Starting on February 3, our own Jason Carpenter, sales engineer and malware researcher at Norman Shark, began a trek even more grueling than analyzing the most pernicious threat. Jason is participating in the 2013 Yukon Arctic Ultra 300, an ultramarathon that follows the Yukon Quest trail, the route used by the world’s toughest dogsled race.
As I write this, it is -1° Fahrenheit in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, where the race begins, and with the windchill factor, it feels more like -11°, not to mention that it’s snowing. Jason joins 25-30 others in this endeavor, and there will be a total of about 75 participants in the three ultramarathons occurring simultaneously, with distances of 100, 300 and 450 miles.
Jason plans to complete the race in six days, race organizers give participants a maximum of eight days.
When asked the obvious “Why?” question, Jason’s answer was simple. “I started doing marathons and wanted to add to the length. I’ve run races up to 100 miles before and wanted the extra challenge of the Yukon Arctic race.
Jason made an interesting point concerning the similarity between running ultramarathons and protecting networks against security threats: “There are good days and bad days, you have to keep moving. On a day when the race has been really tough or you’ve been unsuccessful in analyzing malware samples, you know that tomorrow will be a better day. Likewise, if one day of a race is relatively easy or you uncover new and really great information about especially nasty samples, you have to keep yourself in check, there will always be more difficult days ahead.” As with malware defense, when running an ultramarathon, you never know what tomorrow will bring, and need to be prepared for the unknown.
All of us at Norman Shark wish Jason good luck, and are delighted that he’s on our team.
When asked how his family feels about his upcoming adventure, he said, “my wife made sure my will is up-to-date and that I have plenty of life insurance.”
If you’d like to learn more about the race, click here, if you’d like to track Jason’s progress with us, click here.
