Canadian Running – September-October 2019

I

magine for a moment your very survival

depends on you successfully completing

a 4 ,300-kilometre journey with one

very specific destination. You’ve never been

there before, you’re not given a map, and

depending on where in Canada you begin,

your route is very different from everyone

else making the trip. You can f ly, so you’ve

got that going for you, but you also weigh

half a gram and have a wingspan of fewer

than 10 centimetres. Good luck.

Yet somehow, every year literally millions

of monarch butterf lies defy the odds and

successfully escape the Canadian winter by

f lying to the mountains near Morelia, Mexico.

In forests of oyamel fir trees – areas now desig-

nated as the Monarch Butterf ly Biosphere

Reserve – these beautiful creatures blanket

everything in sight as they stay warm and

prepare for a return trip in the spring.

As a lover of nature and an advocate of

planting the pollinators that keep butter-

f lies and bees alive, ultra-runner Carlotta

James was more than just fascinated by the

monarch migration, she was inspired by it.

Running on the The Great Trail near her

home in Peterborough, two years ago, James

couldn’t help but notice that monarch butter-

f lies were all around her.

“I was running and I felt like they were f lying

alongside me,” James says. “When I run I

come up with really good ideas because I’m

so focused. It’s my time to let everything go.”

On that sweltering summer day, a new

idea suddenly popped into James’ head.

“I got really excited about this idea of

following their journey from the city I run in,

to the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico,” she

says. “We know about the journey because

there have been films about it, but we’ve

never run their migration route.”

With that, the Monarch Ultra was born.

By Dan Dakin

ABOVE Carlotta James running

near Peterborough Ontario, the

start of the Monarch Ultra

The

Magnificent

Monarch

Ultra

AS THE BUTTERFLIES MAKE THEIR ANNUAL

4,300-KILOMETRE ESCAPE FROM WINTER

THIS YEAR, A GROUP OF HUMANS WILL BE

RACING ALONGSIDE THEM

48 Canadian Running September & October 2019, Volume 12, Issue 6

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