Training Log Archive: Bash

Race reports are now posted for:
Coast Raid Day 1 (Aug. 21)

Coast Raid Day 2 (Aug. 22)

Coast Raid Day 3 and Night 3 (Aug. 23)

Coast Raid Day 4 (Aug. 24)

Coast Raid Post-Race Pics (Aug. 25)

Coast Raid Final Thoughts (Aug. 26)

Rode from Inglewood to The Shed Coffee Bar in Belfountain. Without our usual wilderness guides, Knobless and Gorgeous, we made a wrong turn in the maze of trails west of Inglewood. No problem, we figured that we'd just keep going in the right direction, and eventually we'd hook up with the correct route. Wrong. The trail ran out at a big new fence with "No Trespassing" signs on it. After 4.5 km of riding, we were back at our car ready to give it another go. We made a more foolproof route choice the 2nd time, and our iced mocha lattes tasted that much sweeter!

I'm a wimp about taking my bike apart because things always seem to go wrong. I buy a car that fits my bike in the back without removing the front wheel. Today I was telling 'Bent that my bike felt slower after being reassembled from the bike box. Then the bike stopped dead. Turns out the derailleur cable had wrapped itself around my front gears. Yikes. I think I've avoided permanent damage. If not, it would be good timing - my rebuilt Gary Fisher bike (with the new frame to replace the cracked one) should finally be ready by the end of this week.

Easy ride to Albion and around the trails to test our bikes after re-assembly from the bike boxes. 'Bent tried a clever new way of carrying his drinking bladder and managed to slice the tube neatly in half. Gorgeous summer day.

Changing topics... as a birthday present to myself, I sent in a "cross-section of my photographic work" (?!) with an application for the Banff Centre Adventure Photography Workshop.
http://www.banffcentre.ca/mountainculture/programs...

Given that I assembled my "portfolio" hurriedly at 3 a.m. before our Coast Raid flight, I wouldn't have been disappointed to be turned down this year, but I was accepted and am going there for a 3-day workshop Sept. 12-15. A lot of our work will involve outdoor photo sessions with models doing things like kayaking or climbing. Instructors include two National Geographic photographers and another local award-winning photographer. Fun!

My red-eye flight leaves Calgary on Mon. Sept. 15 at midnight. Any westerners interested in going for coffee - or maybe dinner - that evening? Not certain yet what time I'll make it to Calgary from Banff, but it should be in the 6-8 p.m. range. Won't have a car.

Just to keep FB happy...

Aug. 16 - Arrival in Newfoundland

Aug. 17 - Trip to Gros Morne Park

Aug. 18 - Climbing Gros Morne

Aug. 19 - Arrival in Lower North Shore Quebec

Aug. 20 - Biking to Labrador (and back)

5K trail loop in Palgrave. I felt slow but relatively strong after climbing so many hills recently. In the end, it was an average time for me on this hilly loop.

Rodney Yee Yoga for Flexibility. Oooh, that felt good.

Some final thoughts about the Coast Raid. We're really glad we did this event, and it was fun to do it as an adventure vacation. Daniel Poirier, Jean-Thomas Boily and everyone involved in the event did an excellent job.

They took care of the big things - the race course was interesting, challenging and beautiful. It really felt like an accomplishment to make it to the end. Safety was a major consideration, and we frequently saw rescue boats as we paddled. The organizers also took care of many smaller details - getting a large flag for every country represented, laminating the maps, setting up start and finish lines with music and emcee for each race leg, ensuring that bags and bikes always arrived on time, etc. The volunteers were friendly and knowledgeable and most seemed to be having fun themselves. The only suggestion for improvement would be to spell out the race rules in more detail, as there were a couple of cases of confusion where top teams interpreted things differently from one another.

It was interesting to explore this little-known corner of Canada - that's the main reason we went. But it turned out to be more scenic than we'd expected, and the warm welcome of the Lower North Shore residents was absolutely unbelievable - something I may never experience again. It was more special because we shared it with good friends from Ontario - and with new friends we made during the event.

