Decked out in leis and wind-ruffled hula skirts, a group of teens bends over a shopping cart and waits for their cue.
As soon as it arrives — "Go!" — they take off down the track, a crowd cheering as the students push the cart full of rattling canned goods around Halifax's Emera Oval.
The Charles P. Allen High School students call themselves the Beaches. And they may have lost the second annual Haliditarod, but the five competing teams raised more than $1,200 and three carts of food for Parker Street Food and Furniture Bank.
The spin on the famous Alaskan dog sled race sees humans replace huskies and shopping carts stand in for sleds.
"It was a super fun time," says Grade 12 Dawson Bungay, after winning first place with his classmates — and a cart that looked like Lightning McQueen from Cars. "We held a food drive [at our school] the last couple days ... so it was good that we could bring in lots" of donations.
And the race proved more challenging than just running with a heavy shopping cart, according to the food bank's operations manager Kevin McKay.
Growing need for food
Take what McKay calls "the elephant walk, where you have to knock down full bottles of water [by swinging] a tennis ball inside the end of a pantyhose on your head."
The race not only raises food and funds, McKay says, but also the food bank's profile. That's critical, he notes, because the number of people who rely on Parker Street's services has been growing.
About 300 families visit the food bank each week, he says.