A Grande Prairie man has won one of the toughest endurance races in the world. Brandon Miller took the 125 kilometre Canadian Death Race Saturday in Grande Cache with a time of 14 hour and 26 minutes. It was also his first time running an “ultramarathon”.
“I didn’t expect to win at all; it was just a good day for me, I think. It worked out that I was able to put down a solid time, but I was not expecting that at all.”
Not only is the Canadian Death Race nearly six times longer than any run Miller had taken part in before, it’s considered particularly grueling as its five legs pass athletes through three mountain summits, a major river crossing, and more than 17,000 feet of elevation change. The cathodic protection engineer says he’d been training for a couple of years.
“I wanted to see if I could get it done, so really this is only the beginning. I was supposed to run this race last year but had an injury in the spring so I had to take myself out of the race, so really, after I got over that injury, it’s been a year since I started training really seriously again.”
More recently, that training included running some of the legs in Grande Cache. Before that, he says he got his start on his high school cross country team and has taken part in some local runs in Grande Prairie.
“I’m just really excited that this happened and I’m happy that my training paid off. I’m really happy that my parents were out there to see me finish this thing and that I was able to share the podium with Doug, also from Grande Prairie.”
Standing next to Miller on the podium was fellow GP resident Doug Howson. Howson finished third in the race with a time of 14:57:15. The two met at some of those local races.
Miller is taking the next few days off to nurse his sore body, but says he will be looking at other races in the future, like the Sinister 7 in the Rockies and qualifying for the Boston Marathon.
