Greg Hetterley is one of 10 athletes from the U of R Cougars track team competing at the Jeux Canada games in Winnipeg.
He will be competing in the 1500-metre and 3000-metre steeplechase events.
But long distance running wasn’t always his thing.
“At first I absolutely hated it….just the pain and the hurting it just never seemed to end,” he said.
“But by the 8th grade when I finally decided to grow, I was a little chubby kid growing up, but after puberty I kind of thinned out, and kind of took to it and started winning races and when you start winning you kind of start liking it”.
Last season, Hetterley won the conference championship in the 1000 metre race for the University of Regina.
This year, he is entering his 3rd season, and has his sights set on more titles. But he also has goals beyond that, like seeing how far he can push himself.
Last year he competed in the World Mountain Running Championships in Bulgaria, which is an 8 kilometre course straight up a mountain.
Down the road he wants to take it a lot farther than that… Even farther than 42.2 kilometers, which is the distance of a marathon.
“What I want to do is a little more insane than marathon running. I want to do Ultra Marathons when I’m done track which is like anything longer then a marathon, so like 50kms, 50 miles, 100 mile races. It is all about the challenges,” he said.
I just want things to keep getting progressively harder….and see what my body can do.”
Congratulations for going the extra mile, Greg. You are this week’s Global Sports MVP.