St. Albert’s oldest road race celebrates its 30th anniversary April 19 with a new facelift.
The St. Albert 10-Mile Road Race, hosted by the St. Albert Road Runners and Triathlon Club, has been rebranded as the St. Albert Road Race with Landrex as the title sponsor.
Changing the moniker reflects the addition of the Sturgeon Valley Athletic Club 10-kilometre race and the Active Physio Works five km, which replaces the six-km event the last two years.
“Those are quite popular races for people to do,” said race director Joel Maley of the 10 and five km distances. “The 10-miler used to be the historical event in terms of everybody ran 10 miles. It was kind of like the big race back in the day and by and large today we’ve seen a big shift in popularity. The 10-miler to the average person doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s not the race to do kind of deal. You’re seeing more of a trend towards the marathon, half-marathon, five K and 10 K.”
The Tech Shop 10-miler was voted one of the best road races in Alberta in 2014. There were 192 male and 134 female finishers for the 10-miler and 16 finishers in the six-km event.
Last year’s 10-mile champion was Francois Leboeuf of Edmonton at 53:44 seconds and the fastest female was Emily Setlack of Cold Lake at 59:50.
The inaugural male and female winners in 1986 were Dennis Colburn, a five-time champion, at 54:12 and Anne Galloway at 58:54.
The course record of 50:46 was set by Matt Norminton in 2007 and Aster Demissie established the female record of 54:36 in 2005.
As of Tuesday morning, 243 runners – 201 for the 10-miler, 28 for the 10 km and for 14 the five km – had registered online for the road race. The online deadline through www.zone4.ca is April 16.
Maley’s goal is 400 runners in total.
The start time is 9:30 a.m. for the 10-miler, followed five minutes later by the 10 and five km races.
The new start line and finish line is on Sir Winston Churchill Avenue across from the St. Albert Curling Club, the race-day venue headquarters.
“The actual course is the same for the 10-miler but because we’ve added the two additional races, the 5 K and the 10 K, and due to some safety concerns, et cetera, we’ve actually changed in terms of the way the 10-miler is going to be run this year,” Maley said. “We’re going to run the south section first. We’re going to start at the St. Albert Curling Club and we’re going to run on Sir Winston Churchill (before swinging left on Levasseur Road and then hang another left on Grandin Road on the way down to St. Anne Street) on that south loop first and then we’ll head north and do the north section. The interesting portion with the north section is it’s going to run in reverse from what’s been run in years past.”
The 10-km and five-km races will head in the opposite direction of the 10-miler.
“They’re going to head east on Sir Winston Churchill and then pretty much right away they take that left on St. Anne Street and follow the same similar course to the 10-miler in terms of that north section,” Maley said.
Visit www.stalbertroadrace.com/Events/ for the course layouts.
“We’ve made a few changes in terms of direction that we were running and the whole intent is to make it as fun as possible for the racers,” Maley said. “So far the feedback has been fairly good but we’ll have to see after the first race I guess.”
Building up the volunteer base is another priority for Maley and individuals can contact Catherine Buhr at [email protected] for more information.
Maley has also taken the intersection flag person course required through changes to the City of St. Albert’s special events guidelines, spearheaded by the planning and engineering department, to ensure the safety concerns of all participants and for all events are addressed. If needed, he can help train individuals working route crossings at busy intersections.
“We have six flaggers on the course and the RCMP as well to assist us. The rest of the (volunteers) are marshals. They don’t need the course, just a safety briefing,” he said.
