VANCOUVER - Tom Keep has been jogging and walking wherever he goes in the small southern Manitoba community of Brandon where he lives, getting his blood going for his 300-metre stint with the Olympic flame in January.

When the flame lands in Victoria on Friday to begin its 45,000-kilometre Canadian relay, it will still be a few degrees above zero in Brandon.

But by the time Keep, 57, takes hold of the slender white Olympic torch in the new year, somewhere between Brandon and Regina, it will be a tad frostier.

"It could be anywhere on the frozen tundra -- I've seen it with the wind chill more than 50 below," Keep, who works with the city, said with a laugh.

"It's the same if it's 20 below or if it's 50 below, you still have to dress the same. If it's a matter of putting a balaclava on, we'll see how it goes."

Keep is one of 12,000 torchbearers who will carry the Olympic flame along its 106-day, 45,000-kilometre route across Canada, beginning in Victoria on Friday and ending in Vancouver for the opening ceremonies Feb. 12.

Relay organizers have boasted the route is the longest in-country relay in Olympic history, passing through more than 1,000 communities in every province and territory and making it as far north as Alert, Nunavut. Dozens of those communities will be holding events along the way.

Aside from the typical relay running, it will be pulled along the snow on a polar bear skin by a dog in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, and in Iqaluit it will travel on a traditional Inuit kayak.

There are several notable Canadians and celebrities carrying the flame, including hockey player Sidney Crosby and country music star Shania Twain.

But many more are everyday people who entered contests put on by relay sponsors Coca-Cola and RBC.

One of them is Alvin Richard of Moncton, N.B., who will be carrying the torch for the second time.

Richard was a torchbearer for the 1988 Calgary Olympics, when he submitted hundreds of entries into a contest for a spot on the route.

The 47-year-old nurse and artist has been a self-described "Olympic fanatic" since watching television coverage of the 1978 Montreal Summer Games when he was a teenager.

"It's like those defining moments in your life -- I watched it from noon until night," said Richard. "After that, I had the Olympic spirit inside of me and I knew it was following me all along my life."

Calling Richard an Olympic fanatic isn't an overstatement.

He named his only son after a Canadian skier who won a gold medal at the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, and teared up when he visited the Olympic Hall of Fame in Calgary.

Richard said his interest in the Olympics prompted him to start running, and he's since competed in more than 20 marathons and earlier this year hiked the 800-kilometre Camino Trail in northern Spain.

So a 300-metre jaunt should be no big deal.

"I ran one kilometre (during the 1988 relay), and at that time I thought it was going to be over in a second, but it lasted longer, it seemed to me that I ran farther than that," said Richard.

"Three-hundred metres -- I'm not going to train very hard because I want it to last as long as possible."

There will even be a few torchbearers from outside of Canada.

Steve Ford lives in Tahlequah, Okla., a small city about 100 kilometres southeast of Tulsa, and will be running with the torch in Comox, B.C., on Vancouver Island.

Ford, who during an interview asked for help pronouncing the town he'll be running in (it's co-mocks), landed a spot along the relay through a professional relationship with Olympic sponsor Nortel.

"It kind of hit home this past week. My uniform arrived, so this really is going to happen -- it's a chance of a lifetime," said Ford, 47, who boasts that, according to relay officials he's spoken with, he's the only person from Oklahoma carrying the torch.

"It's your national pride. I hope I'll be well-received being a non-Canadian there."