Why would anyone voluntarily choose to get up in the dark and head out in the damp chilly air at 5 am to run or walk 56 kilometres around a huge lake on a rutted gravel logging road during bear season?
The reasons are as varied as the fit, not-so-fit, old, middle aged, young, tall, short and in-between people who participate in the Great Lake Walk every third Saturday in September.
Brooke Hodson of Youbou has completed the walk every year since the first one in 2002, finishing with times between eight hours and eight minutes to 8:40:00.
He enters the event for sheer enjoyment and as a challenge to see if he is “still holding,” even though he is one year older. He must be, as his time this year was 8:32:39.
Hodson also walks to raise money for a friend whose grandson has a rare genetic disorder affecting young children called MPS, mucopolysaccaharidoses, an absence of a specific enzyme that effects the ability of cells to break down waste materials and eventually can cause stunted growth, unusual appearance, facial hair, hearing damage or heart damage.
“She raises the money and I complete the walk,” said Hodson.
So far, Hodson, who is supporting the charity on the suggestion of friend Floyd Augustine, has raised $4,448.
This year Jacquie Farris, an ultra marathon power walker from Victoria, completed the gruelling route in less than eight hours.
She surged across the finish line just after midday surrounded by bright red T-shirts labelled Sean Marlowe on a group of exuberant supporters, one of whom won first place in the 2009 Great Walk between Golf River and Tahsis.
Beyond the finish line they clustered around Sean Marlowe, a young man lying semi-upright in a recumbent wheeled vehicle.
This was Farris’ fifth time in the Great Lake Walk, her third as a fundraiser for Marlowe, a 26-year old former tri-athlete whose vehicle was hit by a tractor trailer in 2004 as he was driving to pick up a race package for a pre-World Cup triathlon.
He sustained a permanent brain injury that left him immobile and unable to speak.
In 2007, when Farris read that Marlowe’s single mother was struggling to get her son home from the hospital, she made an instant decision to use the Great Lake Walk as a vehicle to raise funds to help the Marlowe family.
Sean lives at home now under 24-hour care. With the help of Farris and generous community support sent to Lifesport Coaching in Victoria he now has a portable lift and a custom built jogging machine called the Red Racer, the vehicle he was in at the Great Lake Walk finish line on Saturday and one on which enables his participation in local Victoria events.
This year Farris raised $6,000, or $107 per kilometre, so Sean could own a recumbent step machine on which to exercise. Fittingly she called her fundraising campaign Step Up For Sean.
Four young women from Victoria — Candy Little, Stephanie Rabbers, Carla Munro and Andrea Coppard — raised $2,000 for a campaign called Afghans For Ellis Street.
The money will be used to buy wool so that 23 volunteer knitters can make afghans for the hundred beds in a new homeless shelter on Ellis Street.
Tanya Porter of Bamfield raised $4,000 for Covenant House in Vancouver, a safe home for young street youth. Lalena Scott of Crofton raised $1,700 for the Cowichan Cat Rescue group.
Rosie Child of Sooke walked the walk with her friends, Ty Cooke, Emily Clark, Haley Panek and Kirsten Gellein to raise money for the Lucy Child Memorial Scholarship to be awarded to students in the field of child and youth care.
Lucy Child, Rosie’s mother, died of breast cancer,
Gellein is also fundraising for the Thomas Kay Fund to buy equipment and training for Kay, whose rugby injury resulted in a massive area of dead brain cells and loss of use of one leg.
Apart from charity fundraising aspects of the walk, many participants said they were doing it for a sense of personal accomplishment.
Noni Baanstra, of Youbou, whose time of 14 hours and 35 minutes was 25 minutes less than in her first walk last year, said she was walking to see if she was just lucky finishing the first time.
She wanted to know if she really could do it, knowing full well what a big challenge it is with the hill and the gravel along the way.
“It has been really scary for me all year because I knew what was ahead of me,” she said in a telephone interview the day after the race. “Today I feel like I’m on cloud nine.”
