Snowshoe racing was once the preserve of a hardy few, but that is no longer the case. Clubs from Whitehorse to Halifax now sign up more first-timers each winter than they can easily handle, and the growth over the past forty years has been steep. One striking change is who turns out: women make up nearly half of all entrants, a balance the sport never used to see. The season calendar is crowded, too, with dozens of officially sanctioned races. At the Gatineau Snowshoe Classic, a fixture on that calendar, several hundred racers laced up their frames last February, and nearly all of them reached the finish. Getting there, however, is anything but easy.
None of those finishers arrived without paying their dues. Training for a snowshoe marathon takes a great deal of time and demands real discipline. Most weeks a racer trains on five separate days, keeping one of them for a single long session. Early in a plan that long outing might run only 12 km; by the peak weeks it can push past 35 km. Add everything up and a racer deep in preparation may log close to 85 km across a week. What goes on the plate matters just as much as the mileage, so committed athletes build their meals around lean meats, fruit, leafy greens, and plenty of whole grains to keep their engines running.