Bottom line - the Coast Raid was much more than a race. It showed that our sport can make a difference to communities and regions, and we felt proud and privileged to be part of it. Thanks to Endurance Aventure!

Here are our excellent teammates, Pixie and Tiny, after the race.



And here are 'Bent and myself.



Post-race was the only time we looked better than Team Salomon Suunto. I guess that's the advantage of doing the event as an adventure vacation!

Coast Raid Day 4

I usually handle sleep deprivation very well (it's my normal lifestyle), but not today. After 30 hrs of racing over 3 days and just 2.5 hrs of sleep last night, I felt light-headed and sleepy until mid-afternoon. In retrospect, I should have taken wake-up pills or eaten some chocolate espresso beans, but I was so tired that it didn't occur to me. As a result, I lagged behind more than usual on the road biking (my weakest discipline in this race), but otherwise, I held my own. Looking back at the GPS tracks, I navigated well on the long trek, but I was happy to leave the map in Tiny's hands for the final short trek. It wasn't just me - everyone looked bagged this morning, including the normally dashing Phatty.



Even our friends on Team XTreme South Africa at the front of the pack were concerned about the final day of racing.



We biked to our kayaks a few km away, inflated them, then headed out onto the sunny, windy Baie des Belles Amours to pick up two CPs located by little fishing houses. There were some decent swells on the ocean today, but we were very comfortable in the kayaks by this point. They're very stable and reasonably quick for what they are, but it is possible to inflate them with improper alignment, and then you get a boat that tries to turn all the time. (This happened to one of the Team Salomon Suunto boats today, and it happened to 'Bent and me on Day 2.)

We enjoyed our last kayaking session on the Lower North Shore - for now! If someone wanted to run kayak tours here, it would be an awesome destination. Based on our experience, the locals would be very supportive, and we've done enough kayak trips to know that this is truly a world class destination. I'd have to look at the maps some more to find protected routes along the coast, as paddling on the open ocean would be a bad idea on most days.

We hopped on our bikes to pick up another few CPs on our way to the start of the long trek. We were given a slightly incorrect UTM for the first CP, which led to a few minutes of concern as we hiked with other teams along one pond to the adjacent one, where we found the flag. In an event with so many CPs over five long race stages, it's actually amazing that there weren't more missing or misplaced CPs. From here, it was a long trek where we tried to stay high and out of trouble. We could always see the next point we wanted to aim for, and the challenge was to make it there without getting stalled by prickly patches of tuckamore, which often lurked in hidden gullies that we only saw when we got up close. Bushwhacking through this stuff made me "pine" for the forests of home. Usually we can just lean and push to move through thick bush, but in this stuff, it was easy to get your foot caught under something because of the twists and turns in the branches and trunks. Even more fun were the frequent surprise holes. One minute you'd be walking beside a teammate chatting away, and the next minute, he or she would drop half a meter into a hidden creek with a shocked "Aaaaahh!?!".



The highlight of this trek was a spectacular long, rocky spur that we followed down to the sea. Unfortunately Pixie felt ill during this section and didn't enjoy it as much as she normally would. On the bright side, Tiny had recovered nicely from feeling sick last night and this morning, and 'Bent was perking up around the same time after over-exerting himself on the bike tow earlier. (Apparently I need to lose weight.)



Walking by the sea here was incredible.



Then we headed up - *way* up - to find one more CP before returning to our bikes at the road. Our next stop was a zip line at beautiful Brador Falls, and I think someone must have put an ad in the paper because nearly everyone on the Lower North Shore was there to cheer us on. 'Bent and I did the zip. Back in the parking lot, someone asked Tiny to pose for a photo with some children, and one of the local mayors chatted with him and Pixie. The mayor explained that everyone had been talking about the Coast Raid for the past year, and it had been really good for morale to have the first-ever international event in this area at a time when the economy has become difficult because of the decline of the fisheries. Once again, we realized how lucky we were to be part of something that was much more than a race.

This pic shows me crossing the zip line over the waterfall, with photographer Luis Moreira of Breathe Magazine hanging on the other rope.



