The Banff Jasper Relay 2005- 2019

The Beauty of Relay Running

Exceptions:

• Running the Golden Ultra Half Marathon with my daughter Jennifer.
• Watching my son Brad crush his stage of the Jasper Banff Relay.
• Participating in the Hood to Coast Relay with the Old Dogs, and also with Sandra Barker’s Hurtin’ Albertans.

Experiencing the Jasper Banff Relay

My love affair with the Banff Jasper relay started in 1988 when I was invited to run in the Jasper Banff relay with the NOVA team aptly named the Gas Passers. In those days the race started in Jasper on a Saturday morning, and ran through the night and ended at the Banff hockey rink just outside the Banff town limits on Sunday morning. It made for some interesting times running in the deepest, darkest nights, sometimes in the pouring rain with lightning flashes lighting up the mountains around you. 

Runners carried a little fluorescent baton. That was passed to you and that you gave to the next runner, just like the sprint relays. I remember seeing a baton bobbing down the highway in the middle of the night, in lashing rain and lightning, without a car in sight. It was Rhys Harrison, as we drove by, we slowed down, “Rhys, do you need anything? Do you need a light to see where you’re going?” Rhys, the ever calm Englishman, “No I’m all good, you guys carry on.” So we left them in the middle of the thunderstorm, with lightning that turned the darkest night into daylight as far as you could see, in grizzly bear territory, with the mountains all around us. I looked behind and saw his fluorescent baton receding into the darkness and I thought “Man that guy’s got guts, and where is his team to support him?”

 So I ran many times with the Nova Gas passers and the Nova Old Dogs and I was usually the slowest person on the team. But I was graciously accepted whenever I was healthy enough to run. I ran almost every relay from 1988 to the year 2000 when the relay was shut down by the organizers. 

One of my favorite runs ever was running south from the Columbia Icefields parking lot uphill for 10k  and then 6k gradually increasing down hill steepness taking me from Parkers Ridge down to the huge descent to the Big Bend finish. That’s the only time I ran a sub 6 minute mile, down that last immense downhill, sniffing brake dust all the way. But still, I was being passed like I was standing still by those gazelle-like elite runners that were much faster than me.

Where’s Garth?

I made a famous faux pas the first year that I was responsible for driving the team van from Calgary to Jasper for the weekend. We were all gathering our luggage at our departure point. Our friend Garth Huck said, “I’ll be back in 2 minutes. I just need to go get my gym bag and then I will join you”. 

Well you can guess what happened next. Blair in his race weekend hubris piled everyone in the van, and off we went to Jasper. We left Calgary at noon, and at 6:00pm I’m having dinner in Jasper. I suddenly came to my senses and looked across the table to Hugh Magill and said “Where’s Garth?” Hugh says, “I don’t know, where is he?” I laughed nervously as I replied, “I left him in Calgary!” Gath just went to get something and when he came back we were gone. After a series of frantic phone calls we got a hold of Garth and he caught a ride up with someone else the next morning in time to run his leg. To Garth’s credit (as far as I can tell) I was completely forgiven and we continued to run together many years after having lots of fun.

Hugh Magill – mentor, motivator, organizer

Hugh will get many mentions in my future memoir. He was a constant friend, running buddy and co-conspirator in many running adventures. Hugh and I met at the Husky Fitness Centre and were part of a noon hour running group that would head out of the office almost every day at 11:50 and return at 1:15.  We would run one of our favourite routes close to the downtown core of Calgary.

This was training for the races to come – especially for the Jasper Banff Relay. Hugh also started Wednesday night trail runs; the noon hour group would leave from the office at 4:30, driving to somewhere west of Bragg Creek to run anywhere from 10-16k after work. No wonder we were in shape!! High and I created the format for the Cochrane Ride and Run Relay in 1985 and were the race directors for a few years. (foreshadowing?)

