Deanna

By now, I'm sure most of you have heard of the Amazing Race, and that most of your are familiar with adventure racing, and that you've perhaps also heard of City Chase, a race series that sort of (loosely) combines elements of both AR and the Amazing Race. In a word, they call City Chase an urban adventure challenge. Well this post will give you a taste of how the City Chase actually works, as Deanna and I recently competed in the Ottawa installment. Like the Spartan Race a few weeks back, I was taking part in the race to provide a video race review for Get Out There Magazine. If you'd like to see the video I put together (it's kind of frantic), have a look at the YouTube video. I actually had no idea how the race would actually play out, as I only knew roughly what it was about, which is that you race around the city using public transit to complete 'Chase Points'. First team of 2 that does 10 of them and returns to the finish wins. Plain and simple. Well, as we learned, it isn't quite as straightforward as that. For our first time, we were actually pretty happy to finish in 172nd place in a time of 5hrs 26mins out of over 500 teams that started out. Besides the little video review I put together, you can also check out the photos that I snapped and posted on flickr. As I was focused on the video and racing, there aren't too many I liked. When you've had a peek at those, pop on back and read about the race!

Welcome back to another report from me, Activesteve, on my latest exploits. This time I'll be covering a little cycle touring that Deanna and I did with a group of friends last weekend. The tour? Rideau Lakes. The distance? 370km over the course of two days. Biking from Ottawa to Kingston, and then back again. Yes, it's a lot of time in the saddle, but with good weather and great friends, it really doesn't feel all that bad. And luckily, we had both those ingredients with us on the weekend. I've done the tour once before, but this time, we were a different group, and took a different route. Read on for the whole story, and don't forget to check out the pictures that I snapped along the way!

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.

Holy smokes ActiveSteve readers, it’s already into 2011, but this here blog is stuck back in time at November 2010! I guess I had better do something about that. Here goes nothing :-) Allow me to start off with a skill testing question for you: How can you have a honeymoon without actually getting married? Give up? Just ask for it, and take a vacation with me! Yep, in fact a honeymoon is exactly what Deanna and I managed to get away on during a great week in mid November. Well, technically, it was just a honeymoon special, but we just treated it as a full-on honeymoon to make the most of it. Where did we go? An awesome place known simply as the Couples Resort, located just outside the east gate of Algonquin Park. Read on for the full details of the deal as well as what we got up to that week. And of course, don’t forget to check out all the great pictures that we took while up there for an amazing week!

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 :-)

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.

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!

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!