We had a road ride along the coast past the village of Brador, then we headed inland to pick up CPs in a complex area of ATV trails. Tiny nailed the difficult nav, and we made some time in here. Between the zip line and the technical bike riding, I was awake by this point - and happy to be close to the finish line.



We rode to a TA outside of town where we had the option of pushing our bike over a low, tundra-covered mountain, which would give us a faster trip back to town when we hit the ATV trail on the far side. We decided to go on foot, since the descent to the sea looked cliffy, and the ATV trail section was under 2 km. As it turned out, we were the last team allowed to go up the mountain, since the wind was high (80 kph, we heard later) and the clouds continued rolling in to create white-out conditions. We met the Yoga Slackers up there, the team that ultimately won the mixed 4-person category. They had done the advanced section, and they had their bikes on the mountain. In this boggy, rocky terrain, we were able to stay even or ahead of them on foot for quite a long time without any running at all.



At last we were on the final stretch of ATV trail leading to Blanc-Sablon.



We did our only running of the entire race when we got two blocks from the finish at the school. As we approached the finish line, the race director handed us two huge flags - Canadian flag and Ontario flag. All teams were handed the flags from their respective countries at the finish - U.S., Brazil, Italy, South Africa and France. (I think that's the full list.) We were immediately handed a jumbo bottle of beer and ushered onto a podium, where photographers, volunteers and dozens of townspeople cheered and took photos.



After hot showers, we were treated to yet another fantastic, home-cooked buffet. A truly wonderful touch was that the organizers had invited a number of local people to attend the race banquet, including the ladies who had cooked the amazing food for us in St. Paul's and Middle Bay. We were privileged to share our table with locals and exchange stories with them during the evening. One of them pulled out a digital camera and showed us close-up videos he had taken of whales when he was out on his boat yesterday. There were speeches by mayors from along the coast, and one touching comment from the head of the Council of Mayors was, "You have shown us that our area is more beautiful than even *we* knew." At one point we realized that the applause was especially loud, and we looked back to see that the 2nd floor bleachers of the gym were filled with local residents - wow.

The huge group of volunteers and race staff (probably as many of them as there were racers) had written a song for the race director, which they presented with gusto. Each team was called up and given a framed certificate showing that they'd completed the Coast Raid, and the top teams received prizes with little fanfare. We cheered loudly for Team Salomon Suunto, who placed a close second in the mixed 4-person category, but the loudest cheers of the night were reserved for Team Harrington Harbour, the locals who had done everyone proud with a respectable result. They were the ones who had come to the race via a 13-hr boat ride along the coast, and one of them had raced in a hockey helmet because he didn't own a bike helmet. The Italian team presented them with new bike helmets from their sponsor - very classy. There was a cool 10-minute video montage of race highlights. A couple of Europeans were here filming the race, and we're told that 20 million people will watch it overseas.

Like everything associated with this event, the post-race celebration was a class act and a perfect way to finish this amazing experience. Oh, and the Tree Huggers placed 15th of 19 teams, which exceeded our goal for our adventure vacation!

Coast Raid Day 3

Another night in a school gym with new and old friends, followed by another too-early morning. We started with a paddle, which meant that we could inflate and assemble our kayaks before the race clock started. We were back at the familiar St. Paul's federal dock, where we've started our paddling for the past 3 days. Daniel Poirier is skilled at designing compact courses that don't cover a huge area on the map, but still feel interesting and different to the racers. This makes it easier from the race organization, transportation, safety and volunteer coordination perspectives, which in turn makes it easier for us to race in wild places like this.

The fastest route this morning involved a 400 meter portage with a climb near the start, but that wasn't consistent with our adventure vacation philosophy, so we joined the minority of teams that chose to paddle extra distance through some beautiful little channels.



At the end of Grand Lac Sale, we had a 1 km portage to the fish plant. This time we sat the kayaks on our shoulders, which was much easier than hauling them along by the handles at each end. After another few km of paddling, we transitioned to bikes for some hilly riding on inland ATV trails. At this CP, we had to drop our bikes at the end of a trail and hike to a viewpoint. (Daniel likes to send us to scenic lookouts.)



We continued to make berry picking a priority. No chance of getting bored with our race food.



