On May 15, 2022 I started my run at the Terry Fox monument in St. John's, NL at 5:19 am. My goal was to run 105 kilometres everyday for the duration of the 7200 km journey in hopes to Break Al Howie's 1991 record of 72 days 10 hours. The first nine days were very challenging given the terrain of the TransCanada highway in Newfoundland and knowing that the first ten days are always the hardest with TransCon runs. I arrived at the Port Aux Basques ferry terminal at the end of day nine and took the overnight ferry to North Sydney to start the mornings run on the mainland of Canada. Day ten, running in Nova Scotia I fell into a strong routine of running 105 kms per day.
I would typically start every morning at 5 am after being driven to the location I finished the day prior. My crew members would pin the end of day location and physically mark the exact finishing location of the day prior. At the start of each day, I would always walk east 25 to 100 meters of where I pinned the previous night to ensure I was doubling up on the distance assuring the entire distance across Canada was covered. My crew members, Coros and Strava data, and the independent filmmaker can all attest to this accuracy. I would run alone, with other runners, or sometimes with crew members.
For certain crew members, their Strava data will correspond for the first 20 kms of the day, however some crew members ran up to 70kms a day with me. My crew vehicle would then meet me 20 kms ahead with the tail gate open to replenish my food stores, hydration bottles, reapply sunscreen, lube.... as needed. My routine which stayed consistent throughout the entire run with only minor changes was seeing my crew vehicle at run start, 20 kms, 40 kms, 50 kms, 60 kms, 70 kms, 80 kms, 90 kms, 100 kms, and to finish the day at 105 kms. My crew members would routinely walk me out a protien/recovery smoothie with one km of the run remaining and I would walk it in while drinking it.
My plan was to walk 6 times throughout the day totalling no more than 6 kms which I routinely used in the final 25 kms which you can see in my Strava data. Upon the end of day I would stop my Coros Vertix 2 (my official record keeper) and stop my Garmin In Reach which was used as a public live tracker updating every 2 minutes and hosted on the Performance Tea website. My crew would mark the spot both physically and pin it on their phones. We would then drive away to where my crew chief booked us at the closest hotel. We would have dinner ordered in advance and delivered to the hotel room. Upon getting to the hotel I would shower then immediately do body care, then eat dinner in my recovery boots and typically fall asleep no later than 8:30 pm. The alarm would sound typically between 3:45 and 4:15 am, my crew would have all my devices charged, oatmeal and coffee ready, I'd eat while using the Theragun and try my best to get back to the end location of the previous day by no later than 5 am to start running again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I broke up the crewing duties in to 6 parts across Canada. We flew crew members to specific locations. The crew legs were:
- St. John's to Fredericton which was crewed by Lana Rae Ledene.
- Wayne Gaudet and Myron Tetrault from Fredericton, NB to Ottawa, ON
- Dan Proctor from Ottawa, ON to Thunder Bay, ON
- Matt Shepard from Thunder Bay, ON to Brandon, MB
- Mike Huber and Joel Campbell from Brandon, MB to Medicine Hat, AB.
- Lana Rae Ledene from Medicine Hat, AB to Victoria, BC.
Several of my crew including; Myron Tetrault, Matt Shepard, Mike Huber, and Joel Campbell ran significant portions alongside me, sometimes as much as 70 kms per day and can be found on their public Strava, Instagram, and Facebook profiles. Lana Ledene and Wayne Gaudent also ran with me, but do not leverage Strava or Facebook to make their runs public. We leveraged the app called Life 360 for the crew, filmmaker and myself to use to track one another at all times. Each crew member is signing an affidavit attesting to:
- the dates/locations they were providing crew support
- confirmation that I physically ran each kilometre that was logged on Strava and Coros
Other runners such as Kevin Barata, an RCMP officer in British Columbia who ran for two days with me the final two days, his information can be found on Strava and will correlate to my data.
My daily public social media posts on Facebook and Instagram include many comments from followers indicating that they saw me running across Canada. These comments can also act as a signature to where I was.
For the entirety of the run I was accompanied by an independent filmmaker Vera Neverkevich Hill to create a feature length documentary. For the purposes of her film, Vera collected over 100 waivers from individuals who interacted with me at different times or ran with me. These individuals who will be in the documentary can also act as witness statements. The footage that Vera captured and the subsequent documentary will also serve as proof of legitimacy.
My consistency with my plan, pacing strategy, and fuelling strategy, proved to be my strength during this run. My consistent 105 km days upon the mainland with an increase to daily mileage through Ontario, and the prairie provinces allowed my goal of 67 days to stay in my sights. My mental approach not to let negative thoughts take over while running created a positive and optimistic attitude for myself and the crew members involved. Upon getting to and running the final province of British Columbia I started feeling the strain of the past 60 days and felt that my gas tank was emptying. The final push through the Canadian Rocky Mountains was a significant strain but one that I physically and mentally managed well. The final two days running from Hope to Victoria saw many runners running with me alongside many media outlets filming and writing about this record breaking run. I finished running the mainland of Canada escorted for final 5 kms by the RCMP's Emergency Response Team. I took the ferry from Tswwassen to the Swartz Bay terminal on Vancouver Island to finish the remaining 34 kms of the run to Mile 0 and ultimately finishing the run at the Terry Fox monument in Victoria, British Columbia on July 21, 2022. 67 days, 10 hours, and 27 minutes after starting the run on May 15 in St. John's, Newfoundland.
SPECIAL NOTE* IN A SEPERATE EMAIL WE SENT ALL THE COROS GPX FILES (69) AS THEY WERE TOO LARGE TO ATTACH HERE.