October/November 2024

Phenomenal Phil

Jared Beasley
Oct 2024

Pompeii was nothing but a story until 1599, when an architect dug up a street. Similarly, the ancient cave paintings of Lascaux were discovered by four young boys, who, looking for their dog, stumbled into the Paleolithic age. While it may not be true that you must be lost to be found, it sure feels more interesting. I happened upon Phil Latulippe in the same vein, searching for an obscure record that no one had tracked for decades.

I stumbled upon his story while researching a book about Al Howie. Howie once ran 360 miles in what Guinness considered non-stop running at the time – before they stopped paying attention. (Runners were allowed one 5-minute break per hour.) It was a feat Howie had been playing leapfrog with for years. His competition? A military man named Phil Latulippe who was 20 years his senior.

Phil, then 48, found himself staring at a beer in the mess hall one evening. Those on base claimed he downed a case of them each a day. While there was a time when he would delight in his prowess, he’d come to loathe what he’d become. He used to be a paratrooper and would strut the base with pride, but somewhere along the road of being a lifelong soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces, he let himself detour. He was now chief warrant officer but overweight, out of shape and down. Another cigarette, he thought, might ease his blues for a moment. But then what?

The battle in his psyche was on, two sides – “yes” and “no” playing tug of war – till Phil pushed the beer away. A crazy idea sparked in his brain. He used to run. Maybe he still could.

That night, with a gut full of booze, he started to run around the small track on the base. It got hard quick because his legs didn’t want to move like they used to. He hadn’t run, not really, since he was wounded in WWII. But somehow that night, after several miles, they woke up and so did he.

Day after day, he came back to the track. He dropped the beer and smokes, and soon cut down to a lean 130 lbs. He never wanted to stop running. One night, he didn’t.

At 53, Phil circled the 400-meter track over 1,200 times, nonstop – according to Guinness – to set a new record. At 55, he attempted to speed up and get 100 miles in 24 hours. The Defense Technical Information Center studied the run and observed that “he ran the course in 20 hours at an average speed of 8.16 kilometers per hour.” They noted his diet as if they were monitoring an extraterrestrial’s caloric intake: “[he] ingested every twelve minutes after the first four hours of running, such fluids consisting of water, tea syrup, beef broth, mushroom soup and ice cream and syrup in rotation. Caloric intake averaged 480 calories per hour, giving a deficit of some 56 calories per hour.”

He was the talk of the base. And the track was his. The brass gave him access to it anytime he wanted. But it wasn’t long before Phil was ready to break free and explore what he could do.

In his lifetime, he made four epic trans-cons on Canada’s highways. The first was a 3,976-mile jaunt at the age of 60. Two years later, he ran from St. John’s Newfoundland to the town of Comox, situated on Vancouver Island. He finished with a face full of hair after 130 days on the road. After splashing himself with water, he said, “I feel good. I feel like I could go another 50k.” Three years later, he did it again, and in 1989, at 70, he made a fourth crossing. This time, from Vancouver to Point Pleasant in 134 days. One headline read, “’Phenomenal Phil’ does it again.”

Through his running and work for charity, he was awarded the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal, the Canadian Centennial Medal and the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal. In 1984, he was made a member of the Order of Canada and in 2004, he became a knight of the National Order of Quebec.

And to think it all started with a beer and a decision: what could he still do at his age?

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