We rode through Middle Bay, which is at the bottom of a big hill. As we whizzed past, the volunteers figured out who we were and held up huge flags for the appropriate country. After climbing out of town on the far side, we dropped our bikes at a point and headed out for a long trek on a beautiful, flat, open peninsula. The nicest part of today's trek took us along the seashore where we found a lot of whale bones.



Including part of a skull.



The farthest CP was this little fishing house on a remote point. Wow, I could hang out here for days watching the ocean.



We didn't need to go down to the ocean as early as we did, but it was much more entertaining to walk there.



Here we are, racing hard.



After a long, flat, boggy walk that was surprisingly hard on our leg muscles, followed by a short coasteering section and a little climb over a rocky hill, we were back at our bikes for the final ride into the village of Middle Bay, population 30. They had decorated a house in the centre of town to welcome us. We made the cut-off for the Extreme section, but once again we decided to take a pass on it.



Several of them had made up T-shirts saying "Middle Bay welcomes the Coast Raid". They collected our autographs on their backs!



Everyone in this tiny village was really friendly and very kind to us. The population is dwindling as people move elsewhere to find work with the decline of the fisheries, or else they want to be closer to health care facilities. The school is closed, and children need to go to St. Paul's or Blanc-Sablon. But they live in one of the most beautiful seaside locations you could imagine. (When I said this, one lady jokingly offered to sell me her house on the spot.)



Thanks to our berry-picking ways, the small community centre was full of racers by the time we arrived, so the locals opened up their church for us. It felt a little strange to hang our wet underwear over the pews to dry, but it turned out that the teams at the back of the pack got the luxury accommodation option this time!



A number of local families put on an amazing buffet for us at the Middle Bay Interpretive Centre. This photo shows just one of a number of tables, and the meal was accompanied by fresh coffee, a big cooler of beer, and so on. Just like last night, we were spoiled rotten, and we felt humbled by the generosity of these people as they welcomed us to their amazing little corner of Canada.



With full stomachs, it was time to return to the church for a little rest before picking up our maps for the night section, which would start at 10 p.m.

Coast Raid Night 3

The only night stage of this year's event was a 3-hour rogaine running from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. We could use any combination of biking or trekking to reach 7 CPs. If you came back after 3 hrs, you got credit for finding all CPs, even if you hadn't. So the only way to gain an advantage over other teams on this section was to find all CPs and come in under 3 hrs.

We rode west from Middle Bay up the steep hill. Most of the local residents were there to see us off, and many of them stayed up past 1 a.m. to welcome the last finishers. Tiny led us to a few CPs on bike, and my new bike shoes finally let me down on one climb where I tipped over and didn't unclip before I hit a rock with my upper shin. This wouldn't have been so bad if I had only done it once, but I managed to do it twice, landing on the same spot. Ouch, it's still painful and swollen after a week of recovery.



I screwed up on the night trek, leading us into the wrong valley so that we had to climb over a rocky hill to get to the right valley. We probably lost 10 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Because of the tuckamore, it is never easy to follow a compass bearing in this country. In the daytime, I would often choose a high, far-away point on my bearing, then we would choose micro-routes around vegetation while keeping our target in sight. But of course, this didn't work at night, so I had to try to keep track of how far the vegetation had pushed us right or left. The next CP and our return to the road went smoothly, once I got the hang of it.

Our final section was some coasteering, which we obviously should have done first. We knew the tide was rising, but we'd underestimated the effect it would have in this cliffy area. After all that, we returned to the start with 11 minutes to spare - and ready to work on maps for the next morning. Tiny started to work with me, but got sick and headed to bed in hopes of feeling better. I stayed up till 2:30 a.m. doing maps and preparing my pack for the next day. The alarm was set for 5 a.m. - yikes.

Coast Raid Day 2

As Leanimal explained in her excellent race report, a major highlight of this stage race was the opportunity to stop in North Shore villages and enjoy the warm local welcome and the camaraderie of other racers from North and South America and Europe. Old Fort - where the highway ends - was beautiful in spite of a few black flies.



