Mad Trapper

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.

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.

Good day to you all. As the title implies, this post will be another race report. This will be the final report for the 2010/11 winter race season, and I won’t have any more race reports to share with you all until my next race, the Frontier Adventure Challenge in late April! Till then, guess I’ll focus on my training and make sure that I take good care of all the nagging little aches and pains properly in order to be ready to storm into the 2011 summer race schedule! The final race in this season’s winter race schedule was the 4th Mad Trapper Snowshoe race, which was coincidentally also billed as the Canadian National Snowshoe championships. So do I have a new title to add to my resume you may be wondering? in a word: no :-( It really wasn’t my day, but I’m okay with that, and plan to tell you all about it after you head over to flickr and check out my little folder of pictures from the day.

Welcome back to another exciting chapter in the winter racing saga of ActiveSteve! I’m finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as blog posts go. I’ll only be a couple posts behind once I get this one polished off for you all :-). Let me start by saying I’m always on the lookout for new and interesting races. Although this was actually just another snowshoe race, there was a slight twist on the topic this time around. Mike decided to turn off the lights on us, and make this a night race! Any of you who have raced or trained at all in the dead of night will realize that this has the potential of completely changing the way things unravel. Mountain biking is particularly challenging at night for example. With that in mind, I was pretty excited to try this race with a big headlamp strapped on my head. On account of the darkness, and the fact that my primo photographer Deanna was also racing, there aren't many photos taken by us. However, fellow race-goer Jess Madott did provide some, that I've put in a folder on flickr! However, read on for a synopsis of the events that unfolded before, during, and after the race.

Howdy all. The good news is that this post is about something that happened in 2011! The bad news is that I’m *still* several posts behind, although I vow that I will rectify that :-). Since this race didn’t really have a whole lot of exciting twists and turns, I should be able to fill you all in on the details in relatively short order. As the title of the post suggests, there was a slight delay in this race. While it was scheduled to run on January 8th, mother nature simply didn’t co-operate, so Mike delayed it a full week to January 15th, in the hopes of scoring some more fluffy stuff. Given the conditions of the last race, I don’t think anyone minded waiting for course improvements. To see some pictures that Deanna managed to snap at this race, head over to flickr and check ‘em out. After you’ve seen the pics, read on for the whole sordid tale.

Okay my dear friends, it’s high time I catch up on race reports with you all. Sadly, I’ve just realized that I’m fully 4 posts behind on my race summaries, and that is simply unacceptable. Being that it’s Super Bowl Sunday and all, I’ve decided that I’ll write a post to point out there are lots of other sporting events out there, many of which just don’t get their due :-). Case in point, snowshoe racing. Obviously, winters in the national capital region are long and bring lots of snow. Hibernating or ignoring this fact is one way to deal with it, or conversely, we can embrace this, which is precisely why events like The Mad Trapper exist! This post will fill you all in on the first race in the 4-race series for this year. As usual, you can also head to flickr to see the set of pictures I posted from the race. Read on for the slushy details.

Wow! I've been so excited and happy with my result in the last Mad Trapper snowshoe race of the season that I couldn't find the time to blog about it! Can you believe that? Well, it's partly true. I thought about writing up the story Saturday afternoon, but that seemed too ambitious. Then, life got in the way for a couple days, but here I am to fill you all in on my winter race-season closing race. As some of you may have already looked at the pictures and/or read Mike's own race report, you've probably heard that I WON first place overall!! No joke! I've looked back on all my race results, and it turns out this is only the 2nd time I win 1st place overall in a race. Last time was in August of 2007! While some of the top guns were not present this time, it was still a hard-fought battle, and I invite you all to read on for the rest of my happy story.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog posts from Africa in order to bring you the latest race report from ActiveSteve. It's been a pretty hectic weekend out in the frigid Ottawa region for me. Although the temperatures barely rose above -20degC all weekend, it didn't keep me from skiing, snowshoeing, skating, and just generally making the most of what we get here in the winter. It was also my 2010 race season opener, taking the form of a 10k snowshoe race. This was the 3rd of 4 races put on by Mike Caldwell as the Mad Trapper snowshoe race series. The course for Saturday was the 'combined course', which meant one lap of the infamous 'hilly' route, and a 2nd lap consisting of the 'flatter' route. There were actually a few tweaks to the course, which made it more like 9k, but it was still plenty challenging. I managed to capture some pictures and a couple videos, which I've posted on flickr, but not many. For the full details of how it went down, read on friends.