Wow! Another scorching, sunny race day. This was the third race in 3 weeks of back to back racing, so I was rather surprised that my ‘luck’ with the weather held up for yet another event! Where was I this time? Well, not too far from home. About one hour north of Gatineau in a little wilderness area near Denholm. And boy was it gorgeous out there! Definitely a spot I’d keep my eyes open for a little plot of land for a cabin/cottage. I was up there for the 5-8 hour Raid Pulse adventure race, a perennial favourite of mine that I’d once again be covering for Get Out There. As it stood, I was supposed to race this one solo, but two days before the event, I got a call from a friend of mine who was looking for a navigator / team-mate. I saw no reason to decline, so in a last minute twist, I was thrown onto a team. Would be fun to be put into that category and see how we did. Of course, I managed to snap some pics as well as get my video review done while on the race, but read on for a few more insights as to how the race went for us.
Race Review Videos
Greetings my friends! I realize that I’m a little late in writing my posts, but at least I eventually get around to it when I have the chance, right? Hee hee. As my title subtley implies, this post will be about a great race result I had a few weeks ago in Tweed at the Storm the Trent Adventure race that I was racing in and covering for Get Out There magazine. I ended up in 1st place in my category, which was solo male. There were a few others who finished before me, but they were either the team category or the solo masters category (I ended up 8th overall). However, the victory even in my category was not a sure thing given a few technical problems, so it’s at least worth a quick read of my race report to see how things unfolded on another beautiful day of racing. I also wasn’t alone out there. Deanna opted to tackle the ‘trek’ course (I was on the ‘trek elite’), and given the proximity to Trenton, Deanna’s folks came out to cheer us on as well. Accordingly, I’ve got some good pics of the race on top of the video review. Now read on to find out more!
The sun was beating down hard on my neck. My leg muscles were just on the edge of starting to cramp after over 7 hours of hard effort. A team up ahead had paused to debate the merits of taking one route over another at an intersection. With my head down and with determination, I blew past them and pedaled hard to the finish. Keeping a very short lead on them, I crossed the line as 4th solo male, and 6th team overall at the spring Frontier Adventure Challenge in Huntsville. In retrospect, had they made the turn, they would have had 1km shorter to travel, and would have beat me, but seeing me blow by made them change their minds and try to chase me down. I got lucky this time! Of course, dear friends, I’ve just revealed the punchline, the finish of the race. This was the first summer race of the season, and it was a great one. Read on for the full story, video, pictures, and all the good stuff!
Howdy folks! Well, as we hurtle towards the inevitable spring time change, and the warming temperatures, I’m going to take us back in time to just over a week ago, where we got that sudden dramatic snowstorm. You know. The one that dumped buckets of snow all over the area? Oh yes, the one and same that I had to drive through to get to Quebec City for the Pentahlon des Neiges. There is a well-known adage that goes ‘getting to the start line is the biggest challenge’. Well, it would certainly appear that was the case for this race. In fact, I’d probably rate this drive the worst in my life! The normally 4.5 hour drive took over 9 hours, and that was with only 2 short stops. One for a sandwich, and one for a washroom / nerve break. It was absolutely atrocious, with blowing heavy snow, uncleared roads, and darkness the entire way. Did that affect the race? The rest of the weekend? My sanity? Well, read on through my little post to get the answers to all those, and a few other questions. This’ll be the last race report for a while, so enjoy it my friends! As always, pictures have been posted, and I did a video review as well.
Sorry for the delay in getting this post up everyone. In the past 10 weeks, I’ve done 8 races, and between the pictures, the videos, the training, the racing, the editing, the working, etc. etc, I just ran out of time to write my traditional post-race summary 🙂 However, I’m here tonight to rectify that and share with you all just a few thoughts from the Gatineau Loppet this year. I was particularly excited to take part in the event this year, as it would be my first time taking part in a longish race where I skate skied! Yes, this is still my first year on skate skis, so there is still a lot to learn, but it didn’t stop me from signing up to do the 31km (eventually classified as 27.5km) event at the Loppet. I was also there covering the event for Get Out There Magazine, so as has been the case quite frequently lately, I have a video review of the race for all to enjoy at the end of this post too. In addition to the video, I snapped a fair number of pictures over the weekend for you to check out. Click on to read the rest of my thoughts on the weekend, which I’ll keep on the brief side.