We - and a lot of damp gear - spent the night in the cozy school gym, sharing stories and laughs with other teams. One local fellow came by to collect our autographs, but we tried our best to stay humble.



Most of the volunteers stayed in other parts of the school, including a couple of friendly medics. They bandaged up AndyCam's thumb after his tumble in the tuckamore, but luckily the most serious injury they handled over 4 days was our South African friend Phillipe's foot, which got cut by a mussel shell. It didn't stop his team from placing 3rd overall though!

We had a bike start today, and at 7:15 a.m., Old Fort was treated to the tunes that greeted us at every race start. It was a nice energetic playlist, but a short one, and we heard the same songs enough that they will have to become the soundtrack for our slideshow! Can anyone remember the others?
Very Superstitious
All Star
Highway to Hell
Black Betty
And who could ever forget...?
Let's Get It Started

We started by biking 12 km to St. Paul's River, mostly on gravel road. There were a few hills, so Pixie and I put Tiny and 'Bent to work towing. We had to inflate our kayaks while the clock was running this time, then we paddled several km out to Ile des Esquimaux, where we took several hours to trek to 4 CPs all over the island.

We were never far from the sea, and there were some great views. We passed a little waterfront cabin that I'd love to spend a week at. We were better at blasting through the tuckamore today - and also better at figuring out ways to avoid it. Some of the trekking went across beautiful open terrain.



And some of it didn't!



We hopped back in our kayaks for a longer paddle that took us out to a point in a stiff breeze. Tiny had fun getting out of the kayak to punch the passport.



From there, we decided to use the wind to push us north, then turn into some protected waters that would take us to a place where we could portage over a road, returning to the harbour less than a km from the main dock. It was risky because it wasn't marked as a portage, but we were going to hit it almost exactly at high tide, so we took the chance. It got shallow early, and we had a few minutes of goopy walking through a salt bog, but it was a good route choice at high tide. Apparently, Team Salomon Suunto got there when the tide was lower, and it was a real pain to get through the muck to the road.

We hopped back onto our bikes and followed roads to a trail that got narrower and more overgrown until we were just riding on a narrow track while bushwhacking through a tunnel of green. Phew - we hit the TA and dropped our bikes for the next trek. The first CP was on a nearby hilltop with a scenic view. (Daniel Poirier, the course designer, has a wonderful sense of the aesthetic.)





From here, we bashed our way through the brush to an open hilltop at the base of a cliff where 'Bent went rappelling again. After bashing back to our bikes, we carried on further east of St. Paul's to the fish factory (do they make fish there?) where we were supposed to do a 700 meter adventure swim to Factory Point on a nearby island. Shortly before we arrived, they closed off the swim due to strong currents that had developed, so we never got the chance to pull out our cool pack rafts. We had to visit a new alternate CP on our side of the water, so we just trekked over to get it. Last but not least, we rode back to St. Paul's River in warm evening light - nice!

Even better, we learned that people in St. Paul's had prepared a "seafood tasting" for the racers at their museum. Incredible news - we just turned around at the finish line and headed back down the hill. And when we got there, it was like a mid-race hallucination. Huge platters overloaded with different types of seafood, fruit and vegetables - wow. One of them commented that they get bored with snow crab legs and steamed mussels because they eat them all the time. We didn't find it boring! I even managed a nice partidgeberry tart - yum!! At the museum, we learned that St. Paul's is the place where the cod trap was invented - and we also learned that some really, really friendly and generous people live there.

Online race coverage - including GPS tracking - will be posted from Aug. 21-24 at:
http://www.coastraid.com

Coast Raid Day 1

We had the team presentation ceremony last night, along with speeches by local dignitaries and the race director.



The volunteer support for Endurance Aventure events is truly amazing. As an example, the race emcee is a CBC broadcaster who uses a week of vacation time to come. The volunteers all got nice waterproof-breathable Coast Raid jackets, and many of them seem to be related to one another, including some little kids having a terrific time.

We all slept at the high school in Blanc-Sablon, then piled into a school bus this morning to drive to the village of St. Paul's River. Before the race started, we inflated our kayaks for the first time and put on our cold water paddling gear. Fortunately, the organizers had allowed plenty of time for this!







