Going into the 10th Sinister Seven race, Neerlandia resident Murray Tuininga just had one goal — finish in less than 30 hours.
It’s a goal he completed with time to spare, finishing the course with time of 24:40:00, was good enough for 10th place for men’s category and 11 overall.
The Sinister Seven, which took place July 11, is a 160-kilometre ultra marathon. It gets its name because the course stretches across some of the most rugged terrain of the Seven Sisters Mountain range in the Crowsnest Pass.
“I’m really proud of what I did,” he said. “It is really a tough course that goes up something like 6,400 metres of elevation gain, which is like three quarters the height of Everest, so it is not exactly flat.”
In addition to the elevation, participants had to deal with temperatures above 30 degrees for a good portion of the race.
Typically only one third of registered racers end up finishing, but this year only 18 per cent of the solo competitors crossed the finish line.
A week later Tuininga found himself in Red Deer competing in his first Spartan race.
Spartan events combine cross-country long distance running with natural and manmade obstacles.
In Tuininga’s category, the super solo category, athletes had to traverse a 12 kilometre cross-country track with 29 obstacles.
“It’s an interesting course. It is really hilly and they incorporate the [Red Deer] river into it,” he said, adding as part of the course participants had to swim across the river and later on carry sandbags across it in two separate obstacles.
At times the course could also be quite congested. Due the event’s popularity, more than 1,600 competitors entered the super category alone, the start times were staggered with about 100 competitors entering the course every 15 minutes.
Tuininga finished 21st in the male solo division.
Tuininga first became interested in the ultra category of marathons shortly after starting to run in 2013.
His first event, the 125-kilometre Canadian Death Race, in Grande Cache, he did as part of a team before graduating to solo events
“I wanted to challenge, set a fitness goal for myself and see if I could achieve it so I decided I would jump right into it and start training for these long cross-country type of races,” he said, adding he entered his first race 125-kilometre event as part of a team event in the summer of 2013 before graduating to competing mostly as a solo.
To train for the ultra and now Spartan events, Tuininga typically begins training in December with cross-country running sessions lasting anywhere from one to four hours. This year he estimates, he has put in more than 1,000 kilometres, not including an 80-kilometre warm-up event in May.
One of his favourite places to run is the Boneyard OCR facility near Peanut Lake because it lends itself to cross-country running and there are a lot of elevation changes.
Currently Tuininga is preparing for the 125 kilometre Canadian Death Race in Grande Cache in early August — an event he has done multiple times, including last year, when he fractured two of his ribs, at the 31-kilometre mark after taking a spill on a steep decent portion.
“I knew something was wrong almost right away, but I ran another 34 or 35 more kilometres before deciding to pull out,” he said.
In addition to preparing for the Canadian Death Race, Tuininga is considering whether he should enter the Spartan World Championships in Lake Tahoe in late September. He qualified for the event in Red Deer.
“I am not sure if I will go. Right now I am feeling good and prepared and am just doing a bit of maintenance running,” he said, adding the key to preparing for ultra marathons and Spartan races is to make sure that you have run the complete distance at the peak of your training and then gradually taper the distances off. “But after the Death Race I will see how I feel.”
