Sunny skies and a flat course made for ideal running conditions at the first leg of the 13th annual Elmira Endurrace on April 18. Runners ran a five-kilometre race and about half of them also signed up to do the second half of the race series, an eight-kilometre run on April 25.
![Endurrace sees 300 take to the streets last weekend, with another 250 expected for the second leg on Saturday. [Whitney Neilson / The Observer]](https://www.observerxtra.com/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/post_sports_run.jpg)
“You can add your times together for an overall champion,” race director Lloyd Schmidt said. “We tried to come up with something a little different. There’s a lot of 5k, 10ks out there, so we tried to do something a little different.”
He said 300 people ran last week and 250 are registered for this weekend, with 115 doing both. They’re still accepting registrations for this Saturday.
“It went really well, a number of personal bests,” Schmidt said of the 5 km run. “It’s a fast course.”
This is one of the earlier Waterloo running series races in the year. He said they try to have something for everyone, as shown by runners pushing their children in strollers and wheelchairs.
“After the long winter it gives them a chance to test their fitness,” Schmidt said. ‘There are a number of spring marathons coming up. It’s a good tune up. A lot of people run multiple races in the Waterloo running series so they pick this as one of the races they want to do.”
They try to spread out the races through the region and when they were looking for a location to hold this one, there wasn’t one in Elmira at the time. He says it’s a great venue because many people can run personal bests there, since there aren’t any hills.
“The next race is called the Baden Road Races. And after that is one of the races where we throw the coloured powder on the runners,” Schmidt said. “We try to offer a variety in our series. Some of the funner ones might not be for the more competitive people but they’re fun.”
The Elmira race is run in the evening, which he said was to mix things up from the usual morning races. Also many runners train after work, so they’re used to running in the evening. For the morning runners, it takes a bit to adjust to running later in the day.
The overall winner of both races wins a quilt made from the t-shirts from previous years’ races. Runners also collect pledges for KidsAbility.
“As runners we get a lot out of this sport and we enjoy doing it,” Schmidt said. “It doesn’t feel like a job. It’s fun for us. Our committee meetings are always fun. We can just see the expressions on peoples’ faces when they finish, the satisfaction. People can use races as goals to get into shape for certain things.”
Chris Carmichael from Drumbo finished first overall in the 5 km, with a time of 17:33. To put that into perspective, he ran at a pace of one kilometre per 3:31 minutes. He was quickly followed by Chris Serran of Guelph at 18:01 and Elmira resident Fraser Hutton at 18:20.
As for what keeps people coming back every year?
“They like the t-shirts, they like the course,” Schmidt said. “We try to keep all the races the same quality so they know what to expect when they go to a Waterloo running series event.”
