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Handloggers Half Marathon Trail Race back

The third Handloggers Half Marathon Trail Race will be held Saturday, Sept. 3. It’s a great way to kick off your Labour Day weekend and finish your summer on an active foot with this community-run event.
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Runners enjoy a water break mid-way through last year’s Handlogger’s half marathon.

The third Handloggers Half Marathon Trail Race will be held Saturday, Sept. 3. 

It’s a great way to kick off your Labour Day weekend and finish your summer on an active foot with this community-run event.  

This is a beautiful but challenging mountain trail run taking in the best of Bowen Island trails.

The race offers a good mix of moderate, groomed trails through Crippen Park with the more technical steep and rolling single-track sections around Mount Gardner.  

The race starts at 9:15 a.m. in Snug Cove at the ferry dock and sets out through Crippen Regional Park making a loop around Killarney Lake before the long climb up Hikers Trail, Skid Trail and Handloggers Trail on the north side of Mount Gardner.  

The race joins the mid-island trail near Laura Road trailhead, the site of our second aid station and then skirts back to Snug Cove along Grafton Lake and Crippen Park to a spectacular finish on the Causeway.  

If 21kilometres with some 400 metres of climbing in the middle seems like too much to do alone, why not try our relay event?  The relay can be run in teams of three runners with transitions at 5.5 kilometres and 12 kilometres.

This year proceeds from the race will go to support two worthy causes.  

Half of race proceeds and some special donations will go to supporting the creation and maintenance of trails on Bowen Island. Sections of many popular existing trails, including parts of Handloggers Trail which the race uses, are becoming treacherous for running and hiking because they are getting worn and washed out, essentially becoming creek beds in winter. 

The trail network on Bowen needs maintenance and improvement to offer sustainable and outstanding recreational opportunities for multiple users including hikers, runners, bikers and some motorized vehicle use.  

There is also a growing need for a safe interconnected network of routes for non-recreational travel across island.

Our vision is that the Handloggers race will help to raise awareness as well as funds to support trail development initiatives on Bowen.  

Half of proceeds will also continue to support development of the Akili all girls school in Kisumu, Kenya.  Alison Osborne from Bowen Island has been working with school founders David Omondi and Erick Otieno, who were raised in the “slums” by single-parent mothers, to support their construction and now operation of a school focused on educating and empowering the girls and women in their community.

This year we will be offering some really great prizes for the top three men and women, first relay team, and the youngest and most senior participants.  

We are really grateful to our many sponsors for supporting the race with prize money, vouchers and support for our aid stations and finish line refreshments, as well as a team of volunteers who have kindly offered to give their time to organizing, preparing and administering the race.  

If you haven’t registered yet, there is only a little bit of time left. Visit our site for more information and to sign up now https://handloggershalf.com.