Racing

Howdy all! Well, this past weekend marked my last official adventure race for 2006. I took part in the 14-hour Salomon Adventure Challenge Canadian Champs, held in Bark Lake Ontario. Although I’ve made it back, I sadly haven’t had time to write up my race report yet. Sorry. I caught a bit of a cold, and have been wrapped up working my 2 jobs. First priority was getting all my gear cleaned up. As you can see to the left, I’ve also got a bit of a problem. My Simon River Sports Shark paddle sadly suffered an ugly fate, and now lies in 6 pieces, rather than the 5 it is supposed to be in! Yup, I snapped a blade! Yikes. I really love that paddle. I’ve contacted the company in hopes they can help me out, and I’ll let you know what I hear back. They’re a great Canadian company, and I plan to use their paddles exclusively next year while I’m in New Zealand. I also managed to rip my almost new Outdoor Research Gore-tex Pac-lite jacket in this race! Turns out the free entry that I won to the race ended up costing me heck of a lot more than a I bargained for. Not to mention the challenges of getting to the start line… (but that’ll be in the full story). Till then, stay cool!

Greetings from the world of me again. Time rolls on, and I’ve been delinquent on my ramblings. It is with good reason this time though. In the past 2 weeks, I’ve taken on a second job. Yup, I’m not only a public servant, but I’m also doing contract work with a local start-up company as well. I was solicited by Dragonwave through some of my friends that have landed there. It’s not full time work hours or anything, but between the two jobs, and training for my last race of the season, time is at a premium. During the week, I’m up around 6am to work all day at the CRTC, then putting evenings in at my 2nd employer! Although that may be riveting for all of you, I’ll move into the topic of this post. After all, as most of you know, work is a means to an ends for me. Although I have to like my job, I much prefer talking about my hobbies than my career. That’s what separates us from the animals! Or was it opposable digits. Either way, on with my (briefer than usual) tale.

Well, I’ve done it! I can honestly say now that I’m half a man! Well, half an iron-type man that is! This weekend marked the successful completion of my half iron distance triathlon right here in Ottawa. For those of you who might not be aware of what that means, or the distances, I’ll summarize it for you. For starters, you swim for 1.9km, then you hop on your bike and pedal for 90km, then to finish it (you) off, you put on your running shoes and plod through 21.1km of running. The full iron distance, in case you haven’t figured it out, is twice as far for every discipline 😉 I registered for this race way back in February, and at that time, I was torn betwen doing the full iron distance, or the half iron distance. In the end, sanity won that time, and I registered for the half. After all, I did the half marathon before tackling the full marathon as well. I guess that can only mean that next year, I’ll have to take on the full distance. But I digress (as I often do). This blog posting will be all about my race experience in “The Canadian 1/2 Iron Distance Triathlon”, put on by Somersault events, and raced out of Mooney’s Bay beach. The weather was great, I had a nice little contingent of supporters (Thanks Jody, Kev, Grant, Bonnie, Maya, Natasha, Dave and Meghan!). That kind of thing always makes things go better. To save everyone the trouble, the bottom line is that I did way better than I had hoped. My goal was to finish in 5hr 30mins., but I shattered that by finishing in 5:11:13!! Luckily, there’s also a good bunch of pictures that were taken by Kev and Jody, which you can check out in their folder on flickr. For the gory details, just read on!

Well, another weekend has passed by, and sadly, it’s starting to feel like the summer is waning! Damn! However, I can’t really complain, as I’ve had a great summer. Although I didn’t really take any vacation, I did find lots of time to get out there and do the things I love to do. This has been my most active summer to date, from a racing and training standpoint. I definitely think I’m well on my way to achieving some of my larger life goals now. I’ve never yet put them on any sort of list, and I don’t think I will. Dreams are personal, so until they will be realized, might as well keep them to myself, or at least keep them in until the ‘ole dark rum gets a hold on me, and I spill my guts! Ha ha. Of course, the obvious short-term goal is my trip to New Zealand for next year. In case you weren’t aware, I’m in the planning stages of my 6 month bike tour of New Zealand. The target dates for this are Oct 1, 2007 to March 31, 2008. That way, I get the tax break over two years; I get to spend the time in ‘summer’ NZ, while avoiding ‘winter’ Canada; and get to spend Christmas with Jody in Australia, visiting some of her relatives! While I’m down there, I’m also planning to do some racing. I’m not talking about little bitty races either. The short list of three dream NZ races are the Southern Traverse (5+ day adventure race, committed to this already); Speight’s Coast to Coast “Longest Day” Challenge (140km bike, 36km run, 67km kayaking, 1 day) from west coast to east coast of Southern Island, crossing the Southern Alps en route; and Ironman New Zealand (3.8km swim, 180km bike, 42.2km run, 1 day). Of those three, the Southern Traverse was my original reason for going next year. I’ve been dreaming about this race, and it’s time to shit or get off the pot! Anyway, back to the blog at hand. I was trying to talk about my last weekend, but got distracted by my dreams, silly things, aren’t they? Make them come true. The day you’re born, you start dying, make the most of life and have no regrets! Whew, where’d that come from? Now, onto my tales of Trail Running….