steve's blog

Hello friends! I figured I had better get cracking on my latest race report. After all, another race is looming large in a day or so, and every weekend until March is booked with races, so I'm in peril of starting to fall behind once again! We can't let that happen, so here I am to fill you all in on the Bushtukah Mad Trapper Night Race. This is one of the funnest, social, yet hard races of the winter season that I always look forward to. As you have probably pieced together using your powers of deduction, this race takes place under the cover of darkness. As with all Mad Trapper races, we find ourselves out at the Ark. However, to pick our way along the race course, we all wear headlamps. Race start is slated for 6:30pm, and that's pitch black! As a result, this is one of the first races in a long time where I have absolutely no pictures or videos. Gets to be a lot of work to do that, so this race I was focusing on just racing hard. If you'd care to hear how that went for me (no spoilers this time in my teaser), click on past the link and read the full post.

Another week, and another race report for my loyal readers! This past weekend, I headed off towards Kingston (home of the Tragically Hip, in case you didn't get the title reference), for what I think was my shortest race ever, but a great time nonetheless. I was there to do a video race review for Get Out There Magazine of the Dion Snowshoes Frontenac Park Snowshoe Race. A mouthful, isn't it? I've done plenty of snowshoe races in our area as part of the Mad Trapper Snowshoe series each year, but this was the first time I ventured out of town to try my luck elsewhere. As it turns out, this race was also a qualifier for the Snowshoe Running World Championships for this year! That was part of my motivation to tackle this race. I secretly hoped I'd be in the top 3. Have a look at the pictures I posted on flickr, then click on past the link to read the rest of my thoughts on this well-run family-organized race.

Howdy sports fans! Welcome to 2012 and my first race report of the new year. The race in question was the second of 4 snowshoe races in the Mad Trapper series at the Ark in Denholm Quebec. I've made a decision this year that I'm going to try and shorten my race reports somewhat, since I suspect not everyone is a fan of epically long reports to go through :) Instead, I'll try to add some additional race information that's easier to digest by everyone, including quick course and stat overviews, and video race reviews where I've done them. This was one such race, so I'd invite you all to check out the embedded video review at the end of this post. However, one thing that won't change is my continued visual logs of events in the form of pictures I'll post on Flickr. So, as usual, I invite you to browse the pictures I posted, then catch up with the rest of the report.

Howdy folks! Sorry for the delay in getting this blog post out. Although the race I’m about to write about occurred 2 weeks ago, I’m only now able to get anything written down. Sadly, the motherboard on my main PC died suddenly, and I’ve not been able to get the system set back up yet, so getting the pictures done and writing the post took a backseat. Of course, it’s a little sad to write about this race anyway, as unfortunately, due to a finicky mother nature, we were unable to get the snow we desired to make the race a success. The race in question? The first Mad Trapper snowshoe race of the season. How does one have a snowshoe race with no snow? Well, it basically turns into a trail race, doesn’t it? And that’s exactly how it went down. Have a look at the few pictures that were snapped at the race, then read on to find out how my hard-fought 5th place finish played out.

Greetings all! You'll never guess what this blog post is about. What's that? My Rudy Award? Damn, you folks are good at this guessing game. Of course you are right that much of this post will be about my quest for a Rudy Award. But it will also diverge a little bit to fill you in on another race that I recently took part in. You are unlikely to ever see this one crop up at the Olympics anytime soon, but it is still a feat in human endurance and spirit. Yes, I speak of that most impressive athletic endeavour, the Beer Mile! If you're not sure what that it, please follow the link and read a bit for yourself. It is devilishly simple in concept, but can be hard to execute. And I now speak from experience. Before I delve into that particular report, I'll get into the meat of my Rudy Award, and just touch casually on each of the events that went into making this award a reality for me in 2011. I didn't get there completely alone, so there are people to thank for their support as you can imagine. Before I go on, please have a look at the pictures and video I took of the beer mile as well as the awards ceremony. You'll get a good laugh, and can then read on for the real story.

Hello friends! Well, here I sit on a grey and dreary day, so it seems like a good time to dash off a few words about one of the recent events I had the pleasure of taking part in. November 11th marked the 2nd birthday of my cool little nephew Julien. I'll say this right off the bat. The first year and a half was a bit of a struggle as Julien was a bit of a cranky-pants a lot of the time. I say that with the greatest amount of love possible though :-). He just tended to cry a fair bit. However, he's settled down remarkably, and like his sister before him, is turning into a pretty interesting little person. Helena and Julien are now quite fun to watch and interact with, particularly when it comes to seeing how they view the world around them. For example, at the moment, Julien is all about wheels and watching them go around. It's very cute to see him flat on the ground watching the wheels of his toy train going around. Anyway, back to the birthday festivities. Not only would he be celebrating his birthday, but his baptism was also slated to take place on the same weekend. For that reason, lots of family and friends could be around to celebrate. To see some pictures and video of the weekend, check out the folder I put up on flickr. Afterwards, I can share a few more thoughts of the weekend with you.

Welcome back to another, and perhaps my final post on our adventures in Morocco. My apologies for the slight delay between posts. I was off to Toronto for a conference, and had other family obligations. At any rate, on the plus side, we now have all of our pictures put up on flickr. I've even added a folder of videos as well, with a few clips that I shot in various places. For this post, I'm going to take you on two unique journeys. The first will be a camelback ride out into the dunes of the Erg Chebbi, where we spent the night in a Berber camp. The second part of the story will be our exploration of the ancient Roman ruins of Volubilis, an expansive site which was one of the farthest trading posts of the Roman empire. Both of these little adventures was pretty amazing, and this was the first time that either of us had ventured by camel into a desert, and spend the night under the stars in the desert. Once you've had chance to peruse the desert pictures and Roman ruin pictures, hop on back and read the whole tale.

Welcome to the second post detailing some of the awesome experiences Deanna and I had in Morocco. This time, I'll take you a bit off the beaten path, and talk about two particularly awesome experiences. Namely, the high of trekking and climbing in the High Atlas mountains, including sumitting the highest peak in North Africa, as well as the lows of heading to the depths of the deepest caves in North Africa, the Friouato Cave system. For Deanna, these were particularly fun, as she had never climbed a mountain before or gone cave exploring. In another post, I'll visit a first for BOTH of us, but this time, it's all about Deanna's firsts. If you check into flickr, you'll eventually find pictures from both, but for now, only the Atlas Mountain pics are up. Eventually, they'll all be in the collection though. For now, I'll just give you a bit of the blow by blow in written words. Enjoy!