Steve Pitt - Running to Extremes

PUFFIN CANADA

RUNNING TO EXTREMES

STEVE PITT is a childrens author and magazine writer whose non-fiction book Rain Tonight: A Tale of Hurricane Hazel was shortlisted for several Childrens Choice Awards in Canada, including the Silver Birch Award. His novel Faster Than Wind was shortlisted for the Manitoba Young Readers Award. He lives in Rutherglen, Ontario.

ALSO BY STEVE PITT

Rain Tonight: A Tale of Hurricane Hazel

Guyness: Deal With It Body and Soul

Teasing: Deal With It Before the Joke Is OnYou

To Stand and Fight Together: Richard Pierpoint and the Coloured Corps of Upper Canada

The Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charlie Fox

Faster Than Wind

PUFFIN CANADA

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First published 2011

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright Steve Pitt, 2011

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Pitt, Steve, 1954

Running to extremes : Ray Zahabs amazing ultramarathon journey / Steve Pitt ; with Ray Zahab.

ISBN 978-0-14-317967-2

1. Zahab, Ray, 1969 Juvenile literature. 2. Marathon runningJuvenile literature. 3. Runners (Sports)CanadaBiographyJuvenile literature.

I. Zahab, Ray, 1969 II. Title.

GV1061.15.Z34P58 2011 j796.4252092 C2011-902356-3

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For my wife, Kathy, our daughters, Mia Sahara and Anika Ixa, and fellow runner Patrick Doyle

Ray Zahab

CONTENTS

ONE

LAST AGAIN

T he cabin began to point downward almost as soon as the airliner had levelled off from its climb into the skies over Vancouver. Compared to the six-hour cross-country flight from Ontario to British Columbia, this connecting trip to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, was going to be very short. Ray Zahab sat in his window seat and watched the mighty Rocky Mountains pass by below like so many snow-covered anthills.

This is crazy, a voice said.

Ray ignored it. That was the Old Ray talking.

Its freezing down there. Way below zero, the voice reminded him.

Ray tried to take no notice, but there was more than a little truth to what the Old Ray was saying. He was about to attempt something that would sound impossible to any sane person: running 160 kilometres (100 miles) through the Arctic snow at temperatures so cold that exposed skin could freeze in a matter of seconds. Even the thought of it made Rays knees feel weak, but he had promised all his friends and family that he would try his very best to finish this race.

The crazy thing was that Ray wasnt even an experienced long-distance runner. But here he was, about to enter an ultramarathon, an event that would push even the most highly trained runners to their physical limits. An ordinary marathon race was impressive enough. Legend has it that twenty-five hundred years ago, a Greek soldier named Pheidippides ran 40 kilometres (25 miles) from a place in Greece called Marathon to the city of Athens to tell his countrymen that their army had triumphed in battle over a much larger Persian force. And as soon as he delivered his message he dropped dead from the strain!

Since then, marathon races have been the gold standard of long-distance racing. The marathon is traditionally the main event of the Olympics, and almost every major city in the world holds an annual marathon race. For most participants, finishing one of these races is an amazing accomplishment in itself. Rays race would be three times as long, in snow and at temperatures that never rose above freezing.

But even a full marathon isnt the limit of human running endurance. People have been known to run more than twice a marathons distance in one day, and sometimes they keep running extreme distances for several days in a row. These incredible races became known as ultramarathons. Originally, most ultramarathons were 50 or 100 kilometres (30 or 60 miles) long, but some eventually covered thousands of kilometres and took several weeks to complete.

Ultramarathons became extremely popular events in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the United States and Europe, Six Day, Go As You Please races were held in huge indoor stadiums like Madison Square Garden in New York City. Organizers made a fortune selling tickets to sports fans who would cheer their favourite competitors as they ran or walked as many laps as they could over the span of six days. The winners collected their share of the profits. In 1880, a Haitian-born African American by the name of Frank Hart won $17,000 for covering 909 kilometres (565 miles) in six days.

Other races were sponsored by publishers to sell newspapers or by sports promoters who sold souvenir books, trinkets and foot ointments to the tens of thousands of spectators who lined the route. In 1927, Lon Scott, an American sports promoter, organized a race across the United States, from Los Angeles to New York City, to celebrate the opening of Route 66, the first highway to span North America from coast to coast. First prize was $25,000, which was a tremendous fortune at the time. Despite the hefty $100 entrance fee, the race attracted nearly three hundred athletes from around the world, including Britains Arthur F.H. Newman, Canadas Phillip Granville and Finlands Nestor Erickson, who were among the most famous runners of the day. More than seventy racers quit the first day, and by the end of the first week, the field had narrowed to just 145. Despite the star-studded competition, it was Andy Payne, a twenty-year-old First Nations man from Oklahoma, who won the race, completing the 5,507-kilometre (3,422-mile) course in 573 hours, 4 minutes and 34 seconds, or almost twenty-four days.

By the 1930s, however, Sunday afternoon sporting events such as professional baseball, hockey, football, boxing and basketball had begun to overshadow long-distance-running events, which often took days or even weeks to complete. The remarkable prize money dried up, and only the dedication of a few hundred extreme runners around the world kept the sport alive. Ultramarathon races transformed from money events to personal challenges.

Anyone is welcome to try an ultramarathon, but few people can endure the hardships of running such long distances day after day. Some races take place over a series of days; some are run in both daytime and nighttime conditions. Many ultramarathons are held in extreme locations, like mountain ranges and deserts, the Arctic tundra and tropical rainforests. A few runners have even completed the ultramarathon grand slam, which means they have competed on all seven continents and at both poles.