Kananaskis relay celebrates 25 years

When the starting gun goes for the 25th annual Kananaskis 100-mile relay in Longview June 25, Okotoks will once again be well represented.

At least one team from the Big Rock Runners has competed in the 10-person relay race for the past 24 years. The grueling race starts in Longview and ends at the Kananaskis Village. The route is along Secondary Highway 541 and Highway 40.

“I have missed maybe two or three of them over the years,” said Wayne Wiebe, a member of the Big Rock Runners. “I will be running with our usual Big Rock Runners again this year.”

The Big Rock Runners Masters team has been in the top three in its division for the past eight years including a win in 2005, but how the team finishes is secondary.

“What I like is the camaraderie,” Wiebe said. “It takes a fair amount of planning to ensure your runners are capable of doing a particular leg, that they are at the start time on time and you have to make sure your runners are willing to party afterwards.”

Wiebe has ran all 10 of the legs over the years, and the hardest one is Leg 5, which is 17.6km and has an elevation gain of around 450m with grades up to seven degrees.

“They all have some grinders in them, but Leg 5 is probably the hardest,” Wiebe said.

The K-100 is a popular event for competitors and organizers are anticipating 1,800 runners to participate this year.

Cheryl Lowery, the event’s race director for the past 12 years said after 25 years the majority of the teams know exactly what they need to do to be successful.

“The teams that have been doing it for a long time and they haven’t gotten it down to a science, where they are only using two vehicles and are traveling together,” she said. “From an organization perspective, we have got four equipment trucks which are picking up gear and leapfrogging it forward.”

Some of the problems over the years have been unbearable.

“Two years before I started, they had to close Leg 6 because of a bear, we had to stop and restart a race,” she said. “We just closed everything down and drove up to Leg 7.”

There has also been a change to the final leg this year, which used to be a cross-country leg, from Barrier Lake to the Kananaskis Village in which runners used to have to ford a creek to get to the finish line.

When there is a lot of run-off, like there is right now, the creek turns into a river and the runner can’t get across,” she said.

She said there is the whole gamut of runners, ranging from the competitive teams like the ones from Okotoks, to the more recreational runners.

“You have the fast guys who will finish in 10 hours to the slower teams that will take 16 (hours),” Lowery said. “That’s fine. We manage that by having forced starts, so some teams might have two runners on the course at a certain time. So we don’t have runners out there at 10:30 at night.”

A force start is if a team has a runner who hasn’t reached relay point by a certain time, the next runner starts his or leg regardless.

Okotoks’ Richard Ellum, 71, has also participated in the K-100 several times.

“I have ran all the legs except the hard one,” Ellum said. “I always enjoyed the longer legs. The good thing about the K-100 is the great variety in the type of legs. You can tailor the leg to your runner.”

He said heat can be an issue. While it can be cool at 7 a.m., it will warm up considerably by the afternoon.

“You have to drink a lot the day before the race so the water is in your system,” Ellum said. “I ran it a few years ago, and I struggled with the heat.”

The proceeds of the race go towards Hostelling International Canada and it is the biggest fundraiser for organization.

The money will be used for upgrading hostels across Canada.

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