October 2009 - ActiveSteve

Good Race Day or Great Training Day?

Hey kids! Got another little race to write about for you all. On October 17th I got to take part in the 5 Peaks Trail Race taking place at the Ark, Mike Caldwell’s property near Low, Quebec. I’m most used to racing on snowshoes out here, but any time of the year, this is a great place to get some of the lead out by pushing myself to the limits. This was my second trail race with 5 Peaks during this summer season, and I had my eyes on possibly trying for a podium finish. But then again, what else is new? If you’re not shooting for podium, you’re not really racing are you? Ha ha. Short of giving it all away, I’ll let you know I finished just off the podium. Unfortunately, the other unfortunate part of this race is that I have no pictures from the event, or even a custom map to share. So all you have to do is read the next few paragraphs to get a sense of the event.

Of Wedding Bells and Turkey Smells

Good afternoon to you all! ActiveSteve here, writing a couple overdue blog posts. I don’t know what it is lately, but I’ve sort of started to lose interest in writing lengthy posts about my every action. Maybe it’s the evolution of networking, but I seem to be using my tweets as my updates more and more. Short and sweet, but it doesn’t give you all the details, does it? So, in the spirit of playing a little catch up, I’ll fill you all in on Thanksgiving Weekend. There were a few different activities in the works, including the wedding of Chris Foo and Agnes Kelly. The wedding and reception(s) kept us busy on both Saturday and Sunday. Then, on the vacation Monday, we had some quality family time by heading to my sister’s place for Thanksgiving dinner. You can check out pictures from the wedding, as well as some from the Thanksgiving feast 🙂 After that, come on back and read a bit about the weekend.

Life in General

Enjoying Some Beer with Norm from Cheers!

Hey folks, just a quick little post to talk about a little fun that I had last weekend, as a break from training and work. Although I did end up working both Saturday and Sunday for a little bit, I did avoid doing too much and losing my brain. Good thing too, since I had a long training run in the works, as well as a trip to an Oktoberfest in Van Kleek Hill, and a bachelor party back in Ottawa later Saturday evening! See, I don’t just do boring things all the time like train and race. I still know how to party. However, I sort of regretted it the next morning, and think I should probably lay off the drinks till after my marathon at the end of the month. Seems like the prudent thing to do. For a collection of the pictures from the Oktoberfest event, click on over to the folder on flickr.

Race Reports

Cottage Champs at the 2009 FAC Champs!

Welcome back to another exciting chapter in the life of ActiveSteve. I’m especially excited to write up the story for the race that I just took part in last weekend. Specifically, I’m talking about the 2009 Frontier Adventure Challenge fall champs which took place at Rosseau Lake in the Muskoka region of Ontario. This is a great race to close off the adventure racing season for a lot of teams, and never fails to impress. The format is simple. 10-14 (or more) hours of gruelling off-road racing mixing orienteering, paddling, trekking, mountain biking, and sometimes swimming. This year’s edition of the race was another doozy with some interesting results, as you’ll learn about if you read my whole post. For starters though, you might want to check out my folder of pictures onflickr (I carried my camera on course), as well as the custom map that I put together of the route we took. If you look through the map, you’ll probably see a couple spots where we strayed from the ‘ideal’ route 🙂 Also, you’ll see it isn’t a complete map, as the battery died on my GPS. For the record, I did have permission from Geoff, the race director, to wear my GPS to make this map. I wasn’t using it as a navigation tool, merely a track recorder. Once you’re done checking that out, come on back and read the rest of the story.