“So the final time was 31 hours and 50 minutes.”
That’s how long it took Verner Alexander Lofstrand to run 100 miles on Burnaby Mountain starting Friday morning. What’s more, he did it for a cause.
Lofstrand was originally training for the Orcas Island 100 Miler race in Washington state.
But at the last minute, the race was cancelled due to high winds, so he switched locations to Burnaby Mountain.
“When they cancelled the race, I essentially said, well if I run this loop 20 times, it should give me 160 kilometres and 8,000 metres in elevation. So it will be equivalent,” said Lofstrand.
He started the run at 5 a.m. Friday and finished around 2 p.m. Saturday. Lofstrand said he had a team of people on the trail with him making sure he was safe, fed and watered.
He said he’s seen multiple other races cancelled recently due to weather issues like high winds, wildfires and flooding — and he said there needs to be a solution for climate change.
Lofstrand said people who enjoy spending time outdoors see climate change happening in front of them.
“Watching, you know, anomalous drought, and high winds, and lightning storms that only happen once every 10 years that are now happening five times a year,” said Lofstrand.
“Flash flooding that takes out entire towns. It affects not just people’s lives, which is obviously extremely difficult, but people who want to experience those towns, those areas as well.”
Lofstrand started a GoFundMe before the race. He’ll be donating half the proceeds to an environmental advocacy group that he has yet to choose.
The other half will be donated to Rare Disease Foundation, which supports research on “orphan designations” — the name given to diseases so rare that medications to treat them are hardly ever produced.
“These diseases often don’t get a lot of study dedicated to them, because the money is just not there. But it’s a worthwhile endeavor to look at these diseases for these people.”
He’s accepting donations to those causes until the end of the week.
But for now, Lofstrand is getting some well deserved rest.
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