The NOVA Gas Passers and the Old Dogs enter the Jasper Banff Relay

When we entered the Jasper Banff Relay, we went in as the NOVA Gas Passers. As we got older we formed a masters team, The Old Dogs. We took turns being team captain, but the real boss of the team was Hugh and his magic Lotus 123 spreadsheet. Hugh would assign you a stage to run, give you an estimated time based on his brutal but fair evaluation, and God help you if you didn’t make the time on the spreadsheet. I started running with both teams over the years running from 1988 to the final event in the year 2000.

The end of of the Jasper Banff Relay

In the year 2000 Eve Campbell and the Edmonton based Chaquis Running Club, who were the organizers of the Jasper Banff said, “We’re done, the Jasper Banff Relay is over. Parks Canada says that we cannot run through the Bow Summit area at night anymore. The reasoning from Parks Canada: It’s dark and there’s grizzly bears known to be in the area of Bow Summit. So even if we haze a bear and get it away from the exchange point, we don’t know where the bear has gone. This introduces risks that are unacceptable to Parks, and there is no other way to run the race, so it’s over.”

The organizers said there’s no way to go on without running at night and decided to end the relay. To be fair, they’d done their job and run the race for 20 years. It was time for them to hang up their directors hats and take a break.

This came as a great disappointment to those of us that knew the run. The route through the majestic Rocky Mountains, the Ice Fields, the mega-uphills, the knee crushing downhills, the  exchange points in the middle of nowhere, it was incredible. Our team sought out other relays after the year 2000 to try and fill the gap. We ran Hood to Coast in Oregon several times, we ran the Death Race in Grande Cache, several times and while they all had their particular strong points, they just didn’t measure up to the Jasper Banff Relay.

Our Inspiration for the Jasper Banff Relay: Garth Huck

Our friend Garth (the person I’d left in Calgary…) had a seizure in his house one day and subsequently it was found that he had a brain tumor. After several years of treatment, our friend Garth succumbed to the disease and died in 2004. A few hours before he passed, I visited Garth in hospital. They he told me I could see him, but he was unconscious. Having been in similar situations before, I have a strong belief that the patient’s ears are still working. I made a rash promise to Garth as he lay there. I said “Garth I’m going to bring the Banff The Jasper Banff Relay back in your honor. We’ll find a way to do it, and I promise you that we will pull it off.” Garth may have been unconscious, he may have been in a coma, but his eyebrows raised and a very slight smile came across his face. What more motivation do you need? 

---

The Birth of The Banff Jasper Relay

I approached my Nova teammates to see who would help me bring the race back. Everybody was on board, and said they would help. We needed to get Parks Canada to give permission to hold the race again.

I was told in no uncertain terms that it would never happen by many, here’s a few of the negatives:

• Parks would never let it happen
• The RCMP would never allow it
• After 20 years, it’s over Blair – forget about it
• The runners won’t come out – they are done too!
• The Alberta Government won’t let you run on the highway
• Why bother – it’s too much!

Anyway, we didn’t listen to the nay-sayers!

The Genius of Hugh Magill: “Split the relay into two races that take place simultaneously”

My running buddy and true friend Hugh Magill and I met with the Executive Director of Mountain Parks at the time, Bill Fisher. Bill said, “We were blamed for ending that race. We didn’t want it to stop, We just didn’t want runners running through the night in an area that had grizzly bear activity in it. If you can come up with a way to hold the race without running at night I will approve this race before I retire.”

I’m not that smart, but luckily for us, Hugh McGill is. Hugh came up with the idea that we’d hold two races at the same time. The first race would start in Banff and end at Saskatchewan River Crossing. At the same time a second race would be held leaving Saskatchewan River Crossing and ending in Jasper. We will use the same exchange points, we’ll just be going the other way. This gave us 17 legs just like the old race. We had eight in the South and 9 in the North.

Needless to say we got some feedback from past participants, “It won’t be the same as the old race..” No one will come out for that…” It changes everything!” But others were encouraging, because they remembered being in the van at 3:00 am, weakly bleating out the window, “Go runner go!!, as we approached the Herbert Lake exchange point.

