A Saskatoon teacher who is turning 38 — the same age her mother died from leukemia — is marking the moment by taking on an extraordinary challenge in her mother’s memory.
Starting Monday morning, Megan Wotherspoon intends to run up to 60 kilometres a day for 30 days, completing a 1,500-kilometre trek across Saskatchewan from north to south.
She’ll begin where the road ends, in the northern Saskatchewan community of Stony Rapids, near the Northwest Territories border. She plans to finish in the village of Climax, near the U.S. border.
Her mother, Louise Tokaruk, was a forestry technician who cared deeply about conservation and connection to land. She died from leukemia in 1995, when Wotherspoon was six years old.
“As I’m approaching this age, I definitely think about her as a young parent and fighting such a difficult battle,” Wotherspoon said. “It was kind of hard for me to approach the time where her story ended.”
Wotherspoon decided to run through four major ecozones — taiga shield, boreal shield, boreal plain and prairie — in four different Treaty territories, while raising money for cancer research.
“I wanted to do something to honour her and just do something to, I guess, connect with her as well,” Wotherspoon said.
Wotherspoon is no stranger to running long distances.
She’s an ultramarathoner who has previously completed big races, including 100 kilometres in the Klondike Ultra and 160 kilometres in the Soul Ultra Marathon.
But running more than a marathon every day for a month is ambitious.
She isn’t taking the shortest route, either. She’ll stick mostly to rural, gravel roads, which are easier on a runner’s body than pavement.
“This is something that I’ve never done before, kind of that accumulative fatigue, I guess, over days and days,” she said.
Wotherspoon arrived in Stony Rapids over the weekend with her brother, father and stepmother, who will serve as her support team for the first and final legs of the trip. She plans to visit the Stony Rapids school Monday morning, and then start the run. Other family members and friends will support her along different legs of the journey.
“Running for her mom, and bringing back all those emotions and memories. It’s a wonderful tribute,” Brad Tokaruk said about his daughter’s project.
Tokaruk, who will drive a truck camper behind his daughter, said he’s “proud and amazed” by her athletic prowess and her fundraising efforts.
The goal is to raise $10 for every kilometre she runs, to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada.
Tokaruk said the form of leukemia that claimed Wotherspoon’s mom at age 38 would be curable today with medication.
“Research is the key,” he said.
Wotherspoon said she draws strength from other runners who have taken on daunting runs.
“I would be remiss not to mention Terry Fox as an inspiration. I feel like all of us runners are inspired by his story,” she said.
Fox ran the equivalent of a full marathon every single day, with a prosthetic leg, during his Marathon of Hope.
People can follow Wotherspoon’s progress through a ‘live tracker’ on her website.
She works as a student support teacher at St. Michael’s Community School in Saskatoon, and will share running updates with students.
“I definitely connected it to some Treaty education, which I’m super excited about,” she said.
She expects to finish the run in the third week of June near Climax, where her mother was born.
