Archive - 2010

Hello everyone! Just thought I’d take the chance to write a short blog post on something that happened to me recently which highlighted to me exactly how terrible the Gatineau health care system really is. Luckily, I’m okay, and am glad that’s the case, as I’m about to spend the next few paragraphs venting on the shortcomings of having moved my health care from Ontario to Quebec, or more specifically from Ottawa to Gatineau. The picture that accompanies this post at least gives you an idea what happened. You can already imagine if that’s what happened to the bike, I must have taken a bit of a beating right? Well, read on for the sordid tale, as well as the follow-up that it entailed. I promise I won’t ramble on too much :-)

Greetings all! Looks like it's high time to fill everyone in on my latest fun and excitement. As I'm typing this post, I'm actually sitting in the billiards lounge at the Couples Resort near Algonquin Park while Deanna enjoys a nice spa treatment! Yup, we're taking a great vacation at the moment, and I have a bit of time to write a quick post to catch you all up. Luckily, the catching up will be pretty easy to do, as there are no race reports to write up for the month of October. When you were all last filled in, I had just wrapped up a 2-day charity mountain biking tour in Gatineau Park. At the conclusion of that, it was time to start my month of laziness and recovery. As is usually the case for me, I try to take a the month of October as a month for recovery from the race season. As I managed to squeeze in a couple pretty challenging races this year, including my furthest ever running race (as part of the 3-day Ultimate XC), I definitely needed the break, since my left knee is once again starting to bother me. However, that doesn't mean I did absolutely nothing. Read on to see how I rest and recover :-)

Good day friends and followers of ActiveSteve! As has been my theme as of late, this post is coming to you all just a little bit later than I would have wanted it to. In fact, I'm going to detail for you all an event I took part in a full 3 weeks ago! Yikes! Where does the time go, right? Well, in this case, my time went into a Toronto trip, and preparations for a Timmins trip, as well as my continued string of focusing more on having fun rather than telling the world all about my exploits :-). So, what event am I referring to? It was called Velogaroue, and was a 2-day staged Mountain bike ride through Gatineau Park. Note I said ride, not race! Yes, that's right, it was a social thing through and through, and I wanted to make the most of it with the fall colours. It was the inaugural year for the event, and one of the big goals was to raise funds for a charity, whichever charity you wanted. I chose to support the Ottawa Regional Cancer Center, as I didn't take part in the annual adventure race earlier this year that normally benefits them. For the full story of the weekend, please read on. Also, you can browse through some pictures I took of the weekend, as well as click on over and check out a custom map that I made of the whole ride!

Well, hello again all my friends! I'm back with yet another fun race story to share with you all. This is one of my staple races that I like to do every year, the Frontier Adventure racing Fall Classic, a 12-14 hour adventure race. It's just one of those races that is always a good time, and is a fitting close to my summer racing season, meaning that at the end of the race, I can enjoy a few beers :-). I had registered for this race quite some time ago, but even a week before the race, I was team-less. However, that wouldn't prove to be any problem. Read on for the whole tale of why, and don't forget to check out my pictures from the race. You can also check out a whole pile of other pictures here.

Welcome back to another installment of “What the heck has Steve been up to all summer”. In this post, I’ll cover off the remainder of the summer up to the first weekend after Labour Day. I had another pretty exciting race lined up, although the tale ends up as the dreaded story of the ‘double DNF’. You’ll have to read more of the post to get the full story, but rest assured, it’s another classic ActiveSteve race screw-up :-(. I’ll also fill you in on some Toronto fun at Dream in High Park as well as Buskerfest (pics here), and wrap it up with a little about the week that Deanna spent with me here in Ottawa/Gatineau on vacation (pics here). It was a great way to close out August, and help get over the disastrous result at Logs, Rocks and Steel. Read on my friends, and don’t forget to check out the pictures on facebook as I go through the stories!

Good day folks! As you can see, the time has been flying by, and I’ve been neglecting my storytelling duties once again for the past little while. I shall now try to rectify that by writing a couple posts to hopefully bring you all up to speed on my summer fun. This post, as well as the next will pull double-duty. Part race-report, and part general updates on my summer :-). For this post, I’ll focus on the recent 5Peaks trail running race I did, and the few weeks leading up to it.
In those weeks, I had fun at Taste the Danforth in Toronto, camping in Prince Edward County, and catching the International Fireworks competition in Gatineau. Read on for all the details. I’ll start with the race, which I sadly have no pictures for a change. However, there are pictures of some of the other fun, especially since I bought a new camera!

Greetings race fans! Well, I’m happy to be writing to you all about my most recent race experience. On an absolutely stunning summer day, I had the pleasure of racing in the National Capital Kayak Triathlon, one of many races going on at the same time at Mooney’s Bay. While this was a long weekend on the Ontario side, I unfortunately only had a regular weekend. As luck would have it for me though, Deanna decided to spend the long weekend with me, including the Monday holiday, so I had some excellent company, as well as my mini cheering section to watch me challenge the course. As some of you already knew, my ambitions were to actually win this race outright, but as you will learn through reading this post, I only managed to snag a second place on the podium, although there was indeed some slight controversy to this (as in, controversy between 1st and 2nd). To learn the whole story, you’ll just have to click that read more button and read on. Before that though, I invite you to check out some of the pictures that Deanna was able to snap on race day (as well as other pictures from the long weekend).

Good day friends and followers of the world! Just thought I’d pop on here and give everyone a bit of an update on what’s been new with me. When last you checked in, I had been racing my brains out in my toughest 3-day solo race yet, with great success! So since then, you probably think I’ve been training hard and getting ready for the next challenge, right? Well, not really. Instead, I declared July to be my month of relaxing, enjoying life, and spending time with the people that really matter in my life :-) Yup, that’s right, the lazy days of summer are well and truly here. To those ends, since UXC, I’ve had a great long weekend for Canada Day (Pictures), including some aerial park fun at Camp Fortune (Pictures. I’ve also got my music fix at both Ottawa Bluesfest (Pictures) and Toronto Beaches Jazzfest (Pictures). Wanna hear a bit more about them, as well as what else I have in store? Well, read on dear friends, otherwise, this opening paragraph and pictures gives you a pretty good idea what’s been going on!