Coquitlam's Marc Bremner knows very well now why they call the 125-kilometre foot adventure in Grand Cache, Alta., the Canadian Death Race.
He darn near didn't make it.
"They bill it as a killer and, yeah, it's a killer," said Bremner, who has done multiple ultra races before but none as terribly treacherous and torturous as what he experienced 400 km west of Edmonton near the B.C. border on the August long weekend.
Of the 360 competitors who entered the event, only 130 completed it. Bremner, 52, was one of the finishers, placing 61st overall and sixth out of 32 in his 50-59 age group in a time of 21 hours, 43 minutes and 30 seconds.
Bremner's two training buddies who also took part were among the 230 who did not finish -- for good reason.
After starting the race under sunny skies, competitors then watched as a dinner-hour storm blew in from the north, with dark clouds suddenly blanketing the course that climbs and stretches over three mountain summits, with 17,000 feet of elevation change and, later, a major river crossing. What Bremner really remembers is the pouring rain -- for nine straight hours. At one point, he stopped and waited the better part of one hour so his two training partners could catch up. They never did.
"People just weren't prepared," said Bremner, who, with wife Janet as his sole crew member, packed everything from rain gear to toques and gloves for the event. "When I was packing, I watched the weather [forecast] and started thinking, 'What if? What if?' and then started throwing EVERYTHING into my bag. You just never know."
There were several times during the race where Bremner, himself, considered packing it in.
"There was a point where the mud was actually up to your knees," said Bremner, a father of three sons. "Some people actually lost their shoes in it and never did find them."
Then there was the dangerous downhill dive on the second of the three jagged mountain treks that became so dangerous Bremner was more concerned about what was behind coming behind him rather than what lay ahead.
"It was straight down and really rocky... like I was running on marbles," Bremner said. "Then bigger rocks started rolling down past me from the [competitors] behind me.
"At that point, I really thought, 'What the hell am I doing here?'"
But onward he pressed, just as he did as part of a three-member team that completed Egypt's seven-day, 250 km Sahara Desert ultra in 2009 -- and in temperatures that burned as high as 54 Celsius. That year, the trio competed to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis, with which Bremner's young granddaughter, Reahgan, is stricken.
This year's Canadian Death Race was pretty much the complete antithesis of that weather wise, as temperatures at the mountain summits in Grand Cache plummeted to zero Celsius, with many bowing out of the event due to the threat of hypothermia.
After having to cross one 60-feet-wide river by gripping a rope in swirling waters as high as waist deep, Bremner eventually made it about 100 km into the journey to the infamous Hell's Gate gorge, which competitors can only get across via a large jet boat skippered by a person dressed in Grim Reaper gear. If only it were that simple.
Participants had to be sure to bring with them a coin that accompanied their registration kit, in which they were informed they needed to pay with it to get ferried across the Gate's wild whitecaps.
"No coin and you got disqualified -- and some people did," Bremner said.
After that, there was about 15 km left to the finish line. Even then, Bremner wasn't sure he'd make it.
"It just felt like an eternity," he said. "Mentally, that's the toughest part at that point. You're just running and hoping to see the lights back into town and get there."
Which he eventually did and, more importantly, lived to tell about it.
