Three Queen’s students will be taking part in a self-organized ultramarathon they’ve referred to as “Laps for Life” on Saturday in an effort to raise funds for cancer research.
The three students – Aidan Milne, Noal Keuken, and Nic Roussel – are aiming to run laps for 12 hours straight around Queen’s Tindal Field, kicking off at 6 AM and finishing at 6 PM.
While the three thought a physical task like this to raise money could be a good fit, but said that before deciding to embark on this challenge, running really wasn’t a big part of their lives.
Noal Keuken said they’ll be pushing themselves to the brink for this run and they’re hopeful that might make people want to donate more to the cause.
“I don’t think any of us are big runners, but we were all athletes growing up and love doing hard things and pushing ourselves to the limit,” Keuken said.
“We all thought [the run] would be really cool to do but we are not long-distance runners by any means which I think makes it kind of a a bigger effect because people are more likely to donate when they can see we’re doing something that’s kind of out of our comfort zone.”
Milne, Keuken and Roussel met through and are currently members of the Queen’s club Cure Cancer Classic, which boasts flagship events like the Commerce vs Engineering rivalry game that typically sees a sellout crowd at Slush Puppie Place.
Nic Roussel said that the club is always happy to support smaller ideas for fundraising from team members, and they wanted to take the opportunity to do something themselves.
“We’re always looking for new initiatives as a club and we’re looking for people to step up and start new events and try to contribute to our final fundraising total as much as possible,” Roussel said.
“Nobody took us seriously at the start everyone thought we were crazy and that we weren’t actually gonna do it but then once they saw that we got a bit of traction we got the website up and running and all that they started taking us more seriously.”
Not typically being runners, and only coming up with the idea a little over a month ago, the three students say they’ve been just “trying to get out on their feet” as much as possible – including competing in half marathons and 5 and 10 KM runs over the past couple months.
Aidan Milne short training process has been been eye opening for the impact running can have on the body, but that they’re getting used to it.
“None of us have really dealt with this this type of impact before,” Milne said.
“it’s pretty cool your body does adapt to it and it’s kind of open the doors and we’ve realized how much our bodies can really withstand. So it’s just a mental game on Saturday.”
The students are raising money on their website either by lump sum or on a per kilometre basis, and on Saturday they’ll hope to drive that amount as high as possible with a loose goal of running the length of two marathons during the 12 hour span.
After tomorrow’s run, however, the three young men say they’ve had more than enough running to satisfy them and don’t plan to be back on the track anytime soon.
