St. Albert ultra-marathoner Graham Glennie survived the recent Canadian Death Race as the fastest male soloist.
Glennie, 39, completed the gruelling 125-kilometre course in 15 hours, 17 minutes and 29 seconds for second place overall, behind Alissa St. Laurent, 31, the first female winner in the 15-year history of the Grande Cache endurance event at 13:51:21.
“I had done it two years ago and was 15 hours and six minutes so I was kind of hoping to break that 15-hour mark. Unfortunately things didn’t quite go as planned on the day as far as the time goes but it was still a pretty good day,” said Glennie.
The physiotherapist at the Active Physio Works clinic was pleasantly surprised by his final ranking out of 326 finishers, including 235 males, before the 24-hour cutoff point. In 2013 he placed ninth overall among 371 soloists.
“It wasn’t really something that I was expecting to do but it felt nice to be able to hold onto that first (male) spot,” said Glennie.
The Bellerose Composite High School alumnus lost track of St. Laurent after the second of the five legs on the course, which begins and ends on a 4,200-foot plateau, passes over three mountain summits and includes 17,000 feet of elevation change and a major river crossing at the Hell’s Gate canyon at the confluence of the Smoky and Sulphur rivers.
“We actually shared some miles in the first two legs. We kind of leapfrogged a little bit on leg two and when we got into the exchange point in two-three I spent a little bit longer in transition and she took off and that was kind of the last I saw of her. I think I remember hearing when I got to the three-four exchange she had about 10 minutes on me at that point and then she just proceeded to cruise,” Glennie said.
The fourth leg took some wind out of his sails but he still stayed on course.
“The first three legs went kind of how I planned it. Leg two, which is one of the real tough sections on the course, I came off it in my projected time. I didn’t feel too bad coming off it so I was pretty happy about that,” Glennie said. “As far as difficulties, leg four has a really long climb up Mount Hamel and that went pretty good but when I got to the top I really started having stomach issues, cramping and stuff that really kind of slowed my pace down the second half, so that’s where I kind of lost a good portion of time just trying to deal with the cramping.”
Despite the adverse conditions, Glennie was in “pretty good shape” crossing the finish line.
“Probably the biggest thing was I just wanted to sit down for longer than a couple of minutes and just try and drink a little bit and take a little bit of food in,” he said. “I knew there were a few guys not too far behind me and I wanted to stick around and see a few more soloists come in.”
The weather for the race, which started at 8 a.m., was partly cloudy with a high of 24 C and a low of 5 C.
“Things kind of mid-day did warm up a little bit but it didn’t get too bad as far as the heat goes. I would say the conditions were pretty good,” Glennie said. “As the trail goes it was pretty dry, although some of the downhill sections were a little bit harder, just because the dirt was so dry and loose so they were a little harder to navigate.”
Glennie tackled the Death Race several times in the team event before branching out as a soloist two years ago.
“I love being outdoors, I love running on the trails and definitely Grande Cache has some of the most beautiful view points on the course,” said the three-time Ironman Canada competitor. “I also really like the ultra community. We’re all out there with the same goal, which is to push ourselves but we all look out for each other, which is really nice. There is a lot of camaraderie there.”
The Death Race was Glennie’s big event of the summer.
“I did a couple of smaller races leading up to it just to kind of get ready. I might do something in the fall but I’m not sure yet,” said the 17th place finisher at last year’s Pine to Palm 100 Mile Endurance Race through the rugged interior of Oregon into California and back into Oregon in 23:12:12 last year.
FAST TIMES: Sean Saville, the two-time reigning Leading Edge RunWild half-marathon champion from St. Albert, completed the Death Race in 18:06:24 for 27th place overall as 23rd fastest male for 12th out of 91 finishers in his 30 to 39 age group.
