Chantal Demers smashes Bruce Trail section FKTs
The Ontario ultrarunner said her successful push to set nine FKTs in seven months has been a "whirlwind" journey
Chantal Demers has smashed her goal of setting unsupported FKTs along all nine sections of Ontario’s Bruce Trail this year, punctuating her achievement by completing the final 162-km stretch from Wiarton to Tobermory in 36 hours and 22 minutes on Sunday.
“It’s been a whirlwind,” the ultrarunner from Barrie, Ont., told Canadian Running on Wednesday of the challenge she has dubbed Project 9.
Demers, who has more than 20 FKTs to her name and held the entire Bruce Trail FKT (supported) for four years after running the nearly 900-km route in 12 days in 2017, had a rocky—or, rather, slippery—start in her quest to FKT all nine sections of the trail this year. On Feb. 25, icy conditions forced her to abort the Niagara section from Queenston to Grimsby 61 km into the 79-km run. She persevered, however, returning to battle snow and ice to complete the first section of the course in 11:43 on March 9.
She followed these with unsupported FKTs on the Iroquoia section on April 10 (144 km in 19:47), the Toronto section on April 23 (49 km in 6:07), the Caledon section on May 6 (71 km in 9:21), the Dufferin section on June 17 (54 km in 7:28), the Blue Mountains section on June 30 (67 km in 10:04), the Beaver Valley section in July 15 (114 km in 19:41) and the Sydenham section on Aug. 12 and 13 (170km in 34:55) before successfully completing the final Peninsula section this past weekend.
Although ice was the first obstacle Demers had to surmount, she says injury and heat proved to be the most daunting challenges in her Project 9 attempt.
“Because I wanted to do it in a year, the schedule was fairly aggressive. Many of (the sections) were two weeks apart from each other, and because of that, I actually had a bit of a calf strain after my Caledon section in May, which took a couple of months to recover from. So my Dufferin sections and Blue Mountain sections were a bit harder to muddle my way through. Because I was really hoping to do them all in one year, I just kind of dealt with it to get it done,” she said. “That was a challenge, along with the heat in the summertime. I didn’t have the luxury to wait until September for it to cool down. So I would say my calf and the heat in some of the sections were probably two of the biggest hurdles to manage throughout.”
The fact that the final two sections were the longest of the nine, at more than 100 miles each, compounded the mental challenge for Demers as she started on the Peninsula section in the small hours Saturday. “I was a bit apprehensive, because my previous 100 miler was less than a month before, so just kind of recovering from that one and not really knowing how my body was going to hold up to do another 100 miler pretty much right away was a concern,” she said. “I just told myself to break it off into sections and don’t think of it as 100 miles, because that’s just way too much to wrap my head around, with how my body was feeling.”
She said the beauty of the Peninsula stretch helped keep her spirits high. “It’s such a gorgeous section. I ran in the dark for the first three hours and really enjoyed the sunrise, so that section went by fast, and then all of the lookouts throughout were beautiful. The night was really long, though, because it was 11 hours of darkness. Once I got through the night and got revitalized by the second sunrise, I knew I was in the home stretch.”
Demers added that brief, friendly exchanges with hikers who were out enjoying the trail also made a big difference: “The quick hellos here and there help keep you focused and not running like a zombie.”
She said it was on a small stretch of road near the end of the section in Tobermory that the enormity of what she has accomplished over the past seven months began to sink in. “On that road section is where it just kind of hit me. I had some tears thinking about being done and the totality of the project. You’re just like, Woah! It’s done! I did it!”
Demers says she’ll spend some time reflecting on the Project 9 experience before figuring out her next running challenge. “I want to wrap my head around what just happened these last seven months. My body and feet are so sore right now, I can’t even think about doing anything long again,” she said. “But I am very excited to have accomplished something big, so the possibilities of what’s next are exciting to think about.”
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