General News

The winners of the 10-kilometre races might have in a very small way shown the vast demographics that took part in the most successful Rattler Run ever.

A record total of 780 participants registered for Saturday’s race, which was held at Medicine Hat College with the trail going through Kin Coulee Park. Out of those participants, 756 of those runners completed their races.

That blew away the previous record for participation of 525 people set at last year’s event. In the 10-kilometre distance, the women’s race was won by Tanya Hoffarth, who is in her late 30s, while the men’s race was claimed by Chad Allan, who is a 16-year-old Grade 10 student at Crescent Heights High School.

“It was great to see so many out,” said Hoffarth. “It makes it more exciting for everybody involved.”

Hoffarth has been running for 15 years, and this was the fifth Rattler Run she took part in. She claimed top in the 10-kilometre women’s race with a time of 43 minutes and 22.75 seconds.

When she was circling through the coulees, Hoffarth said the race got a little bit hard, because the wind picked up. Outside of that, she felt the race went well.

“It felt good,” said Hoffarth. “I felt strong.

“It is a good challenge. It is always fun to try and improve.”

Allan topped the 10-kilometre men’s race in a time of 36:39.20, which was about 20 seconds faster than the second-place time put up by Mike Humphry.

Allan squeezes in these races between playing high school badminton, volleyball and soccer. He also competes for the Crescent Heights Vikings track team.

As for why he decided to run the 10-kilometre race, Allan said he preferred to take part in running longer distances. He thought he handled Saturday’s race well.

“It was pretty good,” said Allan. “I mostly kept the same pace the whole time.”

As for the record turnout, Zakk Morrison, the Alberta Sport Development/Be Fit For Life coordinator and one of the main organizers of the run, said all the organizers couldn’t be happier.

“A week ago we thought we would be able to break 600, and we ended up at 780,” said Morrison. “A month ago we wouldn’t have predicted this.

“All the coordinators and the organizers are walking around with big smiles on their face. We are happy that we had this turnout, but also happy that everyone enjoyed themselves.”

After talking to the people who manned various water stations and checkpoints on the course, Morrison was impressed with how well things went. 

With the huge spike in participation number, he said there was a fear that problems could come up.

“Everyone had a good day,” said Morrison. “The number didn’t impact the quality of the run. 

“Walking around and watching people after the run, I don’t think anyone was leaving with a bad experience.”

While things went well, Morrison said there would still be post-race meeting to discuss improvements.

“We always need about a week after the run to give ourselves a chance to recover,” said Morrison. 

“Then, we will debrief a little bit and see how we can improve it next year.

“There are always things that you can do better, but we made a lot of changes this year including the timing systems, having more course marshals on the route, more water stations and people noticed.

“We received positive feedback so far with that.”

DARREN STEINKE