onto for several more kilometres.
That only solidified what I had been heading toward, a 52k day where I wouldn’t break Matt’s record (although we had different starting locations and I ran faster by pace, I think our days are really comparable.)
By the time I hit the river at 50k, the course record had gone. The shock of the knee-deep cold water caused my legs to buckle to a halt and the first hamstring cramps of the day. So by the time I escaped the shackles of the river, I cruised to the finish in a fashion I can’t really remember ever doing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always given an all-out effort to the line of any race I’ve ever done. Even at Falling Water, knowing I was going to finish second, I murdered myself with a 3:20/km finish – a pace I didn’t even know I had in me for flat workouts.
This time, I simply clapped for the volunteers and spectators all the way across the Halloween decorations until the line.
It resulted in a 4-hour-22-minute finish – what I amount to be the third fastest time ever (excluding the 2020 COVID year which was a significantly different course). I felt happy enough that according to our watches and Strava data, that I had run faster by pace than Matt’s two course-record times. But I still felt like I could have given more if I really wanted to break the time. Maybe I got too complacent in the second-half about how smart I had been up to that point and chilled too much. Maybe I would have benefited from one other runner to push me more in the second-half (either in front or behind).
Either way, I walked away happy with the effort, but slightly disappointed with the time, even though I won and had nothing to be truly upset about. Sometimes racing smarter isn’t always racing harder, and that will be an important lesson ahead of a big 2024!
It’s been a cool first year in the sport and I’ve learned so much that continues to set me up for long-term success. Now I just need to figure out when I can make risks in these events and when it’s safe to focus on the short-term as opposed to the long-term. This sets up an exciting 2024, where I’ll compete in my first international race since university cross country. I’m coming for you, Gorge.
Thank you again to Brett Hornig and XACT Nutrition for the support leading into this event. Thanks also to Race Huron and Jeremiah, for a really cool community feel to the event and making this day happen! & of course to Matt Suda for the push in the first half. I will be back some time in the future at the very least for the 25k, hunting down John’s new record instead.
Thanks for reading & see you soon!
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Weekly Newsletter – The Magic of 2-Minute Hills
I love hill workouts in every form.
From 3-minute hills to 10-minute hills to 90-second hills, I LOVE MY HILLS.
There’s so much magic in a hill workout for trail running, as you get the muscle breakdown of all the downhills on your rest and recovery; and get to practice pushing harder in…
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025How I’ve become a better trail runner by running less on trails
I knew I needed to prioritize my “speed” in 2025 to get faster. But I didn’t realize how quickly we could make cosmic changes just from more of an emphasis on one thing: Road running (i.e. running economy and efficiency).
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025The importance of mobility work for trail runners & injury-prone athletes
As I’ve continued to endure injuries even despite the diligent attention to this piece of the puzzle, I’ve reflected on how I can make sure my mobility is properly attended to as much as my runs. Here are my best tips for prioritizing mobility, and why it’s so essential for trail runners and injury-prone athletes…
by Rhys DesmondApril 29, 2025April 29, 2025#MatthewFarquharson #MyJourney #RaceHuron #RaceRecaps #Races #Running #TheBadThing #TheBadThing50k #UltraRunning
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The Bad Thing 50K – Race Recap – Racing Smarter, Not Harder
I almost quit running altogether.
From 2009 to 2018, I did well in school. But I struggled to be smart when it came to running. After hitting the final straw with a torn hamstring in 2018, I took four years to fall back in love with the sport. Normally love like this would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same traps, especially since I only fell back in love as a coping mechanism.
Just a little over a year ago, I left a job I loved for greater money and career progression. For some reason, I never anticipated how much of my identity, community and love for my own self had been built around that job. So when I left, the decision naturally devastated me, and my two best friends.
About a month into the devastation, we tried to have brunch together. It went horribly wrong. Later that day I tried to find something in life that I could cling onto and remembered a dream I had in high school of becoming an ultra runner.
