Some folks love a challenge. Some run marathons. Others climb mountains. Some canoe down challenging northern rivers in their home build cedar strip canoes while some sail the Caribbean as crew (albeit tourist crew) aboard an Americas Cup yacht. Some pedal bicycles from Kamsack to Yorkton and back in one day while others ride their motorcycles to the Maritimes and back.
This summer one local adventure seeker, or possibly a long distance runner, Rachel Sterzuk participated in a race which seems as daunting as its name, the Great Canadian Death Race.
Sterzuk, a local teacher is also a long distance runner. Her running is generally done on relatively smooth, flat surfaces, she says. These events this summer included running 10 km in the Moose Jaw Jog, The Health Foundation charity road race, and the Flatlanders half marathon in Regina.
The Canadian Death Race in Grand Cache, Alberta is a mountain race rather than a road race, Sterzuk points out. It courses up through mountains, along quad trails, through dense stands of trees, and through deep mud.
The entire race is 125 km long. About 600 runners entered to run the entire distance alone. About one third of them were expected to finish.
Sterzuk was the lead runner of a five person relay team.
All entrants had to complete the entire distance in 24 hours or less. Sterzuk's team, Team Prairie Doggers, made up of herself, former York-ton teacher Danny Jewitt, Lindsay Irwin of Weyburn, Doug Klassen of Kindersley, and Kent Bittner from Regina completed the race in 17 hours, 46 minutes to place 112 out of 256 relay teams, she reports.
Sterzuk ran the 19 km first leg. While she didn't have to run up any mountain summits and her course was considered relatively flat, Sterzuk says the hills she was required to run were flat from an Alberta standpoint not flat from a Yorkton girl's standpoint. "My flat involves running along York Road," she admits. This race course which started in town turned into about five kilometers of foot deep mud and water, she recalls. She ran through the trees trying to avoid the mud as best as she could. The trail suddenly turned into a very steep decline, which she felt seemed to go almost straight down. After a relatively flat gravel section followed by several hills, Sterzuk handed off the baton to Jewitt after two hours and eight minutes after starting the race.
Jewitt, currently a vice principal at Kindersley, had originally put together the relay team and invited Sterzuk to join the team. His second leg of the race, 26 km long, included two mountain peaks. He completed his leg in five and a half hours.
Irwin ran the third leg, Klassen the fourth and Bittner completed the fifth and final leg of the race about 14 hours later.
Sterzuk started the race at 8 a.m. and was done by 10:08 a.m. The last member of the team, Kent Bittner finished the race just before 2 a.m., she reports.
"We tried to go to every hand-off site to be there as our team member came into the hand off site.
Each team member had to carry a timing chip and a Canadian Death Race coin. The coin harkened back to ancient Greek mythology. It was believed by the ancients that as each soul that passed from the earth traveled to Hades, the underworld, the soul had to pay the old boatman Charon to ferry it across the river Styx to the other side. If any soul or, in the case of the Great Canadian Death race, the runner lost his or her coin, he or she wasn't permitted to cross the river. So each last runner on each team had to hand the coin to the boatman who would ferry him or her across the river to finish the race.
The event was just amazing, says Sterzuk. She thought she traveled a long way to take part in the race. She discovered competitors from Montreal, Singapore, New York and Hawaii. It seems the Great Canadian Death Race is world renowned adventure race.
"I didn't realize how big a deal it was until I got there," Sterzuk admits. The event's title sponsor is North Face. There were all kinds of booths set up. It was like a five day weekend sort of thing, she continues. Glass Tiger performed a concert on Sunday night with the awards ceremony held Monday. "It really was just a huge, huge deal. I really enjoyed it and I'm pleased that I did it," she adds.
Sterzuk admits she felt a little hesitant and awed by some of the competitors. Some of the solo runners completed the race very fast. The first place winner completed all 125 km in about 12 hours while the first relay team won in about 10 and a half hours, she recalls. She was impressed by the stamina, endurance and speed of the top runners.
It was very much a wilderness race. She remembers there was a bear on the trail on the third leg of the race, causing the runners to wait until the animal finished eating its berries and ambled off some 25 minutes later.
It was a very wild environment to run in and very different to any race Sterzuk had experienced prior to that event.
It was a huge challenge. Her 19 km. leg of the race took Sterzuk 23 minutes longer than she would normally take to cover that distance because of the terrain and the hills. "It was very hilly I wanted to finish under two hours. Then I realized it just wasn't going to happen with those hills. You got to a point you had to walk up some of those hills because they were so challenging, so steep," she states.
While she won't run the Great Canadian Death Race next year, Sterzuk may consider doing so in the future. Some of her siblings are runners so she might well put together a relay team with them. She has a sister and two brothers who all like to run. They all raced together in 10 km races this summer. "That would maybe be cool, to do that with them," she suggests.
Sterzuk thinks she would like to run a full marathon before she becomes too old to manage it.
She doesn't consider herself an amazing athlete suggesting she simply perseveres. Strezuk feels she should, and could, run more often and train more often, but it wouldn't be easy with all her commitments, including her three children, currently nine, seven and four years old, teaching and coaching at Sacred Heart High School, and working with the school musical. "All are big time commitments so there is a limit to how much I can train," she notes.
Despite all that Sterzuk believes she is still making progress and has achieved a new personal best time this summer. Her summer race schedule spurs her to continue running. She teaches her students and her children to make healthy lifestyle choices by running. "It's nice that I can be an example of that as well, that I'm doing the very same things I'm telling them they should do," Sterzuk closes.
