Last weekend’s Tour de Airdrie road race will go down as one the best in the event’s six-year history.
Nearly 300 runners entered the five, 10 and 21-kilometre distances on April 10 and raised more than $20,000 for Victims Assistance groups.
“It’s looking like we raised around $23,000, but that’s not confirmed, that will go towards domestic violence programs here in the community,” Lori McRitchie, with the Airdrie Rotary Club. “We had more runners this year and we had more sponsorship, so all-in-all it’s getting bigger and better. We couldn’t have done it without the community volunteers that stepped up, went along the race route and helped in all sorts of ways.”
The temperature at the 10 a.m. race time was already nearing 10°C, which helped increase the number of runners, but also caused some problems for race organizers.
“We had last-minute joiners, but (the weather) did affect our route because of water and snow still being in certain areas,” McRitchie said.
“Basically, the weather was not super kind to us. It was the nicest day of the year so far, so we were smiled on with that, but the race had to stay on the east side this year because of pathways being flooded. We had to go to plan B in terms of where we had to start the race. But we made the best of what we had and we were very pleased with the results.”
There were many first-time Tour de Airdrie racers this year, McRitchie said, many of whom provided plenty of suggestions for next year’s proposed seventh annual event.
“We received a lot of feedback,” she said. “There were some really good hints of how we can make the race better, as we’re Rotarians and not racers ourselves. We’re going to sort through all of the feedback and just continue to make this race one that we can be proud of, and one that will be a great one for runners to enter.”
