Seven Bridges Run Race Report

Name of the race: Seven Bridges Run

Where: Orangeville Reservoir, Mono, ON

Date: May 14, 2017

Time: 9:00 am

Distance: 6.2 miles

Terrain: Rolling hills, packed gravel, a small section of grass, and wooden bridges

Entry fee: $40 + HST before April 15th/$50 + HST

Post-race Food: Apples, bananas, Clif bars, yogurt, chocolate milk, water, and Gatorade

Time: 51:32

Performance: Overall: 29/XXX Gender: 5/XXX; Age (30-39): 1/XX [waiting for the official results to be posted]

Weather: 52 degrees, 87% humidity

Another week, another race report! I timed my work trip so I could take advantage of this race. I found this race through a site that’s like a smaller incomplete Canadian version of Running the USA, but I now can’t find it. Running in the USA is a great resource to finding races anywhere in the US. I’ve run so many races just because I found it while perusing through the site.

It was a quick hour-long drive north to Orangeville. There was plenty of parking and bib pick up was easy breezy. I even got to use an indoor restroom – oh, the little things that thrill you as a runner.

I was looking forward to this race because the race website had a short clip of the course and it looked BEAUTIFUL! As the name indicates, you do run over seven bridges. These bridges are wooden footbridges over the Orangeville Reservoir. As I picked up my bib, I asked if the course was flat.

“Flat-ish.”

Ish.

That would prove to be my nemesis. If you want to understand just how horrible of a concept ish is, check out Yuriko Kotani’s monologue here.  It was not flat-ish at all! It was full of hills. Not mountainous hills. But hills significant enough that I would never call this a fast course.

The terrain was either packed gravel/dirt or wooden bridges, but there was a (very) short “cross country” section where we got to run on grass. Going out, the grass was fine. When I was tired and heading back to the finish line, I was much less pleased with it.

As for the scenery – breathtaking! It was by far one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful course that I’ve had the pleasure of running on. It was absolutely amazing to run on long wooden bridges and have gorgeous views of the water and woods on both sides and I got to do this multiple times! When we were on the trails, we ran through wonderful cool forests, which was nice because it was quickly turning into a warm day with the sun deciding to come out. I thoroughly loved every the view every kilometer of that 10K.

The run itself was not as successful as I would have liked. The hills made it difficult for me to do a proper time trial. I pushed myself to run hard and fast, but I took it out too hard in the early miles. By the time I hit the last mile, I was totally done. Still my time was good enough to come in 5th overall for women and get me 1st place for my age group.

Seven Bridges Run offers very generous prizes (over $1500 worth). Overall winners received Brooks shoes and a goody bag crammed with stuff. I received a pair of socks (Yay! Can never have too many socks) and a $20 gift card to the running store, Running Free, where I later redeemed my card for a pair of shorts. The shorts cost a bit more than $20, but I have happy to fork over a few dollars for these shorts. There were also a ton of prizes that were being raffled away. I was hoping that I would be selected, but without Ben’s good luck being rubbed off on me, I didn’t get anything.

Seven Bridges Run is a BEAUTIFUL race and one that I totally love. I’m so sad that it’s so far away from Brooklyn because if it were closer, I would do this race every year. It’s a magnificent race and every runner in the Toronto area should do this race.