Parks Canada says “Yes!” to the Banff Jasper Relay

We took this plan to Bill Fisher the Executive Director of Mountain Parks at Parks Canada. Over breakfast we explained that we would hold two races. They would probably be 12 hours in duration each, (thanks for the spreadsheets Hugh!) but we would finish in Jasper at approximately 7:00 – 8:00 at night which would still be in daylight on the first weekend in June. 

Bill was good to his word, and he approved our application to hold the relay in Banff National Park and Jasper National Park. Not only did he approve it, but he gave us a license to hold the race in perpetuity as long as we didn’t miss a year. What a blessing. We had to do an environmental study which was really all about Wildlife Incident Management and traffic control on the icefields parkway and Associated roads, we had that completed and signed off, so we were ready to go.

I said “Sure, no problem..”

There was one final Parks Canada hurdle in Jasper. We met with the head Ranger in Jasper in person to discuss the relay.. We drove through the route in the town site and came to the intersection of The Icefields Parkway and Highway 16.  He mentioned that there was a major traffic accident at this intersection.

“There was an accident at that intersection where a semi went through a red light and took out a van load of nuns on vacation. Eight people were killed, and this happened just a few years ago. The Ranger looked at me and asked “Who is taking responsibility for the runners crossing Highway 16 at this intersection?” Having done this numerous times before as a runner and following our teams through that intersection without issue, without thinking I just said “I will.” I think this surprised the Ranger as he had a puzzled look on his face. He said “Really, you will? I said, “Sure I’ve done this so many times before, we won’t have a problem.” I’m sure that’s somewhere in the Jasper Park Archives! I don’t think I signed anything, but after that we were approved to go ahead and got Parks permission to hold the race. (Sometimes you gotta put it on the line to make things happen.)

Dick Ireland and a Change in Direction, the Banff Jasper Relay is born

Logistics made it very hard to end the race in Banff. There was no place to hold a post race dinner for 500 or 600 people in Banff at a reasonable price. In Banff we were just another one of many events that wanted to take advantage of the beautiful location; so prices were high, options were low. During a trip to Jasper to scout out the route, we met Dick Ireland, the Mayor of Jasper. Dick convinced us to go from Banff to Jasper instead. 

Dick mentioned that we could have the post-race dinner in the activity center just like the old race. Dick made the following observations: The Activity Centre could easily house the race dinner again, it had a commercial kitchen, and the first Saturday in June was still open to make a reservation. The town would love to have you. Plus you could party all night, because the race was over!! That settled it, and we decided that we would go from Banff to Jasper. When I needed help with the Town of Jasper in any way, just a short call to Dick and the problem was solved. Dick ran on our team one year. He ran so hard he was sick at the finish line. He’s a class act all the way!!

Organization of the Banff Jasper Relay Begins

Since we had run the race at least 13 times before, and had manned an exchange point at least twice, we had an intimate knowledge of the racecourse and the exchange points. We also knew how to volunteer as we volunteered for a couple years in the past. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were the ideal team to take the race over.

We thought we were inexperienced so we hired race directors. But it soon became obvious that we knew the race course better than most people and we just needed somebody that could lead the team. That responsibility fell to me, and I was happy to take up the torch since I was the one that made the promise to Garth in the first place. With the support of some amazingly dedicated, passionate, loyal friends, and celestial help from Garth up in heaven above, we pulled all the logistics together to hold the race.

 What do you need to hold the Banff Jasper Relay?

