Sooke Hills Race Report
Photo credits: @dylandoubt @sookehillsrunning, Pauline, Ian
Sooke Hills Running hosted their first event in the Sooke Hills on beautiful sunny Saturday, June 8th. The event had two distances—a 50K and a 25K. STARR runners Pauline and Scott ran in the 50K and Ian ran in the 25K.
Ian had the following comments about the run:
”Hats off to Elliot and Jason for arranging a new trail race right here on our doorstep in Sooke. This was a superbly organized event which really did make the most of the wonderful trails up and down the Sooke Hills. I entered the 25km, and vouch that the trail was really well marked and the aid stations were enthusiastically crewed and well placed along the route. I heard similar feedback from some of the runners in the 50km event too.
Post-race offerings were excellent, with a great choice of food and drink and a really novel idea for finisher t-shirt mementos. All entrants were able to select a running shirt from a clothes line, ordered by size. All of these were pre-owned shirts that had been over stamped with the race logo! This means that i) it fits, ii) as long as you finished early enough you like the colour, iii) it is a truly unique memento of the race.
The logo was a highly appropriate slug, as I can say that the final 7km up and down Monument on a very warm day were indeed slug-like for me. I was only running the 25km, and I have to say the hot weather did cause quite some cramp towards the latter part of the run, and I am super impressed with the athletes that completed the 50km in such conditions. Which, by the way, everyone did; 100% of starters finished!
Good news the race will be on again next year, so please do think about supporting such an excellent local event as you begin to scope out your 2025 race calendar.
Photos above; one of my memento shirt. The next two pertain to an entry rule that we needed to “run with an offline map”. As the oldest competitor in the 25km event it was highly appropriate that I appeared to be the only one thinking I needed to carry an analogue map, and here it is for those of you interested in the route!”
Thank you to Ian for the report! The fourth photo is Pauline’s memento shirt. The routes took runners through an area that is well known to many STARRS, and those that have done some of these trails as hikes or trail runs know how challenging the race must have been! The 50K route had three summits: Empress, Monument and Quimper and 2000 metres of elevation gained throughout the race. Pauline confirms that “it was a super tough one.”
There were six aid stations for the 50K . The first place finisher was Charles Perin with a time of 6:02:02. Former STARR regular Jonathan Dvorak finished in 4th place with a time of 6:51:57. Pauline’s time was 8:23:35 and Scott completed the race in 10:56:30. Congratulations to all—it is quite an accomplishment to race over that type of terrain!
The 25K route had 945 metres of elevation gain and three aid stations. See Ian’s wonderful maps to check out the route. First place in this event went to Jonathan Gendron with a time of 2:10:14. Ian completed the run in 3:51:20.
Kudos to the organizers and volunteers who helped make the day a great success. The organizers plan to host the race again next year! Thank you to @dylandoubt and @sookehillsrunning, Pauline, and Ian for the photos and comments..