Wandering Moose

Description:

In 2012 I was coaching athletes in our fall trail running clinic for a race down on the coast. A few weeks before the race, the organizers changed the race date and the majority of my athletes could no longer attend the event. Everyone had been working really hard on their goals and were so excited for the race, so I decided I would organize a pretend race on our local trails, despite not having the slightest clue how to do it. Let along organize in a few weeks.
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The week leading into things, I started to receive phone calls from people who had heard about it, asking if they could participate and register. Unfortunately that wasn’t possible as it wasn’t a sanctioned event and we actually turned it into a run for local charity.

My husband and I created courses that best matched the profiles of the original race and we went out the morning before to mark it with ribbon and flour that we put in water bottles. We made a little finish area and a few of our friends volunteered at the start and at an aid station. I made personalized “bat bibs”, as it was a Halloween event and everyone raced in costume.

The feedback was so positive that I decided to give this whole “race directing” thing a go and build off of this event the following year. We had 85 people registered for 13.5k, 27k & 42k events. I recruited my friends to help make finishers mugs where we painted individual mugs and baked them in my oven, along with finishers medals made of flour, salt and water.

Then in April 2014, I added Spring Rush in Rose Valley and in 2015 I brought on the giant, “Broken Goat” in Rossland, BC. This event prompted the animal theme to our series and we changed Spring Rush to Nimble Bear and Autumn Rush to Wandering Moose. Finally in 2017 we added the 4th event to our series called “Wild Horse Traverse” and this kicked off the “Quadzilla”… a title you earn if you can finish all four of the races in our series. (any distances)

All of this came from finding the positive when our original race plans fell through… solidifying that a “positive attitude changes everything!” (p.a.c.e.) And the rest, as they say, is history…