ActiveSteve

Toronto Weekend Fun…

Jody and I had plans to go see Monty Python’s Spamalot at the theatre in Toronto on August 12th, along with Alix, Matt, and Andrew Raven. The tickets were bought months ago, and the time was finally approaching. Well, rather than simply go see the show, Jody and I decided we’d make a long weekend of it and hit Paramount Canada’s Wonderland for some serious thrill-ride action! We took the Friday off, so we could hit the park outside of the crazy weekend window. I think it was a good plan. Even though we did end up waiting an hour for one of the rollercoasters at mid-day (Top Gun, if you’re interested), most of the waits were much more reasonable. We also got to do a lot of front seat rides, and multiple trips on our favourites. There are a lot of rides at the park. We had some faves, and some not so good. The thing that sucks on some of the rides is the beating your body takes. They have a new ‘flying’ coaster, called Tomb Raider, and we really didn’t enjoy the bone rattling that went with it. As usual, our favourite was the old-school woodies. Wooden Coasters are just more thrilling. Sure, they don’t do inverted loops or anything, but they feel rickety, and you only have a little lap bar holding you in while you whiz around at top speed! We like them so much that we capped off our visit with seven consecutive runs of the Wild Beast, without even getting off the coaster. It was pretty quiet late at night, so the ride attendants said we could just stay on. It was crazy! When we finally went to bed that night, I still felt like i was riding a coaster! If you’d like to check out some pictures of that day, check out the folder on Flickr.

First Sub 2h30min Olympic Triathlon – New PB!

Well, I’m happy to report that I’m still improving a bit! This past weekend marked my return to racing, after taking a whole month off! It was not intentional, but that’s just the way things worked out. I was slated to race in a 36 hour Raid the North adventure race mid-July, but at the last minute, that race was cancelled, and I opted to not race in the shorter Salomon Adventure Challenge race on that same weekend. Instead, I decided to relax, enjoy summer a bit, and chill out at the Ottawa Bluesfest, as you have probably already read about. I’ve been slowly getting back into running regularly, and also been doing weekly rides in Gatineau Park with Grant and Kevin, generally doing about 70km each time. I’ve had to start kicking my own ass a bit in order to properly train for my upcoming 1/2 Iron Distance Triathlon. As of the date of this posting, I’m a mere 3.5 weeks away from that event, and not too prepared yet. For that event, I’ll be swimming 2km, biking 90km, and running 21km. In order to do a check-up as to where I was in my fitness level, I participated in the National Capital Triathlon, an Olympic-distance event. For that one, I had to swim 1.5km, bike 40km, and run 10km. I’m happy to say that in spite of perhaps not having trained quite hard enough, I did cough up a personal best for it! My first sub 2hr. 30min Olympic Triathlon! Huzzah. My most worrying event was the swim, since I’ve only gone out for a few open-water swims in the past few months. Luckily, I pulled it off strong, shaving several minutes from my time last year in the same event! If you’d like to check out a few pictures of the event, as usual, we’ve got a folder on flickr with all the pics. Now, for the detail-oriented, let’s have a look how the race broke down statistics-wise.

Camping at the ‘Bogie’

I ask you this; Is there anything better than a nice relaxing weekend camping along a river in the summer? Well, although we only managed to get out for a single night of camping over the past weekend (and entire summer so far!), it was really nice. Jody and I headed out to Calabogie to camp on Jim’s property along the Madawaska river last weekend, with Jonah in tow. The idea was just to get away from the city for a quiet night on the river, with a nice campfire, some camp chow, and watery fun in the river. Mission accomplished. Although I had grander plans, which included night biking trips, maybe trail running, and hiking, we really didn’t move too far from our campsite. The only trips we made were up the hill to the cabin to visit our ‘neighbours’, Jim, Allie and Xavier. They were up for the weekend getting some additional work done on the homestead and just generally enjoying their property. Who can blame them? After his recent trip to Utah for Primal Quest, I would imagine Jim thoroughly enjoyed his beer, cigar and scotch under a starry sky by the campfire. I know I did 😉

Bluesfest and new Cousins!

After the dust settled from our crazy Canada Day weekend festivities, Jody and I decided to get to the next order of business in our Ottawa summers. The Bluesfest! This event is the second largest Blues festival in North America (after Chicago), and probably one of the largest overall festivals in Canada. Essentially, the party goes on for 10 days, and plays host to over 150 different acts. This year was another stellar year for performances, and we definitely got more than our fill of many different musical stylings, not just Blues. If you’re curious about this years’ performances, you can still check out the listings on the website. Of course, if you’re reading this after 2006, well, you’ll be out luck, but will see who’s supposed to be on in the current year 😉 I’d love to get into full details of all the shows we saw, but there are far, far too many to list. Personally for me, some of the highlights were on the smaller stages, which often have a more intimate setting, and you get to see some great acts. A partial list of my faves would be Chicago Blues Reunion, Detroit Women, Dickey Betts & Great Southern, Elmer Ferrer Band, Eric Lindell, Etta James, Jake Shimabukuro, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Sam Roberts Band, Solomon Burke, Walter Trout & the Radicals, and finally Wilco. Click any of the links to learn more about them, or check out their music.

Canada Day Update…

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Whew! Where has the time gone? By checking the ole time stamp on my posts, it would appear as thought it’s been exactly a month since I’ve posted anything here. Shame on me! Guess I was just too busy basking in my relative glory for the Quest race. Where would I go from there? Well, apparently, the answer is nowhere in particular. The past four weeks have been spent recovering and revelling. I’ll try to put up a few short posts and pictures to bring y’all up to speed on all things Steve for the month of July. To start with, the week after Quest for a Cure was really a resting and recovery week mainly for me. It was also a preparation week for July 1st, which as usual, would undoubtedly bring forth the traditional debauchery and celebration. This year’s main goal was just to party, and possibly to make sure that Rob didn’t make a return trip to the local drunk tank, of which some of the details are still quite foggy to Mr. Sample.