Le Blog Ultra Distance

Näak athlete Kylee Toth wrote an amazing article about her experience with high altitude sky running in Italy, and it is a mind-blowing experience to say the least. Read along with Kylee's journey to find out how her experience grinding through the mountains of Italy played out, and everything she learned from the journey.

In March 2021, a group of determined long-time friends set off on a mind-blowing excursion. Their mission; to cross Canada on the longest North-South crossing ever attempted. 7 months of skiing, canoeing, and biking through polar bear territories, arctic windstorms, and flooding. This is Expedition AKOR.

Follow along as the team recounts their treacherous journey, from Nunavut to Ontario, powered by nothing but the human body, will, and determination.

Kylee Toth, a professional ski mountaineer and elite athlete in the Näak family, has written you an incredible piece for ski season preparation. Here are 5 key strength exercises you should do to get primed for ski season and the reason why they will get you going up and down the hill faster.

Not only is Kylee one of Näak’s elite ambassadors, but she is also a professional skier who competes on the Canadian Ski Mountaineering National Team. Some of her accomplishments include top female ski mountaineer racing athlete in Canada in 2015, North American female spring champion in 2016 and more recently, claimed the fastest known time on Mount Columbia in 2020! Not to mention she is a 3x winning Canadian Ski Mountaineering Champion.

In early October (2021), Näak Ambassador Marc-Antoine Forand crossed the finish line with an amazing time of 23:22:55 to take 2nd place in the annual Bromont Ultra.

Part of Marc-Antoine's victory happened not only during the race, but also in the process of raising awareness for #runfornoah, a social media movement aimed at increasing awareness about Down syndrome.

We talked to him about his experience at Bromont Ultra, and he gave us an inside look at his mindset, nutritional strategy, and the reason why he has been pushing himself to such great heights. Enjoy!

After months of travelling on the longest North to South crossing of Canada ever attempted, the team of Expedition Akor is finally on the last days of their journey. It's a journey that has been stretching for more than 7 months and one which required a lot of resilience and patience from our adventurers. Our friends have just passed the city of Sudbury, after which they cut south into the greater Toronto area. They still have about 500 km to go before they reach their final destination. They should complete this distance in 5 days, and their arrival date is officially scheduled for November 8th. We would like to thank everyone warmly, deeply, passionately, on behalf of the entire Akor 2021 team, for the support you have given to the expedition.

In the past week, the team has crossed the dividing line separating the vast Arctic watershed from the Atlantic watershed - where they have been since the beginning of the expedition. Now, when they see water, it no longer flows north but east! This is a very symbolic step for our adventurers. Another pinnacle point of progress has been made; they can see the US across the water when cycling. In 178 days of skiing, canoeing and cycling, they have finally reached the American border. They are closer than ever to calling their mission complete!

On this year’s labour day weekend, Nicolas Dickey, one of our proud ambassadors, and 19 other notable cyclists embarked on a 285km ride from Montréal to Quebec for the 3rd edition of the Rouler Sur Le Tabou cycling event. We received the opportunity to speak to Nicolas about this incredible cause dedicated to suicide prevention.

"It feels like it was three years ago. As if there had been three separate expeditions in this improbable journey." This week, Nicolas and Guillaume celebrated a special anniversary: their seventh month of the expedition! They are stunned when they think of how far they have come since Eureka. After some brutal days biking, they are finally out of Winnipeg. they entered the boreal forest and thus left the prairies with their winds and big trucks blasting past the group at 130 km/h. They have been occupied with steep and sometimes very long, unforgiving hills for the past few days. Yet, they say it is mentally much less difficult to bear than a headwind on the prairies.

Apart from some small repairs on the bicycles, such as a broken luggage rack, the team has been experiencing an exceptionally smooth journey. The people who cross the path of Expedition Akor are very kind and generous. Of course, when the expedition members tell them where they are from, the reaction is always the same: "oh sh***t, you guys are crazy" - which is not wrong. At the moment, two uncontrolled forest fires are raging near Hudson Bay. The day before yesterday, the smoke was so concentrated (the wind was blowing it west towards our cyclists), that they spent the day being engulfed in smoke. This, of course, does not make it easy on the team. However, they keep trudging on.