Key Goals: Drive Climate Action, Draw Attention to Bird Extinction

Reprinted from GreenSportsBlog

June 24, 2024

Canadian endurance athlete Leanna Carrière is planning an unheard of adventure to draw attention to the existential threat climate change is posing to migratory bird life: Next year, she and partner, ecology PhD Dr.Timm Döbert, will take off on the Wings of Survival cycle from Alaska’s North Slope all the way to Patagonia, Chile’s Southern tip, a journey of over 10,000 miles. She would be the first woman to accomplish this mammoth task. As a warmup, the duo is taking off on a cross-Canada cycle, from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Vancouver, British Columbia, on Canada Day — July 1.

But this is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg of a life story full of overcoming obstacles and persistence. GSB spoke to the new EcoAthletes Champion about her incredible personal journey that led her to these mammoth cycling challenges and ultimately to the #ClimateComeback.

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GreenSportsBlog: Leanna, your story has as many twists and turns as, well, a bike ride from Alaska to Patagonia, so let’s get right into it. Where did it begin and how did sports figure into it?

Leanna Carrière: I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta and sports was a part of my life as far back as I could remember, with gymnastics and tennis being my early loves. I always loved the thrill of competing. As a teenager my eye focused on track and field; I saw runners, jumpers and throwers as the best athletes in the world and the fact that you could compete in many events was very attractive. As an adult I found out that I had ADD and so now I see that the constant stimulation was good for me. And since the ADD led me to struggle in school so, sport gave me a much needed boost of confidence.

GSB: Sports has so many benefits; this is one we don’t think of that much. What were your track events of choice?

Leanna: In high school, I ran the 100- and 200-meter sprint plus I competed in the 4×100 relay. And I threw the javelin, as well doing the long jump and the pole vault.

GSB: It’s always amazing that an athlete can master so many disparate sports. How did you do it?

Leanna: My high school coach said I was ‘kinesthetically aware’ so, for example, I could pick up a javelin and relate it to a tennis serve and get it quickly. Also, he said that my work ethic, which I got from my dad, was off the charts.

GSB: Where did that work ethic take you after high school?

Leanna: I decided to concentrate on pole vault — I loved the gymnastics aspects of it. And then, wanting to achieve big goals in the sport, I ran away from home in 2002 when I was 18…

GSB: …Why did you do that?

Leanna: My parents were not supportive of my choice to concentrate on track. They thought I should have pursued tennis, but I wanted to go to pole vault training camps in the Sacramento, California area. I was going to use my money, so I was going to go. But there were three months before I left, and I didn’t want to live at home anymore. I basically took two duffel bags and protein powder and moved in with friends and got a job as a receptionist to make some money.

Then I moved down to Sacramento for a training camp with Olympic-level vaulters like Tim Mack who ended up winning Gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics. As I was relatively new to the sport my learning curve was very steep. I remember Tim telling me to ‘run as fast as you can go and don’t let go until the last second.’ I improved a lot but had a long way to go if I was going to be an Olympian, which was my dream. And then the camp ended.

GSB: What did you do then?

Leanna: I went back to Edmonton, staying on friends’ couches — my parents had separated after I left for Sacramento. Eventually, I got another job making $7 an hour and I was able to rent a house with a friend and my younger sister joined me a while later.

This was quite a stressful time: I had very little money and I gained weight. If I was ever going to have a chance at making the Olympics, I was going to have to change things. I needed to find someone to train with who would keep me on track, pun intended.

And, lo and behold, I found one. My friend Andrew would run stadium stairs at 6 AM. I asked if I could join him, and he said yes. He has no idea but that ‘yes’ changed my life. Running those stairs at dawn turned out to be a total reset. It gave me a routine. I started eating better, I got a decent job which paid well, and got into an intense pole-vaulting training regimen. I began to show steady improvement, jumping 4 meters/13 feet. That made me in only the fourth Canadian woman to make that height, putting me on track to make my first international team.

GSB: Congratulations! Where did that put you in terms of world pole vaulting rankings? 

Leanna: It was a long journey, but I finally made the Canadian national team in 2009 at age 27, looking ahead to London 2012 and Rio 2016. And yet, in many respects my journey was just beginning.

