For the second year in a row, the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee (GVRAT) has been won by a Canadian, and once again in a record-breaking performance.
Varden Morris, 50, who lives in Calagary, Alberta and is from Jamaica, completed the 1,000K distance (a little more than 621 miles) in 9 days and 23 hours, averaging more than 100K a day. Morris beat out fellow Canadians Matthew Shepard, 33, and Crissy Parsons, 40, who finished in 13 days and 15 days, respectively.
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“Honestly, I’m in disbelief,” Morris told Runner’s World. “Just hearing stuff on social media about the magnitude of what I just did. I knew it was possible but after finishing and realizing that not many people have done what I’ve done, it baffles my mind.”
Last April, Barkley Marathons creator Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell came up with the idea of hosting a virtual ultra, giving people four months to run twice the distance of the Last Vol State 500K—and more than 19,000 runners signed up. One of them was Morris, who went out with the fastest of the bunch, but due to lack of training, he picked up a few injuries and was forced to slow down. He finished 148th overall.
After that, Morris decided he wanted to win the 2021 race, so he studied the training methods of successful ultrarunners and increased his mileage. By the start of 2021, he was running about 14 miles a day for a week before upping that mileage by four miles to his daily total until he reached a max of 36 miles a day. In March alone, he covered 965 miles.
On May 1, when GVRAT finally began, Morris set out to not only win, but to also finish in fewer than 10 days.
“My strategy was to run as close to possible to the same average distance every day,” he said. “Most people try to put in most miles in the first few days. My plan was to be consistent. I went a little above my average the first day by 10 percent, but I was doing mostly the same miles every day.”
Morris ran around his neighborhood in Calgary, with a routine of running for six hours and resting for five. He rotated through three pairs of Asics shoes, and for fuel, he focused on solid foods like boiled eggs with veggies, Jamaican sweet potato pudding, toto (a Jamaican pastry), and fruit, such as grapes, bananas, oranges, and watermelon.
No day was easy. Morris said he often found himself contemplating if he would complete the run he was on. On the first day, he picked up a groin injury that lasted a couple days. Another day, he ran through rain and hail with winds over 25 mph.
“Every minute was important,” he said. “Each day was more and more difficult. There was a sense of uncertainty if I would finish. It wasn’t something easy. It was something very difficult. We just took it one day at a time.”
When Morris woke for his final push of 44 miles, he was hurting but he knew he was ahead of his fellow Canadians. His wife, who also served as his crew chief, joined him for the first 15 miles of that final push, and his daughter ran the final four miles with him.
Celebrations included a big meal at home of meat and veggies and some non-alcoholic wine. With the record in hand, Morris plans on running back across Tennessee; part of the GVRAT format allows runners to run back across Tennessee as many times as they like during the four-month period.
Morris said he will be taking it much slower back across.
During last summer’s GVRAT, Cantrell faced criticism when he deleted a GVRAT finisher’s post on Facebook that described the runner’s experience receiving racist and homophobic slurs during his runs.
Drew covers a variety of subjects for Runner’s World and Bicycling, and he specializes in writing and editing human interest pieces while also covering health, wellness, gear, and fitness for the brand. His work has previously been published in Men’s Health.
