Around the Bay Road Race Plans

I have a love-hate relationship with the Around the Bay Road Race. It's an annual 30Km(ish) race in Hamilton, Ontario, that I have run six times now over the course of my distance running career.

Some years this race is great and other years it's awful. The weather can range from high single digits celsius down to -10ºC or colder. It's often windy, or rainy. The course is challenging with a lot of hills in the first third and a ton of hills in the last third. The middle 10km often features a strong headwind as you run along the lake.

So naturally, I've signed up for the 2025 edition.

I'm looking for a race this spring and a marathon isn't going to be in the cards due to some travel we have planned. But Around the Bay sits nicely at the end of March and will provide enough of a challenge to keep me going over the winter. It doesn't require the multiple weekends with runs over 30km, but it does need some long runs beyond the 21.1km distance.

If things go well over the winter, I might take a run at a silver medal which requires a gun time of between 2:00 and 2:15. I've run under 2:30 multiple times but I've never really "raced" it. Generally we've run Around the Bay as a race pace test for a spring marathon. We'll see if that is possible in March.