Husband and wife team Mark and Heather Arnold created their first race together in 2003. The Emergency Services Adventure Race (ESAR) has gone on to sell out annually and attacts the best police, fire, paramedic and military personnel around.

Four races and 2 children later, the Beat the Recession Trail Running Series is the newest addition to the Hark Events Inc. family.

Check out all of Hark's race events at www.harkevents.com.

 

A message from Race Director Heather Arnold

Last summer when I was running on one of my favourite trails, I was thinking about the plight of families and this pending recession. Most people haven’t felt the pinch of what our neighbours to the South are experiencing and maybe we will be lucky to walk away unscathed from this global downturn but Canadians on the whole are a bit more cautious and perhaps even more skeptical when it comes to believing that Canada will not see the type of recession the world is facing. Hmph.

 

While I was running I was also thinking about our racers.  We create races because we love to race ourselves.  With three adventure races and two trail races (that occur in the dark of night) we didn’t want anyone that wanted to experience racing to have to spend a lot of money or travel too far, and so Beat the Recession Race Trail Running Series was born.

 

The Goal was to create a friendly race series that would allow local runners to walk or take a short drive to some of their favourite trails and get in an awesome 5km trail race. All at the cheapest price possible.  We wanted to offer this style of racing enough times from May to September to get people training, racing and connecting with their local community.

 

Who knew that this would lead to 64 races across the GTA?

Now let’s keep in mind, this series is safe and fun but it ain’t pretty!  There won’t be any fancy finish lines, or special snacks, there won’t be a lot of cheering crowds and there won’t be any shiny medals for just finishing. This is bare bones racing at it’s best. What there will be is a safe, well-marked course, draw prizing and prizing for series winners, there will be me cheering and of course there will be your finish time.  The same course will be run a number of times at each venue so you can challenge yourself and compare yourself to racers on other days.

 

I love to test my limits on a trail run where I can glimpse the tail of a rabbit sprinting out of sight or pick my way across a muddy path and see how fast I can get to the turn-around.  This is what the series is about.  Each race is limited to 100 racers so the trails and the enjoyment can remain high.  Come on out and test your limits in your neighbourhood.