By Keith Bourassa
I suppose the story begins on a plane ride back from Amsterdam in 2004, after a week-long vacation filled with debauchery. I had spent the past seven days tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms, smoking quite a bit of hash and pot. I was twenty-one and had been living that lifestyle for about six years. It was during that eight-hour plane ride back home, while still tripping on the mushrooms, that I had a revelation: If I continued living my life in this manner, I wasn't going to achieve much in life.
About eight months after returning home from Amsterdam, I decided to move out of my mother's house. It seemed like it was finally time to take some steps towards adulthood. On July 4th weekend in 2005, I moved to an apartment in Keene. One night while drinking beers and watching college football, my roommate, Pat, suggested, "We should start running." In my haze, it sounded like a great idea!
The following day, I went out and bought some "running" shoes and took a Discman out for a two-mile run. I had excelled at baseball as a child and had played soccer and basketball as well. But at twenty-one, it had been about eight years since I had played sports or done any cardio whatsoever. After maybe twenty minutes, I was home, sweating, and completely out of breath, but something about the experience I instantly fell in love with. I had grown up cutting and walking trails as a kid in Swanzey, New Hampshire, with my brother, but running the trails was an entirely different feeling. This was pure freedom of movement, in a way I had never experienced before. The way I had to engage every sense of my body was invigorating! I had to look down every few seconds to spot rocks and roots, and I was hooked within a week. Winter was coming, so I purchased a treadmill and started averaging around twenty miles per week.
After two years of training and gradually building my weekly mileage, my girlfriend, Jesse, signed me up for the 4 on the 4th Road Race in Keene, New Hampshire. She worked at a local running shoe store at the time, had seen a flier, and thought I would enjoy it. Having never run a race in my life, I was nervous that morning, but two miles in, I relaxed and began to feel a sense of accomplishment. That was something that was a void in my life for years now. I was a three sport athlete growing up and had been extremely competitive. Running my first race, even if I wasn't necessarily going to finish on a podium, brought me back to that world. The moment I crossed that finish line, I was ready to do it again as soon as possible.
Jesse signed me up for races all over Cheshire County during the next year, and I continued to build my love for the process of training and competing. I began to want more out of it, so I also started lifting weights with two good friends five times per week. I continued training and built up my confidence to run a 10K. Jesse and I also entered the Give Peace a Tri Triathlon in Surry, New Hampshire, as a team in 2008. Jesse swam the open water portion, then I biked and ran.
I found the Western NH Trail Running Series, founded by the late Chad Denning, and ran it in 2008, 2009, and 2010. This was the race series that began my obsession with trail running. In 2010, after the Xterra 10K in that series, a fellow runner in the trail series Chris approached me about possibly running together since we lived very close to each other. As a duo, we began to train and race together. It was Chris who convinced me to run fourteen miles at the Pisgah State Park "short race" in 2010, which introduced me to the ultra scene. It was a wonderful and painful experience, and I was exhausted afterward. But in that afterglow, I began to wonder what that 50K distance would feel like. I decided to put my sights on it for the following year. I wanted so badly to be one of the folks running the "long race," which was more than thirty miles.
On my twenty-eighth birthday in 2011, I ran my first 50K at Ghost Train, and somehow, came in second place overall with Chris. This experience sparked a fire in me, truly igniting my passion for competition. I returned to Ghost Train in 2012 to win the forty five mile race outright. It was then I realized that I might have the addictive personality needed to excel in this sport! That same personality trait had led me down some dark paths in my teens and early 20's. Yet now, it was the driving force behind my new addiction, ultrarunning. I began to run fifty mile races after that, such as the North Face 50 in Bear Mountain, New York, and the JFK Memorial 50 in Maryland.
I was fortunate enough to win the New Hampshire 100K in 2014, which led to sponsorships with Pearl Izumi for shoes, CWX Compression Wear for gear, and later, Hoka for shoes. Running became the center of my life and showed me a path I had never dreamed of taking during my years of drug addiction. My family and friends, especially my mother, my wife, and brother, were all so proud of me. It was an unbelievable feeling. Jesse had started me on this journey, and in 2015, I carried her engagement ring with me through the Catskill Mountains during the North Face 50 Miler in Bear Mountain, New York. I proposed to her on the finish line, sweaty and exhausted, but wanting to show her how much I loved her and how much her support had meant to me over the eight years since the first four miler in Keene.
"It took a scared kid who used substances to kill his pain and escape life, and turned him into a completely different individual."
I am not sure I can entirely express in words what running has meant in my life. It took a scared kid who used substances to kill his pain and escape life and turned him into a completely different individual. I couldn't have imagined having the ability to run these distances when I was an adolescent. Running has shown me how strong I am mentally as well as physically. It's given me a confidence in myself that I never had before. Now thirty-seven years old, my only regret is not having started running sooner. I often think, what could running have done for a seventeen-year-old Keith? All of that youthful anger might have had a better outlet. Nowadays, I have got my thirteen-year old nephew and ten-year-old niece running, and we completed their first 5K in March of 2020.
After fifteen years of running, I have run forty-eight ultramarathon races and have never stopped learning about myself, loving the experience, and enjoying the competition with the amazing folks in the running community! Running has saved my life, I say that daily with conviction… but ultrarunning, in particular, has given me everything I never knew I needed: confidence in myself, a love for exploring, and a desire to break personal boundaries and limits.
About the Author
Keith Bourassa is 37 years old and lives in Keene, New Hampshire, with his wife Jesse and their three cats. He has worked at Shaw's Supermarket for the past 20 years all over New England.
