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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Arrowhead is final bow for Brazilian runner

A personal quest ends, but others await

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REGIONAL- Marcio Villar was the first runner this year to complete the daunting Arrowhead 135 (A135) winter ultramarathon course, but his name won’t be found in the official list of finishers, because Villar accomplished the feat last Friday, before the race ever started.
Villar was attempting to do something race organizers don’t recognize but many elite ultramarathoners covet as a personal achievement, that of “doubling” the race by doing it from the end to the beginning and back again.
Villar, 54, has already cemented his elite status in the world of ultramarathons, these extreme tests of human endurance, and doubling and even tripling these events has been a personal quest to push himself to the maximum limits.
“What motivates me is to undertake challenges that no one in the world has ever achieved,” Villar said in a 2013 article about his exploits. “The impossible does not exist. When we do what we love and dedicate ourselves, we can always go further.”
Villar has already doubled two of the three races considered to be the World Cup of Extreme Environments. California’s Badwater 135-miler starts below sea level in the scorching, dangerous heat of Death Valley and ends on the slopes of Mt. Whitney at 8,300 feet. The daunting Brazil 135, held in the Serra da Mantiqueira Mountains, is a roller coaster ride combining 30,000 feet of cumulative elevation gain with 28,000 cumulative feet of descent. Adding a double in the A135 would make him the only person in the world to have doubled all three.
But the A135 has been an obstinate foe.
Villar had to drop out of his first A135 in 2008 but returned in 2009 to place sixth on foot. He completed the course again in 2011, placing 15th. Since then, attempts to double the race in 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2020 have all ended short of the mark.
“I have already doubled or tripled the other extreme difficulty tests, but only in this one I still haven’t managed to do,” Villar said. “This test represents, for me, an overcoming, of never giving up on this dream until I conquer it.”
Health issues faced by Villar have only intensified his desire. A rare autoimmune disease, juvenile temporal arteritis, diagnosed in 2015, required drug treatments and head surgery that could have shortened his career. The accompanying intense steroid treatments caused the deterioration of the femur in one of his legs, necessitating a hip replacement. Yet in 2017, only ten months after that operation, he broke the world record for the 500-mile Santiago de Compostela trail between Spain and France.
“I underwent five operations, placement of prostheses in the hip and three surgeries on the spine,” Villar said. “I think anyone in the world would have given up, but I’m here to make my dream come true. It’s a lot of snow, but I’ll bring that mark, God willing.”
Villar planned to arrive in International Falls on Jan. 16 to begin acclimating for the race, but his flight was delayed by a day. The time for his adjustment to the bitter cold of northern Minnesota was shortened even more when, according to a post on Villar’s Instagram account, race organizers insisted he run his solo portion of the double before the A135 instead of after for his own safety.
So, on Wednesday, Jan. 26, Villar took a taxi from International Falls to the finish line at Fortune Bay Casino Resort to begin the first leg of his hoped-for double. And for the first time in 11 years, he completed the entire course, all alone, finishing late Friday night in International Falls.
“It was very difficult,” Villar said. “The temperature dropped a lot. I was frozen in the middle of the trail.”
When the Timberjay caught up with Villar at his hotel on Sunday, it was clear the trek had exacted a toll on him beyond what he had wished. The interview was punctuated by the sound of Villar’s deep hacking coughs.
“I think it froze my airways – I have a lot of coughing,” he said. “I’m measuring my oxygen action here (and it) is very low. I’m having a lot of difficulty breathing and we’ll see if I can recover to start the second leg tomorrow.”
But when the roster was posted for the start of the race on Monday, Villar’s name wasn’t on it. He had withdrawn, and the dream of doubling in what he had called the “last and greatest challenge” of his life was over.
But instead of disappointment, the soft-spoken Brazilian focused on what he had accomplished.
“I left Rio de Janeiro in Brazil with a thermal sensation of 50 degrees Celsius and arrived here to face a forest with minus-40 degrees Celsius alone for three days. I think I have to be happy to have made it, right?” Villar said. “I think it’s a victory, so I tell people that you can have the worst difficulty in your life, but whatever problem you’re in, never give up on your dream. Believe, fight, that one day you will get there.”
And this particular personal dream has never been as important to Villar as his dream of helping and inspiring other people through his running, and also of bringing recognition to his beloved home of Botafogo and Brazil.
“My mother passed away eight years ago and everything I do has philanthropy for her to be proud of me,” he said. “This race is raising funds for the cancer hospital where I have been a volunteer for 15 years. My mother was cured of cancer by them, and this was the way I found to give back. When I broke the world record on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela I paid for the treatment of special children with cerebral palsy and Down syndrome. I have already paid for 38 heart surgeries for children by running. When you have a purpose in life it makes all the difference.”
That purpose will keep Villar active in charitable causes even though he’s formally retiring from the ultramarathon circuit. He plans to keep running in shorter local and regional events, and he also does motivational speaking for businesses and community organizations.
And always a dreamer, Villar already has another in mind.
“After this race, which will be the last of my career, I intend, if I get support, to climb Mount Everest,” he said. “This is my next dream.”

Brazilian journalist Iuri Totti contributed to this story.