2007 - Year 6 - Capilano Midsummer Night Run

18 August 2007 - 37 Starters

What a wonderful evening it was: The rains held off, nobody got lost, no injuries that drew blood and the party lasted until 5:00am.!

The event started early when a faint voice from the backyard drifted to our dinner table questioning "is there a run here tonight?" I almost said, "yes, but you are 2 hours early!" 'Turns out the two early birds from London, Ontario arrived in Seattle the day before and hoped to squeeze in a race before heading to Ironman Canada. A quick web search got them to the Club Fat Ass website and Google maps guided them non-stop from Seattle to the yellow house on Fairmont Road and start line of the Capilano Canyon night run.

After loading up on cheese, bread, olives and shrimps for the apres-run potluck at the local market, Kathy and Scott returned to the start to join the group of 37 runners setting out to enjoy a night trail run through the Capilano Canyon, MacKay and Mosquito Creek trails. We assured Scott that the trail was tame with no major hill to climb. (Scott later confessed to a chorus of guffaws from the locals that this was the toughest 18km he's ever done!)

No bears, skunks or raccoons were seen on the course this year. Fortunately, there were no nominations for the Most Lost or Purple Heart (most injured) runner categories. (Where was Doug Mackay?) Sharon wins the prize for forgetting her flashlight the second year in a row. (Thank you to the kind runner who lent her a headlamp.) Other prizes went to Chris Mager, who won a Northface hydration pack - kindly donated by Gilles Barbeau - for the worst singing performance of the evening. Penny Jabobsen and the Ontario runners won TrailRunner magazine subscriptions and Vanessa Fors went home with pair of socks for inadvertently being led on the long course. A Montrail cap was snatched up by Bryce Adams and a special edition Club Fat Ass cap went to Ron Adams out of recognition for maintaining the Adams family aid station for 11 summer and winter night runs.

The potluck party after the run is the social highlight of the year for your Event Hosts. Thank you to everyone for delicious contributions. Tasty morsels included spicy stuffed eggs, homemade sushi, potato, orzo and pasta salads, pakoras, samosas, bbq'ed chicken, lots of cheeses, chips and dips and more deserts than you can shake a stick at. Those of you who stuck around long enough finished off the eating spree with a home baked Black Forest Cake to celebrate Sibylle's birthday.

Lots of photos are posted here. Please add your photos of the evening to your free Flickr account, then add them to the CFA photo pool and tag them with CapilanoCanyonNightRunMidsummer2007 and CapilanoCanyonNightRun. They will magically appear in the link above.

Thanks to Tim Wiens who provided this GPS generated map of the competitive course. Offical length according to Tims GPS is 16.5km. Take that, Scott... and you thought it was the toughest 18km in your life.

Here are results and points. Please let me know if you have any corrections.

* extra point for garbage pick-up on the trails

** EH point