After a quick google search, the first race to pop up was The Bad Thing 50k, which I recognized from a book I had in high school. I decided to give myself a full year to train for the event and make sure I was ready to run the obscene distance.
Naturally, love like that would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same trap. I went too hard, too fast, without any knowledge of fuelling whatsoever, and made the Plantar Fasciitis I already had at that point explode. While cycling on the sidelines of the sport, I discovered the Golden Trail World Series and realized that ‘Trail Running’ was a thing.
It sounded perfect for me. It also sounded like what I had already done my entire running career, having grown up next to Medway Valley in London.
I started to research more and more, and The Bad Thing fell slightly off my radar as I devised my plan to get back healthy and start racing.
In my first year of competitive ultramarathon/trail running, I wanted to run the most competitive trail races in Ontario.
When devising my 2023 scheme, The Bad Thing 50k, being so late in the year, felt like somewhat of an afterthought. Sulphur Springs, being the most competitive and professionalized would be my ‘A’ race. Falling Water, being the most adjacent to my own strengths of downhill and technical trail running, would be my ‘B’ race. Tally in the Valley 6-hour, being a unique format, would be something fun I tacked into the mix. Notice anything missing? The Bad Thing remained an afterthought.
But after Sulphur Springs, it only took a few conversations with my coach Brett Hornig to forego Tally in the Valley and sign up for The Bad Thing later in the year instead, ensuring I’d have more time to focus on running my best race at Falling Water. Leading into August, everything played out as planned.
Fast forward to the months leading up to The Bad Thing, and I had a few things on my mind. Times were historically slower. Matt Farquharson had run the two fastest times (both in the 4h16-4h20 range). Together (for a few seconds), we ran 3h46 at Sulphur Springs. So something wasn’t quite aligning.
Seeing the elevation profile and the amount of road time, I wasn’t sure why times were historically slower. Was it the early start with the headlamp? Did they make you come to a complete stop at aid stations to mark your bib number? Was the trail really that ‘Bad’? I wasn’t sure, but I thought a 4-hour finish and course record could be within reach.
At the same time, I knew that I ran so hard at Falling Water (and Sulphur Springs) that my legs eventually exploded and I couldn’t really walk after either race. I knew that I had missed a few key runs in The Bad Thing block with illness, that the old hamstring hadn’t been particularly happy, and my abductor on the other side constantly knocked on the door to try and join the party.
A smarter race strategy I thought, would be to hold back a bit in the first 30k, stay strong but slower on the technical bit from 30-40k, and then hammer the final 10k on the roads. To some extent, that’s exactly what I did.
A group of us started at the front around 4:40/km pace, keeping consistent with slightly above what I intended to average. Eventually Matt Suda and I peeled away. I told him I’d take the lead when we hit the trail, using the excuse that I had the brighter headlamp.
Feeling comfortable, I got lost for the first time, thinking that a pink flag was pointing me to the left rather than the right. I quickly realized my mistake and turned back. At that time, Matt passed me. But thinking myself to be some trail technicality wizard, I hadn’t anticipated that the gap I put on Matt might have only been a few seconds. So when we hit the road, I started to stress that Matt had actually gone the wrong way himself and cut off some of the course.
It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him when we hit the next section of trail, and I told him to stay confident and politely asked that he let me by (I knew it was narrow for the next 2k or so and that I wouldn’t be able to politely pass him). He politely obliged, and I immediately wiped out on a bridge. It had been raining (possibly snowing?) for the whole race…and the two weeks leading up to the event. The conditions weren’t amazing. Not muddy. The leaves covered all that up. But the tight turns and excessive stairs were slippery, and the bridges were basically un-runnable.
Again, the worse the conditions the better for me. So I felt confident I could make a nice gap on Matt after picking myself back up from the embarrassment.
Then Matt did something I didn’t quite expect.
