Gibsons-born Kimberley Doerksen recently returned to Canada after helping the Canadian team take silver in the International Association of Ultra-runners (IAU) 50k World Championship in Doha, Qatar on Dec. 4.
Doerksen placed seventh individually in the race with a 3:36:27 time for the 50 km ultra-marathon.
“It was an incredible experience. It wasn’t my event going into it, and I knew that I didn’t know how I was going to feel or how anything was going to go. But it was very cool to be a part of a world championship. They hosted really well,” Doerksen said. “We got to be part of the opening ceremonies and we got to meet people from other countries. Just the experience itself was second to none.”
Doerksen is a marathon runner; marathons are just over 42 km in length. Ultra-marathons are any race longer than a regular marathon. Going into the 50k, Doerksen said she was most concerned about coping with the Middle Eastern heat.
“But the heat wasn’t as terrible as I thought it was going to be,” Doerksen said. “It was about 24 degrees when we started and I think it got down to 22 – so it’s not like the heat eased off at all but because we were running at night we didn’t have the sun beating down on us, which made a huge difference.”
The course was made up of many out and backs. Out and backs, Doerksen explained, are when the race course doubles back on itself so runners have to turn around and run back the way they came.
“With that there was also a wind, so it meant that you had a head wind one way and then a bit of a tail wind the other way,” Doerksen said. “The wind sucked to run into, but it also helped to keep the air moving, so that made it a lot nicer.”
Outside of racing, Doersksen said that the food in Qatar was the biggest highlight of her trip.
“We went into downtown the next night after the race, and it’s all that Middle Eastern food that has those really great spices and humus and falafel and everything like that,” Doerksen said. “So we had a traditional meal out in downtown and that was unbelievable.”
Doerksen was back on the Coast last weekend for the Holiday Hustle 5k.
She said she’ll be going to Kenya in late January for altitude training. The reduced oxygen in the atmosphere at high altitudes causes the body to produce higher counts of red blood cells. Doerksen said it should give her an edge in training for the Vancouver Marathon in May.
