Monthly archives: January 2007

Brrrr.. It sure was cold out there this weekend! To enjoy the cold weather just a little more, I had to take part in my third race in as many weeks. Yes, it was time for the second race in the 2007 Mad Trapper showshoe racing season. To make it extra fun, it was the dreaded ‘Hilly’ course. Two laps each consisting of 5 kilometers of hills, hills, and more hills. Luckily, with every up there comes a down, as you can see by the picture at the right. I’m a big fan of running downhill, not so much of running uphill. Of course, given the terrain, I didn’t really have much of a choice. Also sadly for me, I was having an off day. I’ve already accepted that, so to save you any great suspense… I didn’t win 🙁 In fact, I only came in 14th place. I believe that’s my worst finish yet in a Mad Trapper race. So, let’s go back to the start of the day and review the events of the day, shall we?

Welcome to another exciting chapter in the ongoing stories of Team Hyper-Active! How do you describe an event where you drive twice as long to get to it as you do participating in the actual race? Well, after leaving Friday afternoon, returning Sunday night, recuperating for almost a day, and now sitting here to write out my thoughts, I’d say it was awesome! I’m speaking of this past weekends’ convoy to the Mansfield Outdoor Centre for this year’s edition of the Salomon Adventure Challenge Winter Adventure Race. For this race, Team Hyper-Active consisted of me (naturally), James Galipeau and Sophia Tsouros. We were also joined for the trip by the threesome of Carl Buchmann, Steeve Lavoie and Anne-Marie Moisan, racing as Team NexxGen AR. Just to keep it extra fun, we also dragged along three other Ottawans (Pete, Melanie and Jill) to join in the fun. This was destined to be a grand adventure, and we figured the best way to kick it off would be to travel all together from Ottawa to Mansfield, a 5-6 hour trip depending on conditions. The following is our tale.

Welcome back to my first official post of the racing season. I’ve been putting off posting in any great detail lately because things have really been up and down for me the past few weeks. Since being told that I have a recurring injury, I’ve been doing my best to recover from it and strengthen my left leg. I thought things were going great, and was about to post to that effect last week when BAM! I relapsed quite badly and was told once again not to run. Not a good prognosis, given that I was slated to not only run, but race, in three days’ time. To remove any suspense, I did indeed race, but tried to go easy on myself. I grabbed 5th Place in the male category, and the rest of the details will follow below.

If you’ve been paying attention to my blog, you will have noticed that the Mad Trapper snowshoe race was actually not listed as my next upcoming event. As a result of my injury, I had removed it from my ‘official’ events stream. However, after a few good weeks of recovery, I registered anyway (actually, I registered for all 3 events!), hoping to go for it. Training runs with Grant and alone had been going well, with fairly little pain coming back. However, after a full training week, and seriously upped mileage on my feet, the pain eventually came back strong. The only way to lick it is to rest more. So, I’ll do more biking, swimming and weights, but less running for the remainder of January. But enough about that, what about the race, you ask?