Thirty three runners took on a herculean task last weekend in an attempt to help fight cancer.
On Oct. 3, Tindall Field was home to the Laps for Life event, a 12-hour “ultra marathon” that runners undergo to help fundraise money for cancer research. By the end of the day, the runners had completed over 4,200 kilometres and raised a total of $177,000. All of the money raised will go to the Canadian Cancer Society to help fight a bigger cause.
To learn more about the event, The Journal interviewed one of the founders of Laps for Life Noal Keuken, Comm ’28, and one of the event participants, Evan Romachyk, Sci ’28.
Laps for Life is part of a wider non-profit initiative at Queen’s called the Cure Cancer Classic (CCC). Entirely student-run, the CCC organizes hockey events, like the Queen’s Classic, Commerce-Ivey Game, and the Commerce Classic, as well as the CCC Golf Tournament, to raise money for cancer research. Their biggest event is the rivalry hockey game between the Commerce and Engineering faculties, which raised over $330,000 by itself when it was held last year.
Keuken was part of the CCC last year and decided to expand it to include a marathon to help raise funds.
“Me and two buddies had the idea to do a 12-hour ultra marathon to expand how much money we raised in the year,” Keuken said. “So just the three of us did it last year. It was kind of unstructured, but we raised $47,000.”
Keuken is the only remaining founder still at Queen’s, as the other two founders graduated last year, but that didn’t deter him from trying to grow the event.
“I really wanted to expand [Laps for Life] this year, so I started reaching out to everyone I knew that would be crazy enough to try to run 100 kilometers.”
On the day itself, each runner attempts to run 100 kilometers in a 12-hour time span, starting at 7a.m. Beforehand, people can select a runner and pledge a dollar amount for each kilometer their runner completes throughout the day. There is also an anonymous donor from the CCC who matches the total amount of donations.
The runners are supposed to run for 53 minutes with seven-minute breaks in between. As the day went on, the breaks were extended but some chose to drop out due to exhaustion. However, all runners were able to complete at least a marathon.
Only three of the runners completed the full 100 kilometers this year, one of them being Romachyk.
“Noal started talking to me […] and he was like ‘do you want to try [Laps for Life] this year?’ I was like, ‘yeah, I’ll give it a shot,’” Romachyk said.
He said the most amount he’d ever ran before the event was 21 kilometers.
However, he has done multiple swimming and biking marathons, including swimming to Wolfe Island and back.
“I was kind of nervous,” he commented on the idea of trying to run 100 kilometres. “To be honest, I would never have done this if I didn’t see [Keuken] doing it last year. I would have thought that it was mentally impossible.”
Romachyk said he “hit a wall” around the 30-kilometer mark and started becoming nauseous. However, he pushed on and stayed deep into the night to complete the full 100 kilometers.
“It was definitely a battle,” he said. “However, as you see other people do it, then you believe that you can do it as well.”
Keuken also wanted to emphasize that many of the runners, like Romachyk, were not professional runners, which makes their feats and milestones all the more impressive.
“It’s mostly recreational [runners]. It’s just a group of people that went out and tried to do a mentally tough challenge for a good cause. That’s really what the event is,” Keuken said.
Tags
Canadian Cancer Society, Running
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