5 Peaks Trail Running
Saturday April 26th
Horseshoe Vally, Barrie On
Over the last 2 seasons I have wanted to run a 5 peaks race but my schedule just hadn’t allowed it. This year, however, I was lucky enough to have the weekend of the 5 Peaks season opener up at Horseshoe clear and I am SO glad that I did because this event was fantastic!!
5 Peaks is a really cool company that organizes and puts on a trail running series here in Ontario and across Canada. The first stop for this years series was the X-Country trails up at Horseshoe Resort. Each event offers a SPORT and ENDURO category (4.8 km & 8.6 km this race) with athletes of all ages racing through a challenging trail run course. The cool thing about this race was that the course was set by Team Running Free member Kalon Sparks!! Kalon’s wife Jill was announcing the race and presenting awards and RF’s own John Klich is the 5 Peaks Race Director. Talk about RF rep. at a race!! You put all of these factors together along with great weather and 500+ racers and you’ve got yourself an event to remember.
The race conditions were ideal and the trails were in great shape. I decided to hold back from the lead wave (I’m not really a runner!) and took off with the 4th wave . The start of the race led racers out across the West part of the trails and after a short run along some nice wide double track, we hit the singletrack and worked our way back into some more challenging terrain. At this point I had left the 4th wave behind and started to pass members of the 3rd. The first climb was the turn around point for the Sport course and as racers started to spread out over the race course I made a move on the hill to pass some of the 3rd wave. As we hit the decline and across the bottom end of the race course, we moved into another doubletrack section and I kept up the pace and passed a few more runners. The next challenge was “The Wall”, a notoriously long and steep climb. My goal was to keep running and as I did I was able to pass some of the runners from the 2nd wave that the Wall had claimed. With the Wall conquered the race course flattened out over the final 2.5km. I kept up the pace and reeled in a few more racers. With 1 km to go I decided kick it into overdrive and pushed hard to the finish, just beating out a racer who had decided that I was not going to beat him. I finished in a time of 40.53 with a 4.49 km pace which was good for 31st overall (out of 275) and 8th in my age category (out of 55). All in all, it was a great race. Huge shout out to John Klich, Kalon and Jill Sparks and the entire 5 Peaks crew for putting on a great event and to all of the Team RF athletes who were there sporting their jerseys. Also a big congratulations to my wife Meagan who raced the 4.8 km sport course and to my AHS AR team member Elyse Nieuold (15) who won her age category.
I’ll have to miss the June race at Durham but I am looking forward to the race in July at Rattlesnake Point. I would also encourage all Team RF members to check out this awesome race series. You won’t be disappointed.
Marcus
I agree with you Marcus.
The 5 Peaks series is easily of the best race series we have here in Ontario (whether it be running, duathlon, triathlon, etc.).
I did Horseshoe last year (the last race of the season) and have nothing but praise for the event. Hard to find any faults at all.
I highly suggest that everyone check it out to see how a races should be done.
What a great report of the race. As a volunteer at the event this year, it was really great to see and share in the excitement of the race. It was a great course and a well run event. I also got to see that there is a whole heck of a lot that goes into the race to make it a good experience for all the participants.
I would CHALLENGE ALL team RF’ers to come out to the Durham Forest race. If you aren’t going to race it, come out and volunteer a couple of hours to a really great race (it is practically in our back yard, so you’ll be home by noonish). This race series introduces a lot of new people to the sport and it would be awesome to have team shirts everywhere in order to promote our community and our TEAM.