It was a busy halloween weekend of racing. 

The Boardwalk RC entered as a team in the 7th annual Variety Village Walk, Roll, Run 5k. 
The event is a great event at this time of year, if it's cold you have the ability to warm up indoors on a state of the art track facility, and once the race gun goes off, you realize you are running on one of the fastest 5k cources in the city.

Jimmy Semes entered the race as defending champion, but the rest of the Boardwalk RC team was looking to leave their mark and maybe take down the defending champion who was running only a week after running a sub 3hr marathon.

Possible Boardwalk contenders for the crown were Mark Duff who only trailed Jimmy at Longboat by 5 seconds, Glenn Duncan who finished 2nd in this race a year ago, and Dave Corlett, who has been training well and looking to challenge.

Dave was making a return to racing after a year and a half away from competition.

In the women's race our chances looked good as well. Tanya Sakharov looked to be the class of the field.

Also running were Al and Christine Baigent who were looking fit. They had recently returned from their approximately 800km hike through Spain across the El Camino trail.

Mark took an early lead at a 3:20 pace but, surprisingly, Jimmy's legs were still springy post marathon. Jimmy took the lead at the start of 2km and never looked back. He ran in a seasons best 17:35 to take the win. Boardwalk RC took 5 of the first 6 places. Mark Duff was 2nd in 17:52 which was a SB for him, 4th was Dave Corlett in 18:00, 5th was Glenn Duncan in 18:21, and Tanya Sakharov was 6th overall and 1st place women in 19:17.

Check out the Walk Roll and Run results here.

Monster Dash 10k
Cameron Woo and Jimmy Semes got dressed up as "Where's Waldo?" and "Superman" and took to sunnybrook for this festive 10k. Both runners were on tired legs, but still hungry for success. Cameron Woo surprised his coach and took a very strong opening 3k and was running 3rd ahead of his coach. However, it will be a little while longer before he places ahead of his coach. In the end Jimmy brought himself up to the front of the race and was on the race leaders heals up till the 8k mark. In the end it was a second place finish for Jimmy in 37:48, and Cameron was the top youth runner (good for a free sketchers shoe prize) and 5th in the overall standings in a great 40:07 on a hard course. That was Cameron's 4th race in 7 days, and Jimmy's 3rd in 8 days! These guys like to race!

Check out the Monster Dash results here.

The MTA XC Championships took place in Brantford this year. It was true cross country weather, cold, wet, and windy. This made for a muddy cold day. The course was through the woods over rolling terrain, and if not for the weather would be an excellent course for spectators.

Having spoken to other coaches, it was quite normal that half the teams runners decided to stay home. So it was left to the truly brave and strong to compete.

This was Boardwalk RC's first visit to the championships, and we were excited to have 3 of our athletes toe the line.

in the tyke girls 1.5km race Charlotte Melnyk put in an amazing effort. She placed 41st and covered the distance in a time of 7:51.

Her sister sprinted out with the Atom girls over a 2km course. Running in her 3rd meet in 6 days Sasha finished in 53rd with a time of 9:53.

Also running 3 meets in 6 days was Cameron Woo. Cameron also had himself registered for a 10km race on the 7th day, so there was thoughts he might save something. 4 races in 7 days is a bit extreme, but Cameron has shown an ability to thrive on mileage, and has shown a similar mindset to his over raced coach. Cameron started conservatively in the first half, and began to pick off runners in the second half. When he finished, he was wishing there was more course to race, as he was just getting warmed up. He finished 31st in a time of 12:07. 

For full results click here.