• You need a dedicated team of Race Directors! 
• You need a Parks Canada project manager.
• You need a website.
• You need about $20,000 of seed money.
• You need an online registration system.
• You need a waiver.
• You need 50 – 100 volunteers and hotel rooms for them.
• You need at least 25 teams to make it financially viable.
• You need a captain’s meeting prior to the race. At this meeting we talk about race course conditions, road construction, road closures and recent wildlife sightings along the race course.
• You need traffic cones. (Lot’s of traffic cones!!)
• You need slow/stop paddles.
• You need 2 ambulances.
• You need 40 porta potties strewn across the race course at each exchange point.
• You need school buses to ferry Runners into the places where their team vehicles are not allowed.
• You need to inform businesses and hotels along the race course that they are going to be invaded by runners and support vehicles for a couple of hours during race day.
• You need a captain’s manual that explains in detail every exchange point and gives a general description of the race course whether it’s easy, moderate or hard.
• You need a volunteer manual that shows where every single traffic cone goes, where every volunteer stands, how to set up the exchange point, how to tear down the exchange point, what time of day you are needed, and  what your detailed duties are.
• You need a permit from Parks Canada that allows you to bring your vehicles into the parks to operate the race and to mitigate any risk of traffic accidents or Wildlife encounters.
• You need liability insurance.
• You need to book the activity centre.
• You need someone to cook the dinner.
• You need someone to serve dinner.
• You need someone to man the cash bar.
• You need a DJ for the dinner party.
• You need someone to book the activity center.
• You need Dick Ireland in Jasper to ensure that all the town employees and Parks Canada are aware of what’s going on.

Easy peasy!! Once you’ve done all that – yer good to go!!

The Patron Saint of the Banff Jasper Relay – Gwyn Morgan assisted by Dick Wilson

At this time, I was working as a contractor at the newly formed Encana Corporation. I knew we needed some money to get the race started, so I went to the Encana Charitable Donations Department and filled out an application form. After a week or two, my application was rejected because the relay did not align with their donation criteria. (boo hoo!)

The CEO of the Encana Corporation was Gwyn Morgan.  Gwyn’s profile page on the corporate intranet had a picture of him running and an early version of The Jasper Banff Relay. With Sandra Barker’s prompting, I took a chance, and sent Gwyn an email and told him of my plans to start the relay again. I asked Gwyn if there’s anything that Encana could do to lend support for the relay.  A week or two later, I received an email back from Gwyn saying that I would hear from his associate Dick Wilson in a few weeks. 

In due course, I was summoned to Dick Wilson’s office. It was a palatial space filled with corporate awards and artifacts. Dick was sitting behind a massive desk. He indicated that I should take a chair and sit down. I sat, and Dick asked me a question. “How about we give you a check for $20,000 to kick the race off?  Hopefully you’ll get it started. But if you don’t, at least we can say we gave it a good try. Does that work for you?” My mind considered this for an eighth of a nano-second,  “I would feel pretty awesome if you could do that!  I would love to accept that cheque whenever you’re ready!”  He asked me for some details and sent me on my way. Just as I was about to exit his office, he called out, “See that trophy over there, the one that’s 3 feet tall with the soapstone flame on top of it? Encana won that the last time they ran the Jasper Banff Relay. Why don’t you take that with you and use it in the new race? That way I can get it the H E double hockey sticks out of my office.” Dick had a big smile on his face as I walked out of this office. As things went on, we usually had $20,000 left in our bank account after every race!! Wow!!

Wow!! We had Parks Approval, we had some seed money, we had a team of race organizers, so what’s to stop us! 

Divine Intervention Required – Garth Delivered!!

As crazy as it sounds, you also need divine intervention. I’m convinced that our friend Garth Huck was overseeing the race from his heavenly post and I would call upon him in the captain’s meeting prior to every race. “Garth you only have one job, and I don’t want you to screw it up! That job is to deliver good weather for the runners tomorrow. I know you’re up there, I know you’re watching us, and I’m calling on you not to screw this up and to give us good weather.”

