“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single
step” suggests a saying whose origins are based
in a Chinese proverb.
Someone neglected to tell
Michael Rouleau that he need not take these words quite
so literally.
“My running journey
started with Covid,” noted the 30 year-old former
AAA hockey talent who completed his first ever marathon
in full police garb (as a fundraiser) in Sudbury in May.
“When everything shut down, including the gyms,
I didn’t have any set up at home so I took to the
streets and trails and started running as a way to stay
active.”
“It started with just
running five kilometres – but then I started wondering
if I could run ten, and then wondered if I could run a
half (marathon),” Rouleau continued, in more ways
than one.
“That turned into a
marathon, then 50km, then 80km, then 100km.”
This past weekend, the long-time
Sudbury native was the last man standing at the first
ever Sudbury Backyard Ultra – but not before he
completed 25 laps of the hourly circuit that measured
6.706 kilometres in length. That’s 167.65 kilometres,
if you don’t want to be bothered to do the math
– and it was one more lap than Eric Smith of Stratford
completed and two more than the top woman, local phenom
Helen Francis.
“I started with a run
around the block,” Rouleau mused.
For as much as he knows that
what he just accomplished is pretty darn special, in many
ways it isn’t, at least not in his mind.
“I don’t think
I am different in any way,” suggested the admittedly
stubborn father of one who represented the NOHA as a member
of the OHL Cup contingent back in 2010. “I think
a lot of people can run exponentially further than they
think they can. Pretty much everyone has the ability,
at least anyone who is willing to put the time in.”
Interestingly enough, while
Rouleau has always been fit and athletic, endurance and
cardio were clearly not the priority, pre-Covid. “Before,
you might catch me on a treadmill or elliptical or stepper
every now and again, but really, that wasn’t the
focus,” he said. “Endurance training was far
from the focus.”
While he remains quite modest,
noting that any number of the 70 participants who started
the Backyard Ultra Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. might
have emerged victorious if the event were to be re-run
on Thanksgiving weekend, Rouleau might well serve as a
catalyst for someone else, recalling his own personal
epiphany.
“I remember a pivotal
point, sitting in my basement when I came across a You
Tube video of an event that was something like a hundred
kilometre race,” he stated. “I thought: there’s
no way people run 100 kilometres. I watched this video
and was in complete awe, not only of the elites but also
very much the “everyday people” that were
there, in all shapes, sizes and ages.”
“That really peaked
my curiosity.”
The structure of a Backyard
Ultra is that every competitor has one hour to complete
their lap – 6.706 kilometres in total. And just
to be clear, at 62 years, I can still do that distance
quite comfortably in somewhere between 45 and 50 minutes.
Most folks can. It’s a reasonably light jog.
The trick to the Backyard
is that you then have to be willing to get back up and
do it all over again at the top of the next hour …
and the one after that and the one after that and the
one … well, you get the picture.
This is far more of a psychological
challenge than a physical one, at least for those who
have put in the mileage to ensure a decent level of readiness
for the task at hand. It’s also that mental approach
that perhaps most sets Michael Rouleau apart.
“I humbly had the mindset
from the get go that I wanted to be the last man standing,
but knowing there are always so many variables: nutrition
and hydration, injuries, etc …,” he said.
“There has to be that belief that I can run 30 hours,
even though I don’t know where the finish line is.
That’s unique, a different mindset.”
“So many things can
change your day very, very quickly when you’ve been
running for 25 hours,” Rouleau added. “But
that was the goal, to go until no one else was running
– and I was prepared to go beyond 25 laps. I had
more in the tank to give.”
“It wasn’t the
end of the world to keep going, but it was a relief to
not have to,” he laughed. “I’m cold
and I’m wet and I’m ready to go home.”
Still, give the determined
local man a few weeks to recover and rest assured he will
be ready to do it all over again.
“My curiosity continues
to let in the idea of just how far can I run,” Rouleau
stressed. “The next challenge might be a 200km or
200 miler. Next year or the year after, it’s to
see what that limit is.”
It might not be a thousand
miles, but that first step that Michael Rouleau did take
has led him to some pretty amazing places.
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