Around the world in 80 days? It’s more like two years for English ultra-marathon runner Kevin Carr.
Carr, who is attempting to set the record for the fastest person to circumnavigate the globe on foot, first set out from Dartmoor, England on July 28, 2013. His 18,000-mile journey is not set to be completed until the same date in 2015.
And that’s just the travel time itself. There was also the 18 months or so of planning and the year he expects to spend on writing a book of his experiences “and selling more than two copies,” Carr jokes.
Was the prospect of such a huge commitment daunting? Of course it was, but that’s sort of the point.
“That’s why it’s an adventure,” Carr said. “It’s not an adventure if you’re not scared.”
Carr recently passed through the Westlock area on his “Hard Way Round” trip across the globe, which has so far involved running across England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, the Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.
After passing Chisholm on Tuesday, Carr kept mostly to major highways, running down Highway 44 and then crossing over to Highway 2 to travel down to Morinville.
His time in the area included stops in Fawcett on Tuesday and Westlock on Wednesday before he left Westlock County entirely on Thursday.
Carr admitted that being in an area with such flat, long horizons can be quite hard for a runner.
“You don’t feel like you’re moving. It’s very hard mentally,” he said.
If the roads were quiet, he could “zone out and ignore the horizon,” he said. But as he was sticking to highways, he had to keep an eye on the traffic just to keep from getting run over.
“If you’re driving it, it’s not so bad,” he said, noting he had to check his GPS occasionally just to make sure he’d actually moved.
Carr has been training to be a professional endurance athlete for most of his life, once cycling the entire length of New Zealand’s South Island, which is over 1,000 kilometres.
At the age of 29, he ran from the northern tip of Scotland to the southern tip of England, becoming the first person in UK history to compete the 1,250-mile journey unsupported.
All of his gear, including a tent that he camps out in most nights, is carried in a cart that he pushes ahead of him.
“It’s absolutely crazy for a budget if you stay in motels all the time,” he said, noting he was staying more in motels this week as he was getting over a cold.
After starting the Canadian stretch of his journey in Vancouver, his current trajectory was taking him south after travelling north for a while. He jokes that the North American leg of his journey will look much like an ECG (electrocardiagram) instead of the straight line he traversed Australia with.
He expected to be in Saskatchewan next week, but his goal was to keep heading south until he hit the Atlantic Ocean. Hopefully, he would avoid the worst of the Canadian winter, though he notes he had previously been in Sweden during winter time.
“It’s quite impossible to avoid the winter when running around the world,” he said, noting he may put on more miles in South America depending how things go in the U.S.
During the way, he is attempting to raise money for SANE, a UK organization that seeks to improve the quality of life for people afflicted by mental illness, and the Red Cross.
Specifically, Carr notes the Red Cross is basically the only charitable organization that operates everywhere in the world, having even assisted residents following the Slave Lake fires a couple years ago.
During the final stretch of his journey, Carr admits finding the motivation to complete it can be hard. After all, when you’ve done 10,000 miles, you know you can do it, so why bother for 20,000?
“The challenge is gone. It’s more like an exercise in being thickheaded,” he said.
For more on Carr’s journey, visit his website at: http://hardwayround.com.
