Relay, relay popular
Cabot Trail race to feature 70 teams, 1,200 participants.
SYDNEY — Running teams will pound the pavement for the grueling — yet scenic — Cabot Trail Relay this weekend.
The 26th edition of the race will feature 70 teams and 1,200 participants. The race is a 298 km, 17-stage relay along the Cabot Trail beginning on Saturday at 7 a.m. in St. Anns at the Gaelic College and ending Sunday at around 9:45 a.m. in Baddeck at the courthouse.
“There are teams that use this as a way to get a bunch of friends together who have similar interests and they use this to come to because there aren’t too many events out there you can travel as a team of 17 people and be together all the time,” said race chair Dave Parkinson. “There are teams who look at this as sort of a beginning of the entire race season for them.
“There are teams who want to come up because they want to challenge themselves because obviously the course is unique and, frankly, very, very difficult.”
Over half of the teams registered for the race hail from Nova Scotia, with 12 others from across Atlantic Canada, 12 from Ontario and Quebec, four from Maine and one entry from Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a territory of France located off the southern coast of Newfoundland.
The Maine-iacs of Maine will look to claim their third-straight title this year. They won last year’s race in a time of 16 hours, 39 minutes and 32 seconds. The top Cape Breton team last year was the Cape Breton Road Runners, third-place finishers in 18:57:04. They’ll try to become the first Cape Breton team to ever win the event.
“(The Maine-iacs) are always competitive and last year, they were inching closer to getting the course record back which they owned for quite some time until a team from Ontario took it a few years ago,” Parkinson said. “Who knows? Maybe they’re going to come back and try and get that again.
“The Road Runners have three teams in it this year: Eddie’s Eagles, the Cape Breton Coyotes and the Cape Breton Road Runners. The Road Runners were third last year, so I’m sure they’ll do quite well again this year.”
The 2013 race will be held in honour of 58-year-old Steve Dunn of Halifax, who collapsed and died last year while running the 17th and final leg of the race as a member of the Salt Marsh Trail Running Club team. Dunn was a long- time participant in the relay.
“In speaking with the team captain who I know from the event, (Dunn) was an avid runner, he loved it and loved this race and the family, and the team wanted to take the opportunity to recognize the loss and the commitment he had to the sport,” said Parkinson. “We’re going to name Leg 17, which is the leg he passed away on, as the Steve Dunn Leg, and that’s the name it’s going to carry from this point forward.”
Each team can have up to 17 members, with an athlete assigned to each leg. Other teams have runners tackle more than one leg. Legs run between 12-20 km in distance, with Leg No. 9 considered as one of the most difficult due to a climb up North Mountain.