We would all laugh but surprisingly we never had a day of full-on terrible rain. In one of the first races, the rain followed us up the race course about 5k behind the last runner but nobody got soaked. Nobody ever ran in the rain for their entire stage on race day. Of course many of us were treated to the variability of Alberta weather as we were running. So when you’re running 16k you might get sun, you might get a bit of hail, you might get a bit more sun, you might get some more hail, then some more rain, and then sunshine at the end of your run. But that’s what Alberta is all about. We never had a day of full-on deluge rain. 

By the end of the race day, temperatures in Jasper were in the upper 20’s and runners and volunteers were battling with the heat. In 2013 when Alberta experienced the big flood, the Banff Jasper Relay was the last race that took place that spring.. The Banff Marathon was washed out, the Kananaskis 100 was washed out, the Calgary Marathon was washed out. Garth took care of us and we got our race in just two weeks before the big flood hit. Call it coincidence if you want, but that was my prayer and Garth delivered every single time.

The Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada and the Banff Jasper Relay

We chose a charity that Runners could support for the race and of course we chose the Brain Tumor Foundation of Canada in support of our friend Garth. We raised well over a million dollars for the Brain Tumor Foundation during the 15 years we held the relay. Susan Marshall, Suzanne Elliott and Eileen Quigg, Amy Mathais,  they all came from London Ontario to be part of the Relay. When we finished running the Relay in 2019, our runners had raised almost $1,000,000 for the Brain Tumour Foundation. 

Helping Hands in Jasper

The relay was a community affair in Jasper. The first year of the race, my daughter and her friend naively served up prime rib to all the runners. Thank goodness we only had 22 teams and the crowds were light, but still Jennifer and her friend made a fantastic meal for everyone, in spite of the blisters they got cutting roast beef for the event!  In spite of the lower number of teams, attendance would have been over 500 people – yikes!  

Jennifer moved on and didn’t run a cooking company anymore, so the dinner was prepared by the French School in Jasper. The parents cooked the dinner under the direction of a Parisian trained chef, the students served the meal, and cleaned up the dishes. As the race director the only plate I ever touched was my own. Diane Lamarre was the organizer of the dinner and they never let us down ever!!

We had a cash bar. The beer and wine was donated by The Jasper Brew Pub for 15 years. The bar was manned by The Jasper Fire Department and the money from liquor sales was donated either to the Multiple Sclerosis Society or the burn unit in the Edmonton Hospital. I didn’t even have to get a liquor license, as the fire department took care of that. Thanks to Soc Korogonas and Gerry Van Tiegen.

The Jasper Inn got involved and gave us accommodations at discounted rates for race directors and volunteers that stayed over in Jasper.  Of course the runners also booked almost every room in Jasper. 

Stories, stories, so many stories to tell you about the race and so many personalities that made the race so special. If this is well received, I will write some more…

The Ubiquitous Jim Clampett and the Banff Jasper Relay

Jim Clampett was THE race timer extraordinaire and THE volunteer extraordinaire even as he approached 80 years of age. (Did you know that quite often he got stuck with spreading traffic cones up the hill leaving Big Bend by himself? He would tell me, “Blair you gotta get me some help from me cuz that’s a lot of work at my age.” Indeed!!)

Jim’s legacy: Moose Mountain Marathon, Calgary Marathon, numerous Canmore Trail Races, Kananaskis 100, Round the Lake in Invermere, St. Patrick Day 10k, Police Half Marathon, Calgary Road Runners Club. If there was any running event going on in Alberta or the vicinity, Jim was heavily involved and made it all happen.   

At the Banff Jasper Relay after a full day of race-directing, which was probably 20 hours of uptime, Jin was there from the start, and was recording the runner’s times in his van at the finish line. He would then work with the timing team to get the race results for us by 8:00pm that evening, Jim was a machine! 

The next morning we all saunter in to the breakfast buffet at the Jasper Inn, we are beat, but we are still excited about the race that we just pulled off. So imagine this, we’ve gone through the race, we’ve had the dinner party, we’ve been up late and the next morning we’re all kind of sleepily getting ready to have breakfast in the hotel. Everyone is pretty much done. 

