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Mark Kent: The first run across Canada

Mark Kent

By David Carroll

When Mark Kent ran across Canada, he did it on a diet of Carnation Instant Breakfast and orange-flavoured Tang.

It was 1974. Energy gels and protein bars didn’t exist. The Nike Waffle Trainer had just been released. Highway signs were in miles per hour. Tim Hortons had only 40 locations.

“Nowadays you’ll find a Tim’s at every corner,” Kent remarks. “But back then, it was impossible to find food along the Trans-Canada Highway.”

The 17-year-old high school student rounded out his diet with an estimated 791 oranges and nearly 2,000 vitamin pills. Whenever he passed through a city or town, he filled up on steak and potatoes.

“I only had 7 per cent body fat, and my doctor warned me not to lose more than 10 pounds. So I ate as much as I could and I weighed myself four times every day. I usually lost five pounds during the day and put it back on at night.”

Mark Kent wanted to do something different. Something that had never been done before. He decided to run across Canada.

“Back then, running wasn’t very popular,” Kent says. “But I just loved it. I thought it would be a great way to see the country. And I loved the idea that I’d be the first. I was really drawn to the idea that nobody had done it before.”

Mark Kent

Kent also wanted to do something meaningful. That’s why he chose to run in support of the Canadian Olympic Association. The Association helped fund aspiring Olympic athletes, which Mark considered himself to be. He dreamed of competing in two years time in Montreal.

But there was a hitch. Kent’s parents – initially, at least – weren’t thrilled with the idea.

“They couldn’t figure out why I’d want to run across the country,” Kent explains. “I think they assumed I’d forget the whole idea by the start of the summer break.”

That didn’t happen – thanks in part to Lloyd Percival. Percival was a celebrated sports coach and fitness expert and when he learned about the young track star’s plans, he put Kent on a rigorous training schedule. Suddenly the 135-lb. athlete was lifting weights and going on 70-kilometre training runs.

“My Dad had doubts until I took an oxygen uptake test,” says Kent. “That proved I was fit enough.”

Mark KentKent scored 77, which was off-the-charts. NHL players, by way of comparison, typically scored about 55. Percival declared Kent physically and mentally prepared to run across the country. His parents came on board. And Kent embarked on the journey of a lifetime.

Kent began his run in Victoria on Friday, June 28, 1974. He carried letters from Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Ontario Premier Bill Davis, which he planned to deliver to the respective premiers of every province as he jogged through the capitals.

After an official send-off by B.C. Premier Dave Barrett, Kent ran the 30 kilometres from Victoria’s legislative buildings to the ferry, which took him to the B.C. mainland.

“Those first three or four days were the hardest,” Kent recalls. “Just running out of Vancouver, it all seemed so daunting. It was a ‘what have I done?’ sort of feeling. But once I got into the Rockies, things actually got better. It was so beautiful there; I didn’t even mind the hills.”

Kent was joined by his brother Gordon, who led the way in a wood-panelled station wagon. High school buddy Kevin O’Brien rode a bike beside Kent to keep him company.

Kent averaged 65 kilometres a day. He got up most mornings at 7 a.m., and ran four 16-kilometre sections. At 7:30 p.m. the crew would find a campsite and sleep.

Mark KentAs he headed towards the Prairies on the mostly empty and exposed Trans-Canada Highway, Kent found his daily rhythm. “I absolutely loved it. The only sound was the wind and my running shoes smacking against the hot pavement,” Kent recalls. “I had all this gorgeous country all around.”

It wasn’t all relaxing, though. Kent ran into a lot of bears in B.C. And in Alberta he suffered a stress fracture in his foot from the constant pounding on the pavement.

“I had to stop and rest in Banff for three days,” he explains. “But that was my only health problem, not counting blisters.”

There were other challenges. Kent ran through 35 C heat in the Prairie provinces and suffered through three weeks of rain in northern Ontario.

