Notes from Dan the Trail Guy #21

Trail Bits

Boy oh boy did I ever step into a pile of poop last week. Changing the run time to 6:30 am in order to accommodate some members of the group created a lot of email traffic. Then when I messed up on my emails, it was mass confusion….sorry! I can tell you from the number of email responses that I received -and there were lots of them – the preference on start time is pretty evenly split.

Anyways, the Tour of Morrell Nature Sanctuary was a hit, people showed up at 6:30 as planned and we managed to run the proper time with out running the same trail twice. There are still a lot of trails in there that we didn’t run.

7:00 AM Start time this weekend

****** Membership meeting ****** – Please do not forget that May 14th is the ROC MEMBERSHIP MEETING at the ABC Country Restaurant, 9:45ish AM . Right after the run or soon after. We really need a good turnout of members at the breakfast meeting, so please attend. It is a NO HOST BREAKFAST – which means bring money.

Membership Dues – Of the 124 members that I have on the membership list, 103 of you have paid and at least another dozen of you have contacted me telling, me that your dues are in the mail or will be dropped off….Thank you to all of you…………If you have decided that you no longer wish to be a member of ROC please drop me a note so I can remove your name from the membership list and the email address book.

The Duncan GutBuster is May 7th. This is the home of the original GutBuster race and is an amazing race route. This race route starts and finishes at a pub. Nice and close to Nanaimo.

The Westwood Half Marathon GutBuster is July 9th. This event is an ROC fund raising event. ROC receives a donation from Mind Over Mountain for each runner that races in either the short course (8km) or the half marathon trail race. According to those in the know, this is the first actual “off road half marathon” in BC. This race has been creating quite a buzz in the BC Trail Running community all winter and will attract a good crowd. Norm Thibault, Stefan Jakobsen and I are the course designers and I can assure that we have designed a great course for everyone. We are in need of 4 or 5 individuals (in addition to a lot of course marshals) that would like to work closely with Norm and I on race day preparations. Please contact either myself at this email address or contact Norm via Frontrunners. We will be starting to measure in the sections of the course starting next week and could use the assistance of a few runners that have either a GPS or SDM so we can get 3 or 4 measurements for each section. Let me know if you can help with this. This event is going to put Nanaimo on the map when it comes to trail racing.

Okay the important stuff – The Run – Please note that the next two weeks runs are listed here as I will not be able to send out an email next week.

a) May 7th. Upper Linley Valley Beaver Tour – you have two choices.
Choice # 1) Meet Derek Riley and I for an easy 2 hour trail run starting at Frontrunners at 6:45 am and we will run from the store and meet up with the rest of the group at 7:00 am which will be meeting at the top of Rutherford Road.
Choice # 2). Meet at the top of Rutherford Rd at 7:00 am just past the Quilted Duck, Dig This stores. This portion of the run will be about 90 minutes in length and will wander around the Beaver Ponds and down towards Cottle Lake.

b) May 14th. This is the day of the great ROC Membership Breakfast Meeting at the ABC Country Restaurant. Therefore we will be having a run of the Lantzville Foothills starting at 7:00 am. For those of you that are new; take the highway towards Lantzville, turn up Ware Rd and follow it until it comes to a T Junction; This is Harwood Rd; Turn Left, we will be about 200 yds (meters) down the road.