Namaygoosisagagun runner completes back-to-back races

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY—Namaygoosisagagun’s Natalie Paavola recently completed the Reebok Ragnar Chicago 200-mile relay race and the Fire Fighters Ten Mile Road Race in Thunder Bay within four days.

“We’re all taking turns and we run right through the night,” says Paavola, director of health with Dilico Anishinabek Family Care, about the May 18-19 relay race. “Once you start there’s no breaks. One of your team members is always running at some point.”

Paavola says the team of 12 runners splits up into two teams of six runners, each with their own support van. As one member from one of the teams runs a leg of the relay, the other team drives ahead to the beginning of the next leg of the relay and waits for the other team to arrive. Then the teams switch, with one member of the second team running that leg of the relay and the other team driving to the beginning of the next leg of the relay.

“There’s some portions of the run that have full van support meaning that we can pull up along the road and support our runner,” Paavola says. “Other parts of the course don’t have van support, so that means you are either running on a bike trail or a dirt road that the van doesn’t have access to.”

Paavola says this is the third year that she and the other team members participated in the relay race from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin. Each of the team members ran about three legs of the relay race, ranging from about 13 to 20 miles in total per runner depending on their ability.

“It’s exciting — that why I do it, it’s exciting and I’m with a great group of friends,” Paavola says. “We just have a good time. We encourage each other and it also pushes yourself as an individual athlete. It makes you push yourself because you are waking up at three o’clock in the morning and you have to run your leg otherwise your team will have to pick it up. So it is a really good team building experience as well.”

Paavola competed in the Fire Fighters Ten Mile Road Race on May 21, two days after completing the relay race, along with relay race team members Racheal Anishinabie and Stacey Fiddler, both from Sandy Lake in Nishnawbe Aski Nation territory.

“I’ve been doing that for the last four years now,” Paavola says. “That was one of my first long runs. And I’ve done other half marathons since then. I really enjoy running now and I feel it really helps me stay balanced. It is also a stress reliever.”

Paavola says her family was always active when she was growing up on the land back home in Namaygoosisagagun, which is located along the CN Rail line at Collins, west of Armstrong.

“Because we don’t have road access, our community is actually trails,” Paavola says. “There’s no roads there, so any type of running I did was trail running.”

Paavola says growing up with trail running enabled her to do well with spartan runs, which involve running on rough terrain.

“It wasn’t new for me to run through mud, swamp or rough terrain or uneven ground,” Paavola says.

Paavola began running on a regular basis later in her life in Thunder Bay.

“I wouldn’t go for long runs — it was like three to five kilometres,” Paavola says. “Later, I started pushing myself and I found that the better and stronger I became with running, the better I felt about myself as an individual.”