Race Reports Archives - Page 25 of 47

Slaying the Beast for a 6th Time

42.2km. 28,133 strides. 2,400+ calories burned, 12 small cups of gatorade consumed. 2 gel packs consumed. Several pounds of sweat. 3hrs 16mins and 30seconds. 1 giant smile, and a cool medal. That, in a nutshell, summarizes my efforts on Sunday, May 29th at the Ottawa Race Weekend where I ran the marathon. It was my 6th time running a standalone marathon, and I can still honestly say the running a marathon is one of the toughest events I do. The effort required to run nearly flat-out for 42,200m can not be understated. We all know people who glibly say “I could run a marathon”. I just smile and agree with them. But those words generally haunt anyone who has taken it upon themselves to prove it. Particularly in those who attempt to prove it with any sort of respectable finishing time. Now don’t jump on me, every single person who crosses the line has accomplished something few have, but there is ‘participating’, and then there is ‘running’ or ‘competing’. Me, I run, I don’t compete. I am my only competition in this event. If you are so inclined, I invite you to read the rest of my thoughts on this race following the link. Also, you can check out just a few snaps I have post-race of the event. As you’ll see, I wasn’t the only one to toe the line at the ORW!

Race Reports Race Review Videos

Pick Me to Be a Race Reviewer

The Video

The [brief] Pitch

So, you’re looking for dynamic, energetic, race reviewers to give you two-minute video reviews of races they do this year in exchange for paying entry fees? Well, I’d say I’m your reviewer! I’ve got a full slate already this year, but if you’re willing to foot the bill, I’m more than happy to add more races. Curious about me and my race career?

The Proposed Races

Although I’ve already registered for a lot of my races this season, there are a few more that I’d love to do, and with your support, I can actually enter them! Here are the races in question:

Race Reports Race Review Videos

Team Hyper-Active Gets Physical

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.

Race Reports

Tale of the Tape: Tactical Triumph

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!

Race Reports

Canadian Snowshoe Champs to end Winter Race Season

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.