When we hit a flat section of the trail, he caught back up and put on a surge. He was breathing heavily so I could tell he didn’t want to overtake, but just hang on. I responded by comfortably putting on the fastest kilometre of my entire day, before easing into The Bad Thing Hill. At the top, I had to wait a bit for the bracelet and for them to take down my bib number. Maybe that perturbed me a bit and I sent it back down in what Strava thinks is the second fastest descent ever (oops).
The next bit was technical and I knew I could continue to increase my gap. But at the same time, the leaves entirely covered the trail, and the amount of white blazes and pink flags didn’t make up for that from a navigation perspective. That, combined with Matt’s flat speed, allowed him to catch back up again.
“I was just thinking of you.” I said, before we hit another technical section and I again made a little separation. The cat and mouse game continued for a while until we hit the next flat section. At that point he wasn’t breathing as heavily as before.
“Do you want to go, or stay?” I asked, thinking of Elhousine Elazzaoui from the Golden Trail circuit, who always clings onto second and stays there with the lead runner.
“I’m comfortable staying here.” He said, referring to the pace/effort. I said the same. Psychologically, I could tell that gave him the confidence to make his first big move of the day. We hit the roads at Ben Miller Inn and he took the lead for the second time in the race.I checked the watch to see that I had averaged 4:58/km across the first 25km, and was very much still on course-record pace. Meanwhile, Matt opened about thirty-seconds on me on the road, until the 100m of downhill stairs at the start of the next trail section allowed me to reduce the gap entirely. But that didn’t entirely matter, because we had reached another impasse – and one where I could not pass.
“This is going to get very interesting if you keep making moves like that on the road.” I said, before we mused about the flatness of London’s trails. Moments later, he took us 5-metres off trail, and I capitalized on the moment to pass him. At that point, I’m fairly positive that he took a break to use the washroom. I knew I was fine, and I knew that I could make enough of a gap that I likely wouldn’t see him again.
It was a dangerous decision. For all the back and forth, I likely would have chilled even more in the first half, had I not had him pushing me. So making a gap would be risky, as it would mean I’d have no one pushing me on the trails until I gave him the chance of catching back up on the road for the final 10k.
Coming so close to the aid station, it felt like the right call. AND THEN they didn’t have anything with electrolytes. Luckily, thanks to some smarts from Brett, I had a final bottle of just powder that I could fill up with water, plus two XACT Nutrition Bars and two gels (although I could only locate one!). I knew I’d be fine for the next 10k, but worried I didn’t have enough for the final 10k. I’d been doing close to 80-90g of carbohydrates per hour at the time, and knew that would tail off in the final 10k when I needed it most.
I downed some coca-cola and orange crush for the first time since childhood and made my way into the most technical bit of the course. I also figured out how to go to the washroom without slowing down, which felt like the coolest accomplishment of the day.
Since working with Brett, I’ve made an active effort to focus on the long-term rather than the short-term, and be smarter about every aspect of the sport. At Sulphur Springs, I probably would have been willing to die out there. I simply never stopped pressing on the gas.
But on this particular day, somewhere along the way, I got comfortable. I chilled out thinking I had executed everything I wanted to, and was going to get that course record. I think this is where I took it too slow, staying safe on the bits that were dangerous, hiking more of the uphills than I needed to, and taking some extra time to fuel with oranges and bananas at the 40k aid station. I had an extra gel somewhere in my pack, but I couldn’t remember where. In my deprived state of mind, I didn’t think to rid myself all of the garbage to find it.
I was too focused on what the feelings were going to be like at the end of the race and long afterward, and not focused enough on how much I actually had left in me to push. And even though it was only a few seconds here and there, I wasn’t stopping for the right things (like to find that gel rather than to eat an orange).
The 25k runners started to fuel me on, which provided a nice boost until I hit the road and prepared to hammer.
