For the serious runners, the race was literally neck and neck to the finish. Two runners in contention made wrong turns, while the leaders were running close enough together to hear each other breathe.
In the end Richard Potter won the race, completing the estimated 10 km course in 44 minutes, 56 seconds.
"I’ve ridden this trail quite a bit, and I ran it a few years ago, and I definitely don’t remember it being as long as it was this year," said Potter. "It’s a great trail and a great community event, and the view from the lookout was just spectacular. I was running hard, but I was really enjoying myself as well."
Potter says he was running with Duncan Munro from the beginning – "I used him as my rabbit" – and he only really pulled ahead when two other runners vying for the lead took a wrong turn.
"It was a friendly competition," said Potter. "We try to push each other for sure, and those two guys (Dave Burch and Mike Boehm) taking the wrong turn that was just bad luck. Most of us do Loonie Races, so we know that these things happen, that’s just racing.
"I could hear breathing and footsteps behind me, they sounded really close. The last uphill nearly killed me, it was a total heartbreaker, but on the way down I started to relax again. I knew the finish line was close."
Munro finished second overall in 45:37 and Greg McDonnell was third in 45:38. Boehm was fourth in 45:57 and Kevan Shaler fifth in 45:58.
Among the women, Lindsay Dyck was sixth overall with a time of 47:58. Brenda Baker was 11 th in 53:39, Lisa Helmer was 12 th a second later, Vanessa Murphy was 15 th in 55:17 and Tracy Higgs was 20 th in 58:02.
All of the proceeds from the event went towards the Pemberton Spud Valley Nordics.
