Race recap for our 16th year!
- Chris
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
The odds of having a beautiful sunny race day surely were in our favour after so many rainy race days. It was beautiful and sunny on Friday, but then poured rain to start the race day! Runners literally showed pictures of flowing rivers of water on the single track, the most rain we've ever had - what a fun twist! By noon it had stopped and the sun even started to come out. Our 50k runners got to finish in beautiful weather. Moral of the story? When you pick your poison next year, pick 🅿️☠️🅿️ 50k.
Grim was back, reminding you that you'd made questionable life choices and that there were easier ways to get a pair of socks.
Our runners were once again fueled by great nutrition and electrolyte product from Hammer Nutrition Canada. A huge thanks for stocking our aid stations with gels and helping keep us hydrated with Heed lime and orange!
We couldn't do this without our sponsors
If you were one of our winning runners, you got some great loot! Starting with the hand crafted medal hangers from Evans Tree Work, these sustainably sourced awards bear the 🅿️☠️🅿️ logo and your place. In addition, winners celebrate with one-of-a-kind hand crafted honey-almond soaps from Sue's Soap Creations, a bag of locally roasted coffee from Epic North Coffee, gels from Hammer Nutrition Canada and a jar of creamed honey from our local honey farmer, Paul.
Our Mountain Goats
One of our favourite celebrations is to cheer on our Mountain Goats. These are runners who finish, through determination, as our final runners within the allocated time (9 hours.) These finishes are often very emotional as the day has been long and wet for these athletes. That's why we reward them for being determined and persisting!
Mike Parker - 50k (left)
Eunice Lipinski - 25k (center)
Sabrina Truttmann - 12.5k (right)
Sue Sitki's photo galleries are live!
How wet did you get? Have you checked out your pics? Bet you're smiling while splashing through the mud and puddles. Check out the gallery here >
Congratulations to our top finishers
Big day out on course for these folks who dug deep, started in pouring rain, dashed through a patch of snow on the way down the ski hill, and finished victoriously! We know this meant you trained hard over the winter, so these are well deserved awards for grinding it out in the snowy months and showing up ready to lay down some fast times.
For all of those who got your distance done and earned your socks - cherish them. They are a token of your fortitude at finishing a tough race in a really tough year.
Top Female 50k: Sarah Cushnie, 5:48:06
Top Male 50k: Clifford McCarten, 4:57:09
Top 50k Runners
Women
1st - Sarah Cushnie, 5:48:06
2nd - Isobel Sibbald, 6:24:34
3rd - Shanda Quinlan, 6:41:30
Men
1st - Clifford McCarten, 4:57:09
2nd - Jeff Kroetsch, 5:24:25
3rd - Jason Chirico, 5:33:18
Top 25k Runners
Women
1st - Candace Romanowski, 2:37:49
2nd - Tina Perilli, 2:43:36
3rd - Jodi Cronje, 2:55:19
Men
1st - Drew Graham, 2:05:15
2nd - Jeremiah Groen, 2:10:23
3rd - Herve Mallet, 2:28:16
Non-Binary
1st - Diana Pearson, 3:39:19
Top 12.5k Runners
Women
1st - Jennifer Faraone, 1:16:04
2nd - Patricia Anders, 1:18:34
3rd - Kelsey Lander, 1:19:38
Men
1st - Ralphie Burton, 59:15
2nd - Sean Magee-Saxton, 1:05:54
3rd - Adam Lopes, 1:07:39
Volunteers rule
We couldn't do this without volunteers. Every single person who helped us put on this event did it for the love of the running community. That's a beautiful thing when you think about it. A bunch of strangers gave up a Saturday so that you could achieve amazing things because they knew that one day, somebody would be supporting them in a similar capacity. All our volunteers get a guaranteed entry to next year's race which is a big deal when the race sells out in an under an hour.
Swag Purchases Help Raise $1,250 In Support of Mental Health!
You may not even have known that you were supporting mental health with your swag purchase but 100% of our swag sales go to CMHA Simcoe-County in support of mental health and addictions. Thank you so very much for supporting this great cause. As a huge thank you we present our annual...
Brag Your Swag Contest
It's back! Brag your swag is a chance to get yourself into our race for free. We love seeing all your summer and fall adventures! Take a picture of you doing anything in 🅿️☠️🅿️ swag, post it on social, and tag us and you'll be entered into our draw for 1 of 3 FREE race entries for our 2027 race. We'll keep an eye out and reply to your post letting you know you're entered (we can't see photos shared on private accounts). Not on social media? Email us at info@pickyourpoison.ca and we'll get you entered into our draw. We'll do our draw on Nov 30, the day before registration opens, so our winners know they've beat the rush!
Our first draw entrant is @alexkellyfit, who tagged us wearing this year's socks to an event in Ottawa!
The Families Behind 🅿️☠️🅿️
We can't thank our families and friends enough for supporting us in success with this wonderful event. Families like the Woods who worked in our garage to help us finish the awards and shirt packing to the Oakleys who help us setup the course and run the "Oakley's Safe Haven," aid station. The Livingstons who have helped us run the Ski Chalet aid station for 5 years now, to Trish's parents Phil and Mary who help sort aid station food, clear the course and sell swag in support of mental health to Chris's mom Alice, who loves helping runners achieve their goals! We couldn't do it without you!
With all our trail running love,
Race Directors, Rhonda Marois and Trish Mintz
Creative Chaos Director, Chris Mintz
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