First, after competing in the 2009 Francophone Games in Lebanon, I moved again, this time to Windsor, Ontario, which had a big Olympic athlete community. This was during the Great Recession and money again was super tight, so I lived on a memory foam mattress at a friend’s apartment while teaching boot camp classes to eke out a living. But then in the summer of 2010 I separated my shoulder and couldn’t pole vault.

GSB: Again, you take a punch; how did you come back this time?  

Leanna: I went home to Edmonton to live with my mom for a month while I took up the heptathlon[1], which is a 7-event competition that does not include the pole vault. This allowed me to get really fit as it eliminated the pressing movements that caused my shoulder problems.

As we moved to 2011, I again got work as a personal trainer, moved into my own apartment and started working out with the legendary heptathlon coach Linda Blade. I loved the multi-event nature of it all. And while I did well, I didn’t qualify for London 2012, which was gutting, especially because some of my friends made it. Very tough.

So, I worked to use that disappointment as fuel to make it to Rio 2016 in heptathlon. I had a good start to 2013, winning an event in Las Vegas and qualifying for the Canadian nationals. Before the 200 I felt tightness in my right hamstring; still I ended up running a great race. Next day, I’m training for the long jump, and I tore it in midair; had to be taken off the track in a wheelchair.

Next, it was back to Edmonton to recover and eventually start training again. Feeling good, I decided to try pole vault again for fun. It came back to me like that!

GSB: Don’t tell me…You start training for heptathlon and pole vault?

Leanna: Yep. Oh yeah, I also tried women’s decathlon…

GSB: …Is that a thing? I thought it was heptathlon for women and decathlon for men…although women should be able to compete in the latter.

Leanna: It’s not really a thing in that it’s not sanctioned by World Athletics for women but there are events here and there, including one in Vermont that I entered in 2013. And it was a challenge so of course I was down for it! That meant I had to learn discus and the 100-meter dash and the 1,500…

GSB: No problem!

Leanna: Well, I trained like crazy and was healthy. Tied my personal best in the pole vault and did really well for the entire event, becoming the sixth best score all-time for women. I followed that up by winning the pole vault at the 2014 nationals and coming in sixth in the heptathlon.

GSB: Sounds like you were in your prime and primed for a run at Rio 2016 as 2015 beckoned. What happened then? 

Leanna: Two big things: #1. I returned my focus solely to pole vault — heptathlon took too much time and energy, especially since, #2 I got married to Kyle, an endurance athlete I’d known since high school.

Back to pole vault, I was in good shape as we got closer to 2016: I went to Reno, where they had a pole vault-a-thon of sorts. There were 18 pits, it ran 24 hours a day. I won the main competition with a jump of 14 feet. Things were going well, but then at a meet in California, I was tired and felt tight. Shouldn’t have jumped in retrospect. So, when I took off, my hand let go early, I hit the pole and crashed. I was more shook up mentally rather than hurt physically. And that set me back as my next competitions weren’t great as we were getting close to nationals which also served as our Olympic trials.

GSB: What did you do?

Leanna: I hired a therapist, went for nature walks, got proper rest, and I got my groove back. I was ready and then I got to nationals in Edmonton…and the weather was terrible, with storm clouds and wind shifts that could end up helping or hurting you depending on the direction when it was your turn to jump.

GSB: I’m not getting a good feeling here…

Leanna: …To qualify for the Olympics, you need to finish in the top three. I just couldn’t get my rhythm and finished fourth. It was just bad luck.

GSB: Oh no! To be that close…That’s why being an athlete in an Olympic sport is so tough — you only have your moment in the sun every four years. How did you process this?

Leanna: It turned out to be the last time I ever jumped. And then I bought a road bike, crashed it, got another one, and rode 188 miles from Jasper to Canmore and thought, ‘I have to decide between being a pole vaulter and an endurance athlete’.

GSB: Your husband was one…

Leanna: That’s right. And I could sense I could do it. And endurance athletes can be world class well into your 40s. And the hours for a pole vaulter are not good for a mom…

GSB: Whoa, whoa…mom?

Leanna: Yep, I got pregnant in 2016 and I trained through the pregnancy…running and lifting. And after Adalynn was born in 2017, I would take her on runs and cycles. When she was four months old, I entered a mini triathlon, my first ever tri of any kind. It was awful but I won it somehow. Then I would go for week-long training sessions in Boulder, Colorado — Adalynn’s dad would take care of her — where I got better even as I had my ass handed to me by Ironman champions. It was humbling but hopeful.

