By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

BROWNFIELD — The Bear 100 combines a few favorites for Acadia Gantz: Running in an ultramarathon and helping children to get a fair start in life.

She said there are a couple reason for choosing this particular race.

“I am a midwife. I have a big passion for helping children, for giving children the best life. Children are the world’s future. That is why I am a midwife,” Gantz said. “Medical Missions for Children (MMC) is a nonprofit for children who have a cleft lip and/or a cleft palate. That effects everything from eating to speech, and how they interact with the world. In countries with a lot of resources, it is something that is caught and fixed immediately. In countries with few resources, there isn’t even the equipment to help a child with a cleft palate to drink or eat and they starve to death.”

MMC sends surgical teams to these less resourced places, she said. That traveling team includes the surgeon, nurses, the anesthesiologist, and a speech therapist. Gantz knows firsthand about these surgical teams because her family is involved in these medical missions. She has an uncle who works as a surgeon and an aunt who is a speech pathologist.

The starting line for the ultramarathon is in her hometown of Logan, Utah. She will have support from family living there as well as two girlfriends traveling there.

Raising money for MMC has another meaningful connection for Gantz.

“I was born with congenital cataracts. Because I was born into a family with resources and a place with resources, the cataracts were taken care of. I am technically legally blind. But I have equipment to help me see,” she said. “Had I been born in a low-resource place, I would not be able to see.”

This year, 31-year-old Gantz is envisioning herself being ready for the endurance race at the end of September.

The Brownfield resident has participated twice in the Bear 100, but she has yet to finish it. Still, the number of miles she has logged could fit into the category of impressive. In 2019, she completed 70 miles. In 2021, she did 65 miles despite an ankle injury.

She has been training for a year solid for the upcoming Bear 100, which starts on Sept. 29 this year.

“I feel like in a lot of ways, it is four years of training. When I attempted in 2019, I had run my first ultra. I attempted it knowing I was going to learn a lot. My biggest thing is: I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted something that was going to be hard. Four years ago, having not finished, I am thinking I got what I wanted,” she said.

“Over the last four years, I have been not only training, running the miles but also I’ve been learning the smaller things that make a successful race happen: What to eat, the right gear, the right shoes, and how to pace for a race that long,” she said. “There are things out of my control. I had intended to be back in 2020. There was the pandemic. Then, I broke my ankle in the spring of 2021. That changed my outlook on the race in 2021. It shortened my training. Instead of feeling like I could go into the race really prepared. I was thinking, ‘I will do what I can. I will learn.’”

“I had these two chances to learn from the race, learn about myself as a runner, and get stronger,” she said.

For the past year, she has been working with a coach and running as many mountainous trails as possible.

Call it four years of training or one year of training, Gantz has been applying herself by racking up the miles.

“Generally, I will only do one 100-miler in a year.  In the lead-up, there are a lot of long training runs. The big training race was the Vermont 100K, which got cancelled because of flooding. Instead, I ended up running 60 miles in Brownfield and Freedom,” she said.

“A big part of training is not just doing the miles. It’s getting in the mountain climbing and the elevation. I did a lot of training runs in the White Mountains,” she said. “The biggest struggle of being a runner in Maine is preparing for the altitude. It’s hard to simulate 9,000 feet. The top of the Bear 100 course is 9,000 feet.”

Gantz feels ready no matter what weather is thrown at her.

“One of my other limitations is that being midwife, my schedule is very specific. I have one day a week that is my training day, that I can go to the mountains and run. It becomes running regardless of weather. I run unless it is dangerous like lightening. If it’s just rain, I run. It could be doing anything during the Bear. In 2019, the first day of race, it rained and then it turned to snow,” she said. “Hopefully, if I train in a bunch of rain, it will be beautiful and sunny on race day. If not, I will be ready.”