But then my heart rate immediately got high at the increased pace/effort, and I worried that I wouldn’t sustain that pace without enough carbohydrates. So I stayed comfortable until I picked up a final gel at a surprise aid station at 45k. At that point, I wanted to hammer it to the line, but wasn’t fully confident that I only had 5k to go. In my mind and the data I’d seen, the race would be closer to 52k, and the record would still be attainable (notoriously not great at math).
From 45k to 52k, I fought a battle in my mind of not wanting my hamstrings to blow up, but also wanting to lay down the hammer like my university cross-country days. I wanted to try using the washroom again without slowing down, but I also wanted to speed up faster than the last time I figured it out. I wanted to break the course record, but also wanted to walk after the race this time.
Safe to say, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts in my mind, and instead of hammering, I cruised at a pace that I probably could have held onto for several more kilometres.
That only solidified what I had been heading toward, a 52k day where I wouldn’t break Matt’s record (although we had different starting locations and I ran faster by pace, I think our days are really comparable.)
By the time I hit the river at 50k, the course record had gone. The shock of the knee-deep cold water caused my legs to buckle to a halt and the first hamstring cramps of the day. So by the time I escaped the shackles of the river, I cruised to the finish in a fashion I can’t really remember ever doing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always given an all-out effort to the line of any race I’ve ever done. Even at Falling Water, knowing I was going to finish second, I murdered myself with a 3:20/km finish – a pace I didn’t even know I had in me for flat workouts.
This time, I simply clapped for the volunteers and spectators all the way across the Halloween decorations until the line.
It resulted in a 4-hour-22-minute finish – what I amount to be the third fastest time ever (excluding the 2020 COVID year which was a significantly different course). I felt happy enough that according to our watches and Strava data, that I had run faster by pace than Matt’s two course-record times. But I still felt like I could have given more if I really wanted to break the time. Maybe I got too complacent in the second-half about how smart I had been up to that point and chilled too much. Maybe I would have benefited from one other runner to push me more in the second-half (either in front or behind).
Either way, I walked away happy with the effort, but slightly disappointed with the time, even though I won and had nothing to be truly upset about. Sometimes racing smarter isn’t always racing harder, and that will be an important lesson ahead of a big 2024!
It’s been a cool first year in the sport and I’ve learned so much that continues to set me up for long-term success. Now I just need to figure out when I can make risks in these events and when it’s safe to focus on the short-term as opposed to the long-term. This sets up an exciting 2024, where I’ll compete in my first international race since university cross country. I’m coming for you, Gorge.
Thank you again to Brett Hornig and XACT Nutrition for the support leading into this event. Thanks also to Race Huron and Jeremiah, for a really cool community feel to the event and making this day happen! & of course to Matt Suda for the push in the first half. I will be back some time in the future at the very least for the 25k, hunting down John’s new record instead.
Thanks for reading & see you soon!
Enter your email address
Get inspired and join my email list!
Get in touch!YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY…
Weekly Newsletter – The Magic of 2-Minute Hills
I love hill workouts in every form.
From 3-minute hills to 10-minute hills to 90-second hills, I LOVE MY HILLS.
There’s so much magic in a hill workout for trail running, as you get the muscle breakdown of all the downhills on your rest and recovery; and get to practice pushing harder in…
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025How I’ve become a better trail runner by running less on trails
I knew I needed to prioritize my “speed” in 2025 to get faster. But I didn’t realize how quickly we could make cosmic changes just from more of an emphasis on one thing: Road running (i.e. running economy and efficiency).
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025The importance of mobility work for trail runners & injury-prone athletes
As I’ve continued to endure injuries even despite the diligent attention to this piece of the puzzle, I’ve reflected on how I can make sure my mobility is properly attended to as much as my runs. Here are my best tips for prioritizing mobility, and why it’s so essential for trail runners and injury-prone athletes…
by Rhys DesmondApril 29, 2025April 29, 2025#MatthewFarquharson #MyJourney #RaceHuron #RaceRecaps #Races #Running #TheBadThing #TheBadThing50k #UltraRunning