Every morning for roughly the next 30 days, Megan Wotherspoon will wake up, tie up her running shoes and start chasing Saskatchewan’s southern border on a journey to fight cancer.
Starting Monday, she is running south in the province to honour her mother, who died after dealing with leukemia at the age of 38.
Wotherspoon is turning that age this year.
Her mother used to work as a forestry technician and held the land in Saskatchewan near and dear.
“The Saskatchewan environment was very close to her heart,” Wotherspoon told Global News.
“This run traces some of the landscapes that she lived and loved in her life.”
Wotherspoon is a runner and an experienced hiker. She expects both of those activities will help her along the way.
“This isn’t out of the blue for me. I’m also a long-distance hiker so this kind of blending the discipline of thru hiking, as well as endurance running,” she said.
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Despite the flatness of the Prairie landscape on which she’ll be running, Wotherspoon will hit all four of the ecoregions Saskatchewan has to offer.
“We start in the Taiga Shield,” she said. This ecoregion exists in the north where the province borders the territories.
From there, she will take on the next region, the boreal shield.
“Then, the Parkland, and then, of course, the Prairie. I’m really excited to go through all of them,” she said.
Her almost 1,600-km path begins in Stony Rapids, before she will start heading southward. She will run through both of Saskatchewan’s national parks, as well as past several landmarks.
Her whereabouts can be tracked on her website.
“Essentially, I’ll just turn (the tracker) on when I start running and then I’ll turn it off when I stop for the day. So, you kind of see me go very slowly down the length of Saskatchewan,” Wotherspoon said.
“I’m super excited because I’m a teacher and my students are going to be following along.”
Her site is also home to her fundraising link, where she is 99 per cent of the way to achieving her $15,597 goal at the time of publication. Wotherspoon is raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada.
She expects her trip to take 30 days, with her running 50 to 70 km each day.
Wotherspoon said the key is simply putting one foot in front of the other until she reaches the finish line.
“I think I’ll be so relieved and thankful to get to the finish line. Of course, we know the finish is not guaranteed in any race, so I’m very happy and thankful to make it to the start line healthy,” she said.
“Then, we’ll just see what happens.”
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