By Canadian Press

Canadian race walker Evan Dunfee ready for ‘insane’ late-night challenge

Sep 24, 2019 | 8:29 AM

Evan Dunfee would normally be sleeping at the time he’ll be stepping up to the start line at the world track and field championships.

In an attempt to beat the sweltering heat of Doha, Qatar, any events that take place on the roads outside Khalifa International Stadium will be held in the middle of the night.

Dunfee will compete in the 50-kilometre race walk — an event that traditionally has an early-morning start time — at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, which is his 29th birthday. He won’t arrive at the finish line until sometime after 3 a.m.

“The latest I’ve ever started a 50K is at 8 a.m. It’s insane,” Dunfee said from the Canadian team’s pre-worlds camp in Barcelona. “I’m banking on my couple of years of playing rec hockey at UBC, having games at like 1 a.m. to kind of know what it feels like to have to exercise at that time of night.”

Overnight temperatures in the Persian Gulf city are expected to average around 30 C.

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The heat will only affect the marathon runners and race walkers, as Khalifa International Stadium, normally home to Qatar’s national soccer team, is air conditioned, with temperatures ranging between 22 and 24 C. Both marathons will start at 11:59 p.m.

Dunfee expects one of the toughest challenges to be sitting around all day before racing.

“Every 50K I’ve ever done has been: wake up, eat, go and race, and it’s such a daunting distance that I like that, I don’t have time to think about it, so the idea of having to wait around all day, just letting that fear build up and the nerves rise to the top, it’s so nice having it in the morning where there’s not enough time to worry about any of that stuff,” he said. 

“That will be the interesting challenge to deal with, but it should be a fun challenge. It should be the same for everyone, so that kind of helps, knowing that ‘OK, I don’t have to be 100 per cent prepared for it, I just have to be more prepared for it than anyone else then I’ll have the advantage.'”

These world championships are unique in that there is no morning session. Events start in the stadium around 4:30 p.m., with many being held as late as 10 and 11 p.m. The men’s 100-metre final is 10:15 p.m. on Saturday. Day 2 of the decathlon is Oct. 3, with the final event — the 1,500 metres — starting at 12:25 a.m.

Canadian team physiologist Trent Stellingwerff said the athletes have done some time zone shifting, doing evening workouts, staying up late and sleeping in.

“The key is not the absolute hour of time but the relative time to what the athlete feels like it is. And because Doha is 10 hours ahead of Vancouver, in some ways it’s like doing a race at 2 in the afternoon Vancouver time,” Stellingwerff said. “But conversely we want to think about recovery and sleep patterns and normal human behaviour sleep patterns and obviously when meals are served and when the sun is out, so we’re telling (athletes) to just phase their day back.”

Doha’s time zone presents some “really huge advantages,” he added.

“They’ve all just travelled east, so they’re all going to want to stay up late anyways. . . so just go with it, stay up, and then sleep in until 10, 10:30. It’s perfect because breakfast (in Barcelona) goes until 11, lunch isn’t until 2, dinner doesn’t even start until 8 at night, so we’re in the perfect cultural context to have late nights. So that’s kind of how we’re playing it so that they’re used to staying up until 1, 2 or 3 in the morning kind of thing. On race day when the adrenalin is there, they’ll still feel with it and alert and used to being up at that time, and then the adrenalin will take over.”

Dunfee has never raced in the dark before. Lighting the course comes with its own challenges. Judges have to be able to clearly see the walkers’ feet. In race walking, there must be no visible loss of contact with the ground. 

“So the IAAF has had a bit of a challenge I think trying to maximize their ability to broadcast as well as giving the judges what they need as well as not have massive floodlights that create heat and add to the whole problem of why we’re doing it in the middle of the night in the first place,” Dunfee said.

Dunfee’s Canadian record is three hours 41 minutes 38 seconds, set in his controversial fourth-place finish at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

The Richmond, B.C., native crossed fourth in Rio, but was upgraded to bronze after Japan’s Hirooki Arai was disqualified for jostling the Canadian. Arai won an appeal, bumping Dunfee back to fourth, and Dunfee opted not to pursue a counter-appeal. In his statement, Dunfee wrote “I will sleep soundly tonight, and for the rest of my life, knowing I made the right decision. I will never allow myself to be defined by the accolades I receive, rather the integrity I carry through life.”

Dunfee was fifth in the 20K event at last month’s Pan Am Games in Lima. He flew from Peru to St. Moritz, Switzerland for a month of altitude training. He’s hoping for a top-eight finish in Doha after struggling at the 50K distance the past couple of years.  

“I was so close to a medal in Rio, so now the goal is to win medals, and that’s sort of blown up disastrously in my face the last two years,” he said — Dunfee has pushed too fast of a pace then hit the proverbial wall.

Unfortunately, not much from Doha’s unique conditions can be carried over to the next summer’s Tokyo Olympics. The Olympic stadium isn’t air conditioned, and there are both morning and evening sessions with finals in both.

In an effort to avoid the Tokyo heat, the 50K race walk starts at 5:30 a.m.

“That’ll be a 3 a.m. wakeup, so completely the opposite challenge 10 months apart,” Dunfee said. “So both present really interesting attempts to avoid the heat. The race walk course in Tokyo is part of the marathon course, and it’s the part where they’re not going to allow spectators, because there’s no shade and it’s too hot. Tokyo will be a whole different challenge than Doha will be.”

Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press