“That was the most depressing part of the run,” Kent says. “The shoulders of the Trans-Canada highway were coated in thick gravel. Plus, the shoulders were slanted, so I had to keep changing sides to keep from wrecking my ankles. I ran through 800 kilometres of that.”

Kent thought about dropping a rock on his foot – to make it look as though he’d been hurt. “I knew I couldn’t quit,” he said. “But I thought if I could make it look like an injury… It was just a fantasy, really. People were counting on me. Personal pride kept me going.”

Mark KentManufacturers Life Insurance Company was sponsoring the run. The company paid for the gas, food and telephone bills. They also ran ads in local papers across the country, asking Canadians to come out and run with Mark and pledge financial support.

Many towns and cities gave Kent a police escort. The police motorcycles held up traffic as he ran through the downtown streets to the mayor’s office.

As he ran, radio stations and newspapers sent reporters to interview the high school athlete.

“It’s amazing how small some of these places called towns are in this country,” Kent told the Globe and Mail. “Some of them have dirt roads as their main streets. I went into a town in Saskatchewan and asked the hotel clerk for a room. The guy thought I was crazy. He told me he hadn’t had an overnight customer in years. All they do in his place is drink beer and go home drunk.”

There were plenty of memorable encounters on the road.

“When I was crossing the border from Manitoba to Ontario, some idiot thought he was being funny and took a run at me in his car. Figure that out.”

And then there was the guy on the motorcycle. “He was a scary-looking guy,” Kent recalls. “He had lots of muscles and he was really big and he was the type of guy you just don’t cross. I thought he was going to give us trouble, but he was really interested in what we were doing, and he even offered us a place to stay for the night. He turned out to be the leader of a motorcycle gang known as the Black Spiders. He was a real nice guy.”

Kent remembers another interesting moment–when a limousine pulled up beside him in downtown Ottawa. A man jumped out, wearing a red tracksuit and running shoes. It was Donald Macdonald, the federal Minister of Energy.

“He ran beside me for a couple of kilometres,” Kent recalls. “We ran up to Parliament Hill together.”

Fifty reporters were waiting for them on the Hill–along with Prime Minister Trudeau.

Mark Kent“I was very impressed with him,” said Kent. “We were surrounded by microphones and cameras, but Trudeau looked right at me, and he asked me all sorts of questions about the run. He was sincerely interested, and he was completely oblivious to the press all around us. He talked directly to me, unlike some other people in high office.”

On Friday, Oct. 18, 125 days after launching his run, Kent ran the final 5K to St. John’s Confederation Building. He’d burned through 14 pairs of Adidas trainers, 181 packages of Tang and 120 pounds of steak. After an estimated 4.25 million strides, Kent became the first person to run all the way across Canada.

“I don’t really remember what I was thinking at that moment,” Kent says. “Mostly I just wanted to get back home.”

He’d missed seven weeks of school, but his teachers at A.Y. Jackson Secondary helped him catch up on his work when he returned home to Toronto the following Monday.

Sometime later, paperwork was forwarded to officials at the Guiness Book of World Records. Subsequently, Kent’s effort was listed as the world’s longest endurance run. Oddly, the Guinness entry also mentioned Norwegian runner Mensen Ernst, who, in 1836, supposedly ran from Istanbul, Turkey, to Calcutta, India in 59 days. This unlikely feat would have required the Norwegian to run an average of 148 kilometres per day. This makes the claim, in Guinness’s estimation, “improbable.”

Kent didn’t compete in the 1976 Olympics as he had hoped. Not long after his record-setting jaunt, he gave up running altogether because of back problems. He went into financial planning and now works in property management and owns a small contracting company. When asked what his four decade-old cross-country run means to him now, a warm smile spreads across his face. “It gave me a real appreciation for Canada,” he says. “Both its people and its landscape. I often wonder: why do people leave Canada to go to other places when everything is right here? It’s just spectacular. Even the Prairies. People say that it’s just flat, that there isn’t much to see. But if you get out of your car, and really look at the wheat blowing in the wind and at the light hitting the grain elevators–it’s so beautiful. I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”

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