Why these Yellowknifers took on the Somba K’e Backyard Ultra

“I’m very happy with 12. I could have done 13, but I would like to be done now and I want to end on a good note, not throwing up.”

Annika Olesen has completed 12 laps of the Somba K’e Backyard Ultra and that’s where she is stopping. She began running at 8am. It’s now 8pm, the sun has gone down, and those 12 laps meant covering more than 80 kilometres.

Olesen was one of 29 contenders in Saturday’s event – the first one ever held in Yellowknife, which challenged athletes to complete one 6.7-km lap of the city’s ski club on the hour, every hour until they tapped out.

The winner would be whoever completed 24 consecutive laps or the last person standing if nobody got that far. In the event, that was Eman Lamvu, who called it a night following lap 16 as Saturday turned into Sunday. He had run 107.2 km with 2,973 metres of elevation gain.

Adam Long, in second place, completed the same distance but missed the 60-minute cut-off to finish lap 16.

“I wanted to mix adventure with physical activity,” said organizer Mike Lee, who runs an adventure documentary film business and is the president of the Yellowknife Multisport Club, which hosted the Somba K’e Backyard Ultra.

“This is running, but it’s strategic,” Lee said. “Everyone goes out together and you have an hour to come back. You can’t go full tilt and come back with 30 minutes to spare. I mean, you could, but you’re red-lining. You’re taxed out, you’re tired, you’re burning a lot of reserves.

“You can’t go so slow to come back in 59 minutes because you’ve got no time to eat anything, let alone go to sleep if you keep going. So you’ve got to balance it, and I find that interesting.”

Lee would have been running himself but for the toll raising young children has taken on his ability to train. He confessed to establishing this event in part with a view to competing in it a year or two from now.

That 29 people wanted to come and do it is “crazy,” he said.

“You just don’t know what kind of personal grit you have. Everyone is on their own journey. The amount of thank-yous I’ve had, I didn’t expect it. So many people wanted this and didn’t really know it.”

Christian Irving came having been persuaded by Braden Larochelle and completed eight laps – nearly 54 km – before deciding to finish.

“I had a blast out there,” Irving said.

Larochelle went further, completing 10 laps and finishing the 11th slightly outside the 60-minute window, meaning his race ended after covering 74 km.

“By lap eight or nine I was feeling it,” Larochelle said.

“The terrain is crazy. Obviously, everywhere in Yellowknife is crazy, but there are loose rocks, roots, ruts, soft spots, sand. You’re going through it all – you’re going down those and you’re going up them.”

It’s not like these people are completing the 6.7 km on a running track. In summer, Yellowknife’s ski club is a collection of leafy trails through rock, sand, boardwalks, dirt, occasional gravel and marsh. There are steep hills.

Herb Mathisen, like Olesen, pulled over after 12 laps. “Going down the hills, I wasn’t trusting the legs any more,” he said.

Mathisen spoke by a campfire next to the finish line. Music played on a boombox in the background, a giant clock kept the time, and about 15 to 20 support volunteers, spectators and athletes mingled between tents beneath strings of fairy lights.

“This event is amazing. It’s so cool, everyone’s so supportive,” he said. Cowbells rang out any time someone sighted an athlete through the gloom as night set in.

Someone handed Mathisen a plate as he caught his breath and discussed his race.

“I tried a couple of marathons in the last couple years and crashed both times at about 30 km. There’s a science to the eating and all that, and I’m not a scientist. I wanted to use this as an experiment to see how to keep your body fuelled,” he said, holding up a pierogi.

“It’s perfect, because you stop for 10 or 20 minutes. You get a break after every loop, so you can intentionally eat and drink. Pierogies. Who knew?”

Opposite Mathisen, Jake Roche was still standing. Roche had just under 10 minutes after lap 12 to take a breather, eat something, reset his music mix and ponder lap 13.

“I don’t know how many more I’ve got in me, but I told myself I’m not going to quit if I’m at the line. So I’m going to have to get timed out or I’m still going,” Roche said. (He recommended No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems, the Kenny Chesney album, to get you from kilometre 80 to kilometre 90.)

Olesen said she had spent a surprising portion of her day talking with fellow runners rather than relying on music.

“Because of the way the race is structured, everybody comes to the start line together every hour, so I did a lot of chatting with people,” she said.

“It was just a really beautiful day. Super foggy this morning, which was a neat way to start, and then watching it all peel back and the fall colours, it was spectacular out there.

“You get into a weird but good head space when you’re doing these events. It’s just like: this is the world. We just eat pierogies and run this circle, and then we eat some more pierogies.”

Olesen has always loved running. A cross-country runner at university, she was inspired by one of her team-mates to try her first 50-km race. She signed up for the Somba K’e Backyard Ultra because she wanted a focal point for her summer of training.

“I was out there for 12 hours and the time just disappeared. You’re in a zone that is hard to find in other areas of life. It’s also a little bit of a celebration of my own health and strength that I feel is very precious, and I try not to take it for granted,” she said.

“The ability to do something like this makes me feel really grateful.

“I’m not a road runner at all, and I don’t think I ever will be, because I just want to run on the lichen and the rocks and the tamarack needles.”