GSB: So, you became an Ironman champion yourself?

Leanna: Not quite; there was another detour ahead…My younger sister Kristyn and I started a chocolate bar-for-athletes company in Edmonton called 7 Summit Snacks.

GSB: Where did that come from?

Leanna: Well, Kristyn was working for Cadbury in London and knew chocolate inside and out. Her boyfriend Robin Fisher was a mountaineer who was planning to summit Mount Everest. After that climb, the plan was for the two of them to move to Edmonton. And he had complained that there weren’t any good chocolate bars for endurance athletes.

You know what? He was right? I was tired of not finding a chocolate that spoke to me as an active person. I asked my sister, “can’t chocolate be used as healthy, tasty fuel for athletes”? She said yes and since she is a chocolate scientist, that was good enough for me. And that was the germ of what would become 7 Summit Snacks!

So, in 2018 Kristyn accompanied Robin to Everest base camp and went back home to London. Then she was awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call…Robin was dead.

GSB: Oh my God! I’m so sorry…What happened?

Leanna: Thank you, Lew. He summited and then he collapsed on his way down, about 200 meters from the top. No one knows why; there is a chance he didn’t have enough oxygen in his system and went hypoxic.

I remember my last conversation with Robin…he said that after he comes down, we should run the Everest Base Camp Marathon — from camp to town. So, in 2019 I decided to run it as a tribute to Robin.

But before that, we went to London, packed Kristyn up and moved her back to Edmonton so she could start the chocolate company and begin to heal. We used some Kickstarter funding and some money Robin had left her to conduct product testing. We started shipping the product — seven flavors, five bars, and two sticks — to friends and sold into health stores, hiking/running shops, and cafes.

We were growing slowly, and I still had a passion to pursue endurance sports. This didn’t necessarily match the ‘stay at home mom’ life. Never one to follow the ‘normal path’, I felt it was best to go on my own and chase my goals, while maintaining a good co-parenting lifestyle with Adalynn’s dad.

So, Kyle and I separated…and then COVID hit.

GSB: That must’ve slammed the brakes on things…

Leanna: On the chocolate business and on me getting a triathlon career going, yes. I trained for races that got canceled like the 2021 Ironman Canada[2] — it would’ve been my first I was in great form.

It was at about this time that I saw on Instagram that a guy set a record cycling the PanAm Highway, from Alaska to Patagonia at the southern tip of Chile; he did it in three months. What really stuck out was that a female had never done it. So, the idea was planted.

GSB: I guess COVID slammed the brakes on some things but hit the low-carbon accelerator on others! How did your Ironman career get rebooted once the pandemic-era cancellations stopped in mid-2021?

Leanna: Well, before we get to Ironman, my first endurance test was to run the Everest Base Camp Marathon in the spring of 2022 to honor Robin, along with my friend Kate Storey. This was no ordinary marathon, however, because you had to first hike for ten days to get up to basecamp before running down. I trained in an altitude chamber to try to acclimate to what I’d face in the Himalayas when I was not taking care of Adalynn.

But once I got on the hike, and despite having worked in the chamber, I got severe altitude sickness. I could barely eat and, about 36 hours out from base camp, I started to hallucinate. Somehow, I made it, subsisting on Pringles and Sprite. About a day later I was able to eat oatmeal and honey and make it to Robin’s memorial. Then I rested for two days and ran the Everest Marathon in eight hours, finishing in the top ten. I honestly don’t know how I did this.

GSB: It seems to me that a garden variety Ironman would be a piece of cake in comparison to the Everest Marathon. Was that your next hill to climb or did the PanAm cycle from top of the world to the bottom take precedence?

Leanna: It was kind of both. You see, in 2022 I had met my new partner, Timm Döbert, an endurance cyclist in his own right and a PhD in ecology — he wrote his dissertation on ‘Deforestation in Borneo’.

At some point I told him about the PanAm Highway ride and that I wanted to be the first female to do it. He said, ‘you need to do this ride, but it needs to be purposeful!’

GSB: What did he mean by that?

Leanna: Well, I knew that poor water and air quality as well as extreme heat were canceling sports events. Timm made the connection to climate change, saying that we humans were mostly naïve about it, that the trends are indeed awful, and that most people are doing nothing about it. He also educated me about how climate change was harming and killing migratory birds all along the PanAm Highway flyway.

