2016 Beaver Chase Trail Series Wrap Up

by Joe DuVall

The 24th year of Run Ottawa’s Beaver Chase Trail Series came to a close on Tuesday evening, August 30, 2016 with the final event held at Bell High School.

Everyone started on the cinder track at Bell High School, with participants in both the 2K and 6.75K following a route that took them onto the trails within the NCC’s western greenbelt, north of Hunt Club Road and east of Moodie Drive.

It is one of several trails that exist in all areas of the Ottawa area that provide a pleasant change to one’s regular training routes. We are hopeful that we can incorporate some of the other great venues for 2017 when we return for the silver anniversary of the Beaver Chase Series.

On this night, 15 runners plowed through the 2K event, 68 in the 6.75K, which was slightly longer than usual.

However, we wanted to add the portion on the track to spread people out at the start and have a great area to finish and lounge about when finished. After all, this was the night to award the Beaver Chase Trail Series shirts to those who managed to take part in at least 4 of 5 events and 35 people made the grade. The blue sleeveless tech shirt looked good on those posing for the group picture afterwards.

It was a great four months of series events, staged from 3 venues, the aforementioned Bell High School, Pinhey Forest on Slack Road and Richcraft Recreation Complex in Kanata. The trails were not complicated or very technical, we just wanted to offer runners an option for a weekday training session throughout the summer.

Special thanks to go out to Lisa Georges for her help during the series, along with Christophe Renne, Lise Morrow who tabulated results, Britt Halvorsen and series founder Dave Pedley who was also present and lent us a helping hand throughout. I would like to especially thank Run Ottawa colleague Dave Morrow for being a great help in staging these events.

Finally, thanks to Bushtukah and Sports 4 for being the series co-sponsors, providing great prizes at every event!

Plans for next year’s series will appear on the Run Ottawa website early in 2017.