You just never know how an adventure race will turn out when you start. This is especially the case in multi-day events, such as the 4-day staged Raid International Gaspesie that I most recently completed. Completion was far from certain. In fact, I finished on a different team than I started on! What follows is a tale of anticipation, teamwork, tragedy, rebirth, and triumph! It is also a concise explanation of why I love adventure racing so much. As my high school motto stated: “Palma non sine Pulvere” (No success without struggle). Before I get deep into the meat of […]
Good day all. An interesting thing happens when you start to do more and more endurance events. You can’t stop. If someone dangles a challenge out in front of you, you snap it up. You don’t do it for prizes, awards, or glory. You do it for you. You do it because you love every moment. The pain, the suffering, the elation, the views, the awaiting cold beer when it’s over. It weaves its way into becoming a part of who you are. I have fallen squarely in to the camp of endurance athlete if you will. Distances and durations […]
Every now and again, I head to a race with the specific intention of putting it all out there, and shooting for a win. This year’s Bruce Peninsula Multisport Race was one of those races. You’ve seen the video, but I figured some of you might also want my specific thoughts and reflections of this excellent event put on in the near-North of the Bruce Peninsula, and makes use of the famed Bruce Trail. While I didn’t take the top spot, I did manage a solid 3rd place in the long (100km) course, all while narrating and filming as I […]
[My apologies for not getting this race report written up sooner! Amazingly, two weeks have already passed! A few days were just for recovering, then life got in the way. But without further ado, here we go.] A mere three weeks before this race, I was tackling the toughest race I had tried to date, the 4-day Untamed New England. However, being slightly shorter, at 24 hours in length, does NOT make a race easier. In fact, racing with my ‘semi-pro’ competitive team actually made this another really tough race, thanks to the relentless pace, and the taste of podium […]
This is a race report that was a long time coming. For many years now, I’ve planned on tackling a proper expedition-length adventure race, and Untamed New England was my first crack at it. With our team racing basically non-stop for 4 days and 4 nights, and covering about 380 km, it truly was an expedition. We were a new team, unfamiliar with each other, and with me acting as captain and navigator for the full race. We hit absolute highs and absolute lows. Although we were ultimately ‘short coursed’ early on, it didn’t detract at all from our overall […]