The Advanced Elements kayaks were pretty good for inflatables. They were stable, tracked well and moved at a reasonable pace.

With a crowd of locals and volunteers cheering us on, the Coast Raid started with a kayak section - about 11 km including a portage of several hundred meters.





Our team remained happily near the back of the pack. Tiny had promised an adventure vacation to his wife Pixie, and 'Bent and I had agreed to approach the Coast Raid in that manner. So there was no pressure, although we did hope to finish the Raid. Anything beyond that would be gravy, so we took hundreds of photos with the 3 waterproof cameras on our team. On land, we often made brief stops to pick blueberries and bakeapples.

We dropped our kayaks in a bay and trekked up a steep hill onto a plateau. It was our first exposure to the boggy ground, fragile sphagnum moss, invisible deep holes and patches of tangled tuckamore that made the treks more challenging than one would expect on relatively open land.



After locating a couple of checkpoints, we descended to the water for several kilometers of awesome coasteering that led us to a ropes section, then ultimately back to our kayaks. The water was warmer than expected - 10-12C, so the coasteering was chilly, but not deadly. Most of the complaints came from the boys, who whinged about shrinkage. According to one guy, "I've got an inny instead of an outy now!"







We hopped back into the kayaks for a short paddle to the village of Old Fort, which is where the highway from Blanc-Sablon ends. There are a number of villages to the west of here on the Lower North Shore, but they aren't accessible by car. The one local team in the race had come from Harrington Harbour, and it had taken them 13 hrs by powerboat to get to Blanc-Sablon. This was their first race - impressive!

We went up to the local school to pick up our bikes for some orienteering in hilly terrain with spectacular views in gorgeous late afternoon light. We ended up dropping our bikes and hiking through a lake to get to one CP, and we had a fun ride through shallow water along a pebbled lake bottom to reach another CP. Basically, we were wet all day!





We made it back to the finish line an hour before the cut-off for the Extreme (i.e. advanced) section. We'd agreed earlier that we wouldn't do it today, so we took the 4-hr penalty and let a couple of other teams move ahead of us. This event isn't about results for us, so that was OK. All the teams built little forts in the school gym using chairs and bags, and - with judicious use of ear plugs and eye shades - most of us slept *very* well!

Event: Raid International Éco EnduranceAventure
 

With our bikes freshly assembled from their boxes, 'Bent, Tiny, Pixie and I rode to Labrador with our new South African friends, Phillipe and Jeremy. We got a taste of the steep climbs and descents as Hwy 138 follows the coast. I suspect the hills will feel a lot tougher in a few days - and they already felt tough today!

Several hours in a school bus from Deer Lake to Ste. Barbe in Newfoundland, then 1 hr 45 min by ferry to Blanc-Sablon, Quebec - just a few kilometers west of the Labrador border. The kayaking conditions here would be a tad rough, but fortunately, our race took us through more protected waters!





In case you're uncertain (I know I was!), here is where Quebec's Lower North Shore is:
http://www.tourismlowernorthshore.com/villages.asp

Climbed Gros Morne with 'Bent, Tiny and Pixie. Phatty, Leanimal, STORM and AndyCam joined us at the summit, and we all hiked down together. Great views except when we were on top and clouds rolled in temporarily. We saw several caribou and a *big* moose. We got chatting with another hiker who asked, "Where are you all from? A place called Salomon?"

Went to Gros Morne on a rainy day. It was still beautiful there, but we weren't inspired to get our race clothes soaked by hiking in them. It cleared later in the day, and we watched a fantastic sunset with crashing ocean waves at the Lobster Point lighthouse. We stayed in Rocky Harbour and hosted Team Salomon Suunto for an Olympics-watching night.

People in Newfoundland are soooo friendly. We went into a small craft shop, and the owner mentioned that he knew two families from Ontario. We just smiled politely since there are *lots* of people in Ontario, but it turned out that we did know one of the families. They live in Caledon, and he had sold them a house just down the road from the craft shop. (They're involved with whale research.) Small world.

