– Date: June 16/17, 2007
– Description: An adventure relay
– Location: Across the Oak Ridges Trail
– Race Name: Moraine Adventure Relay
– Sport: Adventure
– Race web site: www.moraineadventure.com
The Moraine Adventure Relay first trial run of this event turned out to be a fantastic concept.
The Oak Ridges Trail Association in partnership with the Oak Ridges Foundation and the Northhumberland Tourist Board put on a 15 stage relay race starting from Rice Lake in Peterborough, all the way to King City – completely on the Oak Ridges Trail. While the course was only 160k, the trail itself stretches 240k, where it ends in Caledon and hooks up with the Bruce Trail.
While most teams had 10-15 people, Team Runningfree.com entered a team of 3. Bob McGrath did all 60km of running as part of his training for the Death Race. I did all the 90k MTBing, as part of my training for the Transrockies Challenge. Denise Rispolie alternated between running and biking to fulfill her AR training and Death Race training regimen.
The trail is marked by white blazes, similar to the Bruce Trail but at times looking at the map did help us navigate through a maze of side trails. The trail is a mixture of sand, single, double track, road, gravel road all blended together to make it interesting enough.
The relay format is a good one – it maintains the spirit of a team while an individual tackles each stage. Each stage is manageable with running sections of no more than 10k (unless you strung together 2+ running stages together for 20k) and biking stages were no more than 20k (unless you put together 3 stages for 50+k). For a team of 15, these distances are manageable. For our little team of 3, we worked pretty hard!
Definitely a race to consider for Team Running Free next year.