Where is Jim and his wife Barb, I asked? 

No one knows where they are, but we notice that their van is gone.  “I’ll just phone them and see if he can come for breakfast. I’ll probably wake him up.”  Jim answered his phone, “Jim where are you? Get your butt out of bed and I’ll buy you breakfast.” Jim replied, “We can’t make breakfast, I’m just putting Barb’s kayak in the water at Edworthy Park in Calgary.” I was astounded! “Jim, how in the hell did you get to Edworthy Park by 9:00 in the morning? Jim chuckled and said, “Well, we left kind of early…” 

It was Jim’s 80th birthday a few days before the relay one year. I asked Diane, the Dinner Director if they could prepare a big birthday cake for Jim.  We can present it to him at the race dinner. There would be seven hundred people in attendance and we would all wish Jim the happiest 80th birthday. The time came for the surprise. I called Jim up front. He comes up all  smiles. He puts his arms around me and whispers in my ear,  “You dirty bastard!”  Because as it turns out, unlike me, Jim hates being the center of attention, HE HATES IT!! I still laugh at this memory every time.

Al Davidson and the timing crew

Al Davidson was manager of the official timing team, and they took it to a new level. We had accurate results every year, times were reported during the race. Results were posted during the dinner, so we could give out the awards while everyone was still at the dinner party. Not to say we didn’t have issues with the timing crew getting all that they needed, but I must admit Al took it all in stride and he was a fantastic team leader.

Porta Potties!!

Peter Graham and Carol Windlinger were responsible for putting the porta potties in place working with the Porta-Potty company. I remember the first year it rained like crazy the day before the race. They were out all day, in the rain helping position porta potties and when they came to the dinner they looked like a couple drowned rats. I think I received some stink eye from Carol that was well deserved, but being the good sport she was they came back and faithfully took care of that job every year thereafter.
Lucienne and Marie Beauchemin from ABC Waste – they were the greatest! They provided porta-potties, attended the relay and gave us some great advice on how to make the relay better. If you were lucky, they threw in the odd Hutterite chicken too!

Ref’s and Radios

Imagine holding a race in the mountains where there’s no cell coverage! We had to rely on long distance handheld and car mounted radios to be in communication with each other. Our experience of working in the field at NOVA ensured that we had good radio etiquette and communications were effectively in place throughout the race course. 

The radios were essential. If you got lost and needed to get back to your team, if you left your knapsack/jacket/child/spouse/car/asthma inhaler somewhere and you wanted to get them/it back, we took care of it. These are the things that we coordinated during the race without a hitch because of the Fantastic Team we had and the radio communications.

Core Race Directors and Supporters

Thanks to my long suffering spouse Debbie, who supported me before, during and after the Relay. She volunteered numerous times at different exchange points. Her suggestions streamlined the operation of the race numerous times.

Props to Shaheen Bhimani, my business partner. We shut down for the month of May while I coordinated the relay – not one complaint from my business partner! Shaheen wrote the first registration system and timing scripts to download the teams names, team categories, team members and the stages they ran, for importing into the timing system. Shaheen thanks for coming out and volunteering and bringing Shy and your kids out to the relay so many times.

Rob and Tammy Stichbury and Don and Mary Lou Gyonyor were everywhere, they were race referees, safety coordinators, bear incident recorders and generally helped hold things together on race day. Rob and Don would manage the start line at Saskatchewan River Crossing. Tammy and Mary Lou would help in the south with race logistics – that was a little challenging until we went past Herbert Lake!

Ron Legere and Sandy Lough came out as directors at large and managed the south start. They also helped with the logistics being on the radio from start to finish. They were integral to on race day and helped at the finish line in Jasper.

Dave and Linda Foo also helped in a huge way, volunteering at exchange points, helping with the race packages, coordinating volunteers, setting up exchange stations, tearing them down and coordinating numerous activities on the race day.

