Adventure Racing

Welcome back friends! What an exciting tale I have to share with you this time. In this blog post, I'll be taking you step by step through my experience at this years Frontier Adventure Challenge Fall Classic, a 12-hour adventure race which took place in the Muskokas. To be more specific, it took place near Rosseau, at the Muskoka Woods camp. This race was the last race I had on the schedule for what I'll call my 'summer season'. After this one, the plan is to basically take the next month to month and a half pretty easy. Recover and do some light training before gearing up for the winter race season. Because of that, I was heading into this race with pretty high hopes, even though I've been going pretty hard over the last month. My chances were improved by the fact that I was teaming up again with my new friends on Adrenaline Rush; Adam Mallory and Mark Honsberger. Read on for the full story. As per usual, don't forget to check out some pictures that I snapped, as well as the race video I shot for Get Out There magazine.

Wow! What a difference a single week can make. One week ago, I had just finished what was arguably my hardest race ever, when I completed a full iron-distance triathlon in under 13 hours in really tough conditions. Well, flash forward to this past weekend, and I once again found myself toeing the line at another race event. What was I up to this time you ask? Well, on the schedule was Logs, Rocks, and Steel, an off-road multisport race consisting of 12km of paddling, 52km of mountain biking, and 17km of trail running. I was covering the event for Get Out There Magazine, and you can check out the video that I made for that. I competed in the race last year as well, but unfortunately, the outcome of that race was less than stellar. I'm happy to say that this year, conditions were much better, and the fact that I put no pressure on myself landed me a good result. Check out all the pics that I took while there, then read the rest of my post.

It is my great pleasure to bring you another race report. This time, I'll be covering my part in a 30-hour Adventure Race known as Wilderness Traverse. Yup, the very same race that I did last year. However, I'm sure this time the weather will be much better, right? Not so much, but you'll have to read the whole thing to hear more about that. I had been planning on re-doing this race since last year's DNF, but two weeks prior to the event, I still had no team lined up! Lucky for me, some last minute cancellations presented me with a couple options to explore, and I found myself on a great team to undertake the experience. Not to name drop or anything, but I would have two Mount Everest Summitters on my team in Adam and Laura, as well as a veteran racer who designs and builds map boards for navigation on mountain bikes! How cool is that? It was a pretty amazing race, and I can't wait to share all the details with you all. Have a look at the various pictures that I took on course, as well as some from Deanna (who was volunteering), then come back and read the whole story!

Good day to you all! Time for another race report. This one is from a 4-hour sprint Adventure Race put on by the fine folks at Raid Pulse. Normally, I wouldn't be interested in doing an adventure race this short, but seeing as I was cleared to cover it for Get Out There Magazine, I figured why not? It's quite surprising to look back on all my races this year. I have done a surprising number of them with Deanna! Some as team-mates, some in different events, but either way, we've toed the line together quite a few times together. Each race, she gets a little stronger and a little more skilled. This race was another example of that, but unfortunately, the outcome wasn't a podium or anything. We were just happy to clear the whole course! You'll have to read the rest of my post to find out what I mean by that. Before reading it all though, I invite you to check out some pictures from the event that I've posted, as well as view my quick 3 minute video race review. That'll give you an idea of the race, then you can read my whole tale.

Time for another race report for all my faithful followers! This time, I'll be filling you all in on the Raid Pulse spring adventure race. This was a 6-8 hour adventure race being held in an area I've not previously raced at, Notre Dame du Laus, which is about an hour and a half from my place in Quebec. I've been attending Thierry and Annick's races for many years now, both in teams, as well as solo. For this particular race, Deanna and I were actually racing together as a team! So far, we've raced together as two solos traveling together, and as solos on our own. This would be our first race as actual, bona fide team-mates! We were both looking forward to it. For a glimpse into the race through pictures, have a look at my folder on flickr. There are both pictures that I took, as well as pictures the race photographers grabbed. I was shooting a bit of video as well for another reason, which I'll get to after the break.

Ahhh, Adventure Racing, the sport of kings. Well, perhaps that’s too glorious a title. More fittingly, I suppose it would be the sport of fools. Still noble in the king’s court, but for different reasons. After all, we spend countless hours training in a multitude of disciplines, spend countless amounts of money on equipment and race entries, all in order to suffer countless injuries and endure pain in races where the outcome is determined by much more than the money and training invested :-). In this post, I’ll take you through my first adventure race of the season, the 2011 Frontier Adventure Challenge 8 hour race that took place in Huntsville. As the title implies, I had a tactically (and physically) very strong race. Unfortunately, as is often the case in AR, it was all for not, as a bit of difficulty in the last section took me from 3rd place overall to a ranking of 66th!! And that is no indication of a tight race with everyone jostling for the finish line. This is all about strategy, tactics, when you got to the finish line, and how much of the course you completed! Parsing how that ranking was calculated, as well as the full story of my race, which I contend was one of my strongest ever in spite of it, is what this blog post will be all about. Read on for the whole story, and don’t forget to check out some of the shots from the weekend as well. No GPS race map to share, so I went old school and snapped photos of map!

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.

Ahhh Adventure Racing. Probably one of the ‘fringest’ of the fringe sports, right? We toil in obscurity, with both the racers and the races themselves pretty much unknown. We train for hours on end in places unknown, be it the wide open roads or deepest forests or raging rivers. And what for? Well, the chance to take part in really cool events like the Wilderness Traverse, a new 24-hour adventure race put together by the incomparable Bob Miller. Yup, whether you finish or not is never certain when you start, but you can pretty much be guaranteed a good time. That brings us to this post, a brief tale about my teams performance at this race. I hadn’t done a 24-hour race in a couple years so I was pretty stoked. Read on to learn more about it, and don’t forget to check out the pictures I managed to get from the event.