This Sunday I will be joining 6,999 of my closest friends running the oldest road race in North America* – Around the Bay in Hamilton, Ontario. With all that history, and the infamous “Older than Boston” t-shirts, what’s not to love? It fit into my marathon training schedule perfectly, so although I won’t be racing it, as such, it will make for an interesting, fast-paced and (hopefully) confidence-building training-run.
Naturally, when I tell people I am running Around the Bay, they ask how far it is – after all, not everyone is as interested in running history** as I am. But when I answer that it is 30K, people look at me and say “that’s an odd distance for a race, isn’t it?” What, because 42.195K makes sense?
*It should be noted that Around the Bay is not the oldest continually run road race in North America – that honour belongs to the Buffalo Turkey Trot, born in 1896, because Around the Bay missed a few years in there.
**Come on, even Saint Ralph did Around the Bay!! Okay so another obsession of mine that is not shared by everyone is watching movies about running.
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best of luck to you and baby brother…!!!
Haha! I never looked at it that way before! 30km is a nice round number, and the marathon only seems “normal” to us because there are so many more races of that distance.
Having said that, people always ask me how long I’ll be running even when I tell them I’ll be running a marathon. Gotta love non-runners. (:
Hi Karen!
My friends are running the 30K and I’m doing the 5K (training for the half marathon at Ottawa Race Weekend though 🙂 I’ll be wearing my red iRun t-shirt so we should meet up to say hi when you’re done! For everyone else attending the fabulous Hamilton Around the Bay race, please don’t be shy and come say hi! I’ll be in Copps Coliseum so just look for the girl with the big smile and the red iRun t-shirt.
Vicky
I can’t wait to cheer on all the runners doing ATB! Congrats on training for this event – Well done 🙂
Good luck, Karen! Hope to run that myself someday.