Thanks to Colleen McBain, our long-suffering volunteer coordinator. It was her job to get the volunteers to give them work assignments and ensure that they’re working with their friends, that they got their hotel rooms, that we moved them from assignment to assignment as volunteers had continually changing time commitments that meant they couldn’t be there when they thought they could. Colleen you did this for many years without complaining but eventually everybody showed up on the race and went off with what a hitch. How could we have done it without you?

James Romaine was our faithful accountant who put up with my poor accounting practices.  At least I got the receipts and statements to him so  he could balance the books at the end of every race. At one point we were in a financial crisis and I was blissfully unaware of it until James pointed it out to me. Some last minute budget cuts prior to the race taking place that saved our bacon!! James, thank you so much for your unwavering support and dedication to the relay.

Steve Madeyski, who brought out his son and his heavy duty truck to support those on the race course.

Bill Somerville, also a director in the early days, and supplier of his red Mazda Miata, known on the radio communications as the Coke can.

Lana Makonin was a stalwart volunteer, taking care of the bidding process for major expenditures, and helping out on race day.

Thanks to Gary Pitcher who rewrote the timing system to Al’s new specifications and it ran trouble-free every year afterwards, thanks buddy. We still have everyone’s contact information. 

---

The Radio Guys

We hired a group of ham radio operators to help out. These gentlemen were looking for a place where they could be put to use. Unlike other volunteers, there was no recruiting required here, they descended upon us in great numbers, and were there for the whole race day monitoring the progress of the runners up the race course. The worst job was to be “Tail End Charlie” who monitored the progress of the slowest runner of the race. The radio guys faithfully reported on that poor soul tromping it out in last place. When someone pulled up lame, they stayed with them, they helped retrieve lost or forgotten items, they reported on bear sightings. They were a valuable asset to the race, and we couldn’t have done it without them.

There was the Mystery Radio operator who always assumed command of the race.  During race day he spoke with authority and gave orders and direction. Quite often he would chime in with directions to people on the race course and we’d all laugh because he was generally right 50% of the time, but he was certainly overstepping his responsibilities. When he was overstepping and wrong, we had to shut him down.

Thanks, thanks and more thanks!!

Thanks to Gord Hobbins – shoe supplier and generous sponsor of the dinner party so many times!

Thanks Shawnee Wilson and everyone at the Jasper Inn – great accommodation and a great “day after” breakfast buffet!

Thanks to Dick Ireland, Mayor of Jasper – you made it happen! And you and Barb(?) even ran with us!!

Thanks to Soc Korogonas for donating the beer and spirits every year – and being a Team Captain!

Thanks to Greg Vantighem – the best bartender and liquor sales coordinator.

Thanks to Diane LaMarre and everyone at École Desrochers for preparing the post race meal.

Thanks to Gord Enns and Luigi Barera and everyone else at Calgary Silkscreen, our faithful t-shirt supplier.

Thanks to Fernando Ibanez from ATS Traffic for coordinating all the traffic supplies.

Thanks to Brian McCullagh for being volun-told to manage the north section of the race one year, and also producing a great video about the relay.

Sandra Barker for being a supporter and volunteer, and team Captain, whatever she’s taking to be so positive, I want some of that!

Thanks to the Team Captains that managed their team, recruiting runners, replacing injured runners, travel logistics, race day running logistics, getting everyone to the post race dinner, wow you are amazing! Murray Meads leads the pack, by bringing 3 teams in a few years in a row.

Thanks to all you Runners – this isn’t an event that you can run and just go home and have lunch afterwards, it’s usually a weekend commitment, and we are so appreciative that you came out!

Volunteers!

Yes the volunteers, they would give up their weekend to stand at an exchange point for hours, just for 90 minutes of activity, then drive to their next assignment, and so on, we couldn’t have done it without you!!

In conclusion

This isn’t the end of the story, please feel free to comment on your experiences. Also, if you are inspired to run again, the relay is still happening, go to the new Multisports Canada relay website and sign up!