The more we discussed it, the more we saw that there was a big opportunity for science, sports and the community to come together to make a difference on climate. In our case, we could use this ride to document the threats to migratory birds and to the broader climate. This would be our purpose and it would manifest itself through what would become the Wings of Survival documentary film project when we do the North Slope of Alaska-to-Patagonia ride starting in June 2025.

GSB: How long are you estimating that it will take? What are your and Timm’s roles? And who’s shooting it? 

Leanna: Good questions all. We expect that it will take nine months to do the trip, going about 200 miles per day. A good thing is that Timm and I bring complementary skill sets to the project. I have the athletic passion and creativity whereas Timm adds knowledge of climate change, a deep appreciation for nature and an analytical approach to things.

As to the cinematography, let’s take a step back. Timm and I decided to both do the Patagonia Ironman in December 2022 — finally my first Ironman! A guy named Justin Brunelle reached out about filming us on this journey — he wants to do a documentary with purpose. He said, ‘you pay my travel and expenses down to Patagonia and I’ll film it and be your support person. We’ll be a family. And then we can talk about the PanAmerican Highway project.’

I took out a loan, did bottle drives, and got some private donations and was able to pay him to come down. Timm and I ended up finishing together in a time of 16 hours 32 minutes and then we did a five-day hike.

GSB: Just a ‘cool down’ of sorts. So, it’s one thing to film you doing an Ironman. It’s quite another to get a team to from Alaska to Chile. What are the logistical challenges? They must be immense!

Leanna: They are. Last summer, we met with scientists from Anchorage and Fairbanks who are studying the whimbrel that fly from Alaska to Patagonia and to figure out how we would follow and track them as we ride.

The group decided that we will go into the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) — it’s not easy to get us in but it will happen — and meet the birds who will be fitted with GPS technology. Then we will raft up to Prudhoe Bay where we will meet the support team and start the cycle southward. 

GSB: How much will it cost? And how are you going to fund it?

Leanna: Justin estimates that the entire project, from staffing the expedition to filming it, will run about $2 million. So, now we’re working on getting brands that care about the environment and climate to fund us.

GSB: How is that going?

Leanna: It’s up and down. Meaning that the brands to which we speak all express interest, but no one is committing just yet. Which is of course frustrating. We had hoped to do the ride this year but without the funding, that is of course an impossibility.

Instead, we are embarking on a cross-Canada Wings of Survival ride, cycling from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Vancouver, British Columbia starting on July 1, Canada Day.

We will take 30 days, cycling about 150 miles per day, and we’ll sleep in tents. On the way, we will highlight 30 of Canada’s biodiverse hot spots and the importance of preserving them. And we will encourage our followers to take a 30 day-health challenge — run, hike, bike, be in nature, for 30 minutes of activity per day. Bill Alt, a Canadian podcaster, will be our support/driver/storyteller/manager. It will be much less expensive than next year’s PanAm Highway trip; costing about $10,000.

GSB: What are your goals in terms of awareness and actions with the project? 

Leanna: Lew, as a global community we need to protect 30 percent of all land and water by 2030…and we are so far off that target at this point. I want to see that needle move forward through the actions and stories we — athletes and scientists — tell, empowering individuals to make changes and stand up for nature.

GSB: Finally, you recently became an EcoAthletes Champion and joined a mom’s subgroup within the Champions network. What drew you to both? 

Leanna: We have a major disconnect when it comes to climate in the world. We’re not seeing the urgency and the universality of the problems and we’re not acting fast or seriously enough. Athletes can and must make a difference. Bringing the community together the way EcoAthletes is doing is very powerful. Athletes are heroes and they….we can use our platforms to get our fans to pay attention.

As far as the mom’s group is concerned, I am honored to be a part of this team of amazing women athletes who are linking motherhood and mother nature.

And look, I know the life I’ve chosen, and specifically Wings of Survival, has been hard on my relationship with Adalynn. But I hope that I’m modeling for her that it is so important to stand up for what you believe, even when it’s not comfortable. Or perhaps especially when it’s hard. And the climate fight can be uncomfortable but if we don’t fight it, then all our realities will be unspeakably worse. So, let’s do this!

You can follow Leanna on Instagram here, Wings of Survival here, and 7 Summit Snacks here