A few days before my friend Andy and I departed for the Canadian Death Race, we received a disquieting email from a teammate.
“Not to get you worried or anything, but a mountain biker was eaten by a bear here the other day.”
Up to that point, we hadn’t really been worried. Although running 125-kilometers (78 miles) over three mountain summits with 17,000 feet elevation change in the Canadian Rockies is certainly no walk in the park, we were splitting the distance between five teammates. We expected to finish. Alive.
After all, no one has died during the seven years of the event, though kidney failure, frostbite, and numerous disqualifications for failure to meet timing cut-offs have occurred.
Of the 1,000 people that entered the Death Race in 2007, only about 210 were crazy enough to do it solo; the rest, like us, competed as part of a relatively sane relay team. I wasn’t worried about my leg—it was twelve miles with little elevation change—I had one of the easiest sections. Some of my teammates, and certainly all of the soloists, would be facing altitude, cold, heat, exhaustion, running at night, and possibly, wildlife.
This latter subject dominated our discussion on the long trip northward. From the highway, in addition to endless forest and sparkling glaciers, we saw big-horned sheep, bald eagles, and moose. On the news, we heard of kayakers being attacked by wolves; in the paper, we read about a man wrestling a mountain lion off his twelve-year-old son and then growling at it; from locals, we heard of Inuit teenage girls hunting seals by spearing them in the face. Canada started to seem less like our northern most state and more like the wild, wild, west.
As we approached Grand Cache, the small mining town in Northern Alberta that hosts the run, I read the terms and conditions of our race: there would be no aid stations on my leg (the first) and only two on Andy’s (the fourth and longest leg; 23.6 miles). This is unheard of in the U.S., where even remote trail runs usually have food, water, and basic medical help at least every six or seven miles. There was little, if any, chance for help along this route. The organizer’s attitude seemed to be one of if you’re not prepared, you’ll die, and we’re not here to save people from their own stupidity. I was starting to think that the Death Race could live up to its claim of being one of the “toughest extreme races in the world.”
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