MacKinnon, Barry-Benedik top runners
Dunk River Road Race celebrates 40th anniversary
There was a repeat winner and a first-time winner at a special running event Sunday morning. Mike MacKinnon of Miscouche completed the hat trick while Stephanie Barry-Benedik of Stratford captured her first Dunk River Road Race title under near perfect conditions. The 40th annual 7.22-mile run is one of the longest-running races on the P.E.I. RoadRunners Club calendar. All 40 events have been organized by Paul Wright, and sponsored by Callbeck’s Home Hardware.
“It was really nice,” said BarryBenedik, who was the first female to finish in 58 minutes 28 seconds (58:28). “The head wind was nice and cool. . . I didn’t have water with me, and I used the aid stations. They were perfectly spread out, and that helped keep your temperature down. It was a really nice run.” MacKinnon, who had a time of 42:38, now has three Dunk River Road Race titles to his credit, but this was the first one since the course changed in 2014. He previously won in 2010 and 2013.
“It’s a lot better safety-wise, but it’s still a tough course,” assessed MacKinnon.
When asked if the new course’s degree of difficulty is the same, more or less, the teacher at Three Oaks Senior High School in Summerside commented: “You’re going backwards, but the hills still go both ways. The finish is a little tougher now because before you would go down the Bedeque rink road and it was downhill, but here you are pushing right to the end.”
Previously, the finish line was at the Bedeque Area Recreation Centre, but the race now starts and concludes at the Mount Moriah Masonic Lodge at the Junction of Highway 1A and Route 171 in Bedeque.
It was MacKinnon’s first race on P.E.I. this season, and his first since the Bluenose Marathon in Halifax, N.S., in May.
“I didn’t worry about time,” said MacKinnon, 44. “I wanted to go out easy and see if I felt good, and then pick it up as I went through. That is what happened. If you look at the time it wasn’t a great time, but I’m pleased with it.”
Pleased with run
Barry-Benedik, who finished 19th overall out of 50 runners,
was pleased with how she felt following the race.
“I wasn’t going for time,” said the 34-year-old Barry-Benedik, an animal health technologist at the Atlantic Veterinary College in Charlottetown.
“It was a training run just to see where I am at because I have not done a lot of running events lately.”
It marked Barry-Benedik’s second Dunk River Road Race, with her first in 2014.
“It’s hilly,” she said in describing the course. “Every time you come around a corner there are quite a few grades, but there are some flatter sections you can recover.
“Then you go up a hill and you recover, and go up another hill. It’s a good training route, and a nice challenge.”