2011 - Page 6 of 8 - ActiveSteve

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!

Travelogue

A Little Sinful Spring Fun

Greetings friends. So have you figured out what this post will be about yet? Well, here’s a hint; normally what you do there stays there. Yep, that’s right, I just got back from spending nearly a full week in Las Vegas. The occasion for such frivolity? Well, I was actually on the company nickel for this trip. I was attending the 2011 National Association of Broadcasters conference. Sound dry to you? Well, apart from the yearly CES show, this is one of the biggest conferences in the states. Estimates pegged attendance at over 90,000 people. How insane is that? In a word: insane. I was the only attendee from my work, and unfortunately, I didn’t know a single person at the conference. I know a fair number of people in the telecom industry, but not the broadcasting space. As such, this wasn’t going to be the typical Vegas trip. In spite of that, i managed to do some fun things, and will tell you about those things. Also, I took a few pictures while there, which I’ve split into two sets: Natural Fun, and Hotel and Conference pics. After you’ve checked them out, read on for the rest of the post.

Spring is Here, and the Sap is Flowing!

Hey gang, just thought I should check in with everyone and let you know what Deanna and I have been up to. As you are all aware from the last post, the winter race season was over, so now I’m sort of in between races and events, and focussing on training and also just trying to have a good time. With that in mind, I figured I’d write a quick post about a trip to a friend of ours’ sugar shack a little over a week ago. Deanna had never been to a sugar shack, and we decided that we’d go for the full-on authentic experience. It was made doubly a good idea by the fact that we were hosting Deanna’s sister Cheryl with us for the weekend! What exactly do I mean by the full-on authentic experience? Well, read on and find out. Here’s a tip though: there were no tourists, we had to hike in, and we were even put to work! To see pictures of our little visit to Mike Caldwell’s Ark, and his very own sugar shack, head over to the flickr folder chock full of maple syrupy goodness. Aftwerwards, click through to read the rest of my little story.

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.

Race Reports

Making the Best of the Season

Well hello there everyone! Seeing as I’ve finally gotten caught up on all my race reports for the past little while, I guess I can take the time to write up a post on something other than hard physical activity. Let’s start with a little question for everyone. What is the single best thing about winters in the Ottawa / Gatineau Region? Well, I’d say just the simple fact that we have them! Yup, there are so many fun things that we can do even when the temperature drops and the white stuff flies around. With that in mind, I present to you this blog post, which is meant to share a few of the things that Deanna and I have been up to over the past couple months of winter wonderland weather. Between Gatineau Park, weekend guests and the yearly Winterlude, we’ve been outside quite a bit.To see a bunch of pictures from our various winter outings, check out some of the pictures that I’ve posted to flickr. For more of the gory details, just read on my friends!