Racing

Howdy gang. Hope everyone’s had a good week! It’s hard to imagine but just a little over a week ago I completed my first Iron Distance triathlon. The first order of business after doing something like that is of course to rest for a little bit. However, that’s not the way I roll over here atActiveSteve .com! Although I did manage to do absolutely no training for the entire week, I didn’t want that to continue indefinitely, so on Wednesday I looked into doing the 5 PeaksEnduro trail running race at my friend Mike Caldwell’s property (the ARK) in Farrellton , Quebec. At the time, I hadn’t decided exactly whether or not I’d actually race. I thought that I would either volunteer at the race, or maybe do the short (5-6 km) race. As you might imagine though, things didn’t work out quite that way. Read on to find out what I’m talking about. You can also check out some of the pictures taken at the race by the fine folks at ZoomPhoto.ca.

Well, here it finally is folks. My post about the recent completion of my journey to become an Iron..Man. I can’t use the term Ironman itself, as this term is trademarked, and the race I took part in isn’t an ‘official’ Ironman event. Whatever. I still did the distance, endured the pain, and went through all the training. So I still feel pretty damn good about it 😉 As you’ll note, I’m calling this a journey, because it isn’t as simple as just doing a race. Getting to this start line involved about 9 months of training and sacrifices. I really couldn’t be a big party animal on weekends. Instead, I was up early mornings pretty much every single weekend, doing 6 hour bike rides or 3 hour runs or putting time in the pool. Often times, I actually had to do more than one of those per day. Yup, my weekly training regimen consisted of between 12 and 20 hours a week! Of course, rather than always just training, keep in mind I also raced during all this time, doing numerous triathlons and adventure races throughout the early season as well! But, since you’re reading this, it means that I made it to the other side. This post will be all about my race day, as the rest is essentially history at this point 😉 In order to help you understand the most about the day, I’ve done a few things for you. First off, head over to flickr for a folder full of race pictures. Secondly, since I had my Garmin on during the race itself, why not have fun and browse the Google map that I created, that includes some of the pictures? Good enough? Excellent, now on with the story.

Yup, after years of trying for it, I’ve finally landed a legitimate first place finish in a race. It’s just that simple. I could go on with the fanfare, and a long build up, but why put you through that, right? However, since that would be completely out of character, I’ll back up now, and give you the entire background and story. The event I’m talking about is the National Capital Kayak Triathlon, put on by Somersault Events, and took place at Mooney’s Bay in Ottawa on July 28th of the long weekend (well, long weekend for those who work in Ontario… I had to work Monday). It was to be my last race before the Iron-distance race I’m doing on September 1st. Also, my goal was to win this one, not just ‘do well’. If you’d like to see some pictures of this race, check out the folder on Flickr. Now on with the story.

Howdy folks! You may be asking yourself, why is it that ActiveSteve seems to be perpetually two weeks behind in all his postings? Well, that’s a pretty valid question, and with this little post, I hope to enlighten you a bit as to why that is. Essentially, it’s a question of time. You might have noticed that I tend to get a little verbose when writing up my postings. Ihonestly don’t mean to, it’s just that I seem to have a rambling writing style. I’ll decide to just write a little paragraph about a certain leg of a race for example, but when I get down to it, I start describing a whole lot of little things in it. I’m not sure why that is, I guess I just want to make sure that my readers are getting a true sense of my experiences. Where and/or what will this ever get me? Well, not a hell of a lot, other than when I’m old and wrinkly, I can bring all the old stories up (I hope), and relive my ‘youth’. So there you have it. But I digress. This post is about my training, not my rambling ways, right? Hee hee, see, there I went again.

Good day race fans, and welcome to another edition of ActiveSteve’s race reports. I’m writing to you about my most recent race experience. On the weekend of July 21st and 22nd, Carl and I took part in the Raid Pulse staged race. This was the first time I raced in a staged race in its entirety. You see, I previously did race in a staged race, but I only participated in the second day. This was the Sea2Summit race a couple years back when Kevin supported me. This time I had the time to do the whole race.This particular race was based in Montpellier, QC, and would consist of 3 separate stages. The first stage would start on Saturday morning, and last 6 to 8 hours. The second stage was to be a night stage of 2-3 hours. The final stage would be another day stage on Sunday again lasting 6-8 hours. In order to be well prepared, we decided to head up to the race site on Friday night, and beat the morning rush, since it was a 2 hour drive, and we’d need to register as well as get all our gear together by around 9am. Read on to hear all about this fun experience. To save you any suspense, no, we didn’t win, but we did have a great time, and raced well as a team. To check out some pictures from the race, head over to my Flickr folder.