First off, I apologize to the family who’s daughter did not get to race, even though they paid and showed up on time. That would not be fun at all!

Now saying that, different distances often require different starting points on the 400m track that we use.

For example, the popular 400m, 800m and 10, 000m distances, all have the same start and finish points on the track. The classic mile almost starts and finishes on the same spot – is almost 4 exact laps, the mile is actually 1609 metres, so starts 9 metres back of the finish line on that same 400 metre track. Follow?

Our goodly announcer, David Jackson, was calling athletes to the appropriate start line however, not everyone listens to all announcements all the time – I often don’t myself, so I get it.

But it is too bad she did not get to race. To give credit, her father would not take a refund, he offered the registration fee he paid as a donation to the Mustard Seed Food Bank, our Charity-of-Choice. Thank you!

Now there are other distances requiring starting points at odd places. For example, 5000m races require 12.5 laps of the 400m track, 1500 metre and 1000 metre distances have different starting points as well. Darned math!

Next time we will make an even louder attempt to get everyone to the correct starting point, but the deal is; everyone needs to be responsible for their own preparation – an old running credo.

Walter and Lisa Cantwell, who own Atmosphair Studio Ltd have generously offered to sponsor the kid’s section – thank you very much. In fact, Walter, has offered to help manage the kids (9 – 15-years) for the final two events.

Gary Barber started the idea and is bringing out kids and volunteering his time – but now, going-forward, we will have an organized kid’s section with both Gary’s contribution and Walter and Lisa’s help.

Thanks, Walter (and Lisa) and Gary, for your contributions and to the family who demonstrated class, by not whining and donating their registration fee to a good cause.

Please be sure to return July 17th and August 7th for our final two kids races, which are 800m and 1000m respectively.