Daniel Vasconez fell in love with trail running and racing by accident.
The 45-year old Saskatoon resident and Brainsport employee ran in early adulthood to stay fit and soon got bored of running the same roads over and over. He asked friends for recommendations about new routes and they encouraged him to try the trails.
“Trail running, for me, is fun. I am close to nature, the idea of going through rocks and roots and winding routes that not everybody knows or walks through, that silence in the middle of the forest is unbelievable,” Vasconez says. “And then there was a whole community asking me: Have you ran trail races? And I hadn’t known there was such a thing. I’d just been running casually, I wasn’t training myself to become a trail runner. But it was something I stepped into.”
Vasconez started trail racing seven years ago and has lined up at races across Western Canada — including the Beaver Flat 50 in Saskatchewan Landing and the Sinister 7 50km and Iron Legs Mountain Races 60km in the Canadian Rockies — as well as Yukon, the United States and Ecuador. He’s also a big believer in supporting the trail running community by volunteering at races when he can.
Last year, when Vasconez was looking for his next challenge, he saw a social media advertisement for the 2023 Eurafrica Trail Ultra: a five-day race with stages in Gibraltar, Spain and Morocco from Oct. 27 to 31.
“I was like: ‘This is going to be really fun.’ And the idea of experiencing three different countries is going to be really cool. So why not?”
Vasconez signed up and booked flights to Spain to tackle his first multi-stage race. He arrived right before the first stage: a 5km race with 490m of elevation that took runners from Gibraltar city square to the highest point of Gibraltar. Vasconez was jet lagged and facing heat, humidity and altitude. “It was the hardest five kilometers I’ve ever done,” he says.
From Gibraltar, participants were bused to Malaga, Spain for the second leg of the race and then to Cadiz, Spain for leg three. Then, they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to get to Musa de Belyounech, Morocco. The travel was as memorable as the running, Vasconez says. Participants would be on a bus together for hours, often on narrow and winding roads, arriving at hotels late at night and then needing to get up early the next morning to run hard. “It was so intense and insane,” Vasconez says. “It builds relationships … When you’re living with 100 people — between athletes and volunteers — for five days, doing the same thing, it’s really easy to catch a conversation with them and listen to their stories.”
Vasconez works full time and has three kids ages 10, 12 and 14, so finding time to train is no small feat. He does most of his training along the South Saskatchewan River — sometimes during his lunch breaks — and occasionally makes trips to Blackstrap Provincial Park and the Rockies. He knew many of his competitors at the Eurafrica Trail Ultra would have more experience than him in the hot, mountainous terrain that made up the course.
“It’s always a fear because I’m training on hills compared to the people that live beside mountains. As much as I can train in elevation here, it’s not going to compare to running in real mountains. So it’s always that fear about how I’m going to perform, how my body’s going to react. But it’s amazing how my body adapts to extreme conditions,” he says.
Vasconez felt stronger each day of the race and felt his best on the fifth and final day when participants ran 22 kilometres through Tetouan Mountains in northern Morocco.
“On the final race day, the whole time going up the mountain, I felt great. When I arrived to the finish line I thought: That’s it? I want to keep going! I wasn’t done, I wasn’t tired,” Vasconez recalls. Fun, yes, but also sad as crossing that last finish line meant it was time for him to bid goodbye to new friends. “We’d been together for five days in times when not many people see you: When you’re struggling, when you’re tired, you’re hungry, you’re upset, you are sweaty. There are a lot of emotions coming out.”
After the race, Vasconez took some time to travel around Morocco — and then almost immediately began planning his 2024 racing calendar. The EurAfrica Trail Ultra has ignited a passion for stage races and he hopes to tackle another one soon in 2024, possibly at the Golden Ultra in B.C. His longest race to date is the Iron Legs Mountain Races 60km and he’d like to challenge a longer race, possibly the Sinister 7 80km event. And, after reading about Saskatoon runner Caitlin Schindel winning the 2023 Puerto Vallarta by UTMB 50k, he’s keen to give that event a try too.
It’s an impressive calendar for someone who picked up trail running less than a decade ago.
“From where I started, and where I am right now, I feel like it has been a really positive change for me,” Vasconez says. “I guess my message would be to never close yourself to new challenges.”
