What happens when an ordinary runner decides to tackle a seriously hard trail race, while also maintaining a professional and social life? Here’s how one runner did it.
The Transgrancanaria is hosted on Gran Canaria, an island of Spain. The race offers several distances, including a marathon, but the greatest is the classic — 126 km with over 6,900m elevation gain, sprawling across singletrack, dirt, and gravel roads of the Canaries.
It’s part of the UTMB World Series, so no joke in terms of difficulty. This year, the Transgrancanaria race was held on March 4, 2022.
In a recent short film, The North Face is hoping to show what it takes for an average runner to prepare for, run, and cross the finish line in this race.
“You don’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I’m going to run 126k.’ It’s something you need to work up to progressively,” said Theau Marmey, the runner in the film.
Marmey, a 31-year-old amateur runner from France, finished in 20:46:07. Outside of running, he works in a leisure center with youth.
Runtime: 11 minutes