Flew to Deer Lake with Phatty, Leanimal, Tiny, Pixie, 'Bent and a big pile of AR gear. The Air Canada agent got snippy when so many of us appeared with bike boxes and large gear bags. Phatty & Leanimal got a partial break due to his Elite Aeroplan status, but the rest of us were charged $275/person for travelling with bike box ($75), overweight bag ($100) and oversized bag (same bag - another $100). This is only a 1-way fee, so we'll see what happens at the other end. Good thing 'Bent and I were travelling on an Aeroplan ticket, but this sure doesn't encourage us to fly to adventure races in future!

Nice birthday dinner with the gang at the Irving gas station restaurant in Deer Lake. 'Bent surprised me with a fantastic cake baked by Crash. Thank you!

Got everything settled with our house and dog sitters, fine-tuned our packing one more time, and we're off in the morning. This is the 2nd time I will have spent my birthday travelling to an Endurance Aventure event. Hopefully I'll have a nice day-after-birthday, because a day spent with airlines can rarely be described as fun.

The new excess, overweight and oversized baggage fees implemented on May 15 might stop us from flying to future adventure races - on Air Canada, anyway. We've already been billed part of the fee, but if we get billed "by the book" for our large hockey bag + bike box each, it would cost 'Bent and me over $1100 in baggage fees for the return trip. Glad we're flying on points - that's just crazy!

If you're interested, you can follow the online coverage as the Tree Huggers and Team Salomon Suunto race. In our case, I use the term "race" loosely, as we have agreed to approach this as a low pressure event, taking advantage of this amazing opportunity to explore a fascinating corner of Canada while doing some of our favourite outdoor activities. I've been tapering for about 6 weeks, so I am, like, totally ready.

Coverage will be at http://www.coastraid.com/en/index.html from Aug. 21-24, and we'll be carrying GPS tracking units that should show where we are at any time. As I've already told some of you, if you notice our little dot drifting out into the Atlantic, please alert search and rescue personnel!

Reverse 5K trail loop in Palgrave West with BulletDog. I'd planned to follow up with some yoga, but I met someone on the trail (which never happens around here) and used up my yoga time chatting.

Goose and Coach LD hosted a terrific Coast Raid send-off dinner for 'Bent, Leanimal, Phatty and me. Then we went to say a quick farewell to Gazelle and Gazette, who will be returning to Tajikistan with baby Justin around the time we get home.

I unpacked all my Coast Raid gear and went through it item by item to get the weight of my bag down below Air Canada's limit. It's a new hockey goalie bag that we bought on eBay - awesome, but it weighs 13 lb empty. I took out a few items, including a lightweight fleece jacket that I might regret, but the real trick was identifying and removing some of the things with the greatest density. We're each allowed two carry-ons of limited size that can weigh 22 lb each. I'll be nowhere close to that, but I've now got an eclectic mix of non-terrorist-looking (I hope), heavy stuff to carry on - a kayak bilge pump, my shockingly weighty new cycling shoes, batteries, a thermos (hope that doesn't frighten the airport security folks), 2-man inflatable pack raft, etc.

The taper continues, albeit not intentionally. I followed up on my chilliness during Monday night's swim by getting a good portion of my hair cut off today. Now it should all fit under my neoprene cap, and hopefully it will dry faster.

The 2008 Adventure Sports Games have been cancelled due to lack of registrations. Too bad - it was high quality and excellent fun last year, and it would have been nice to see BobTheNavigator take it to the next level. Last year's title sponsor, Keen, has moved on to support the Bruce Trail instead, which probably made things difficult.

Yup, that's right - 5 minutes - just a night-time test of my lighting system for the Coast Raid. And yes, as a matter of fact, I *did* have a little more planned for today. I thought I had about half an hour of work on my bike, then I'd go for a little ride. It turned into the Afternoon From Hell as I realized that my new bike's handlebars are so fancy that for night riding, I need to choose between having a light or having my map board, because I can't have both. These aren't the only things that have to fit on and around the handlebars, of course, so there was much fussing and tightening and untightening and switching things around and dropping of tiny parts in the gravel and occasional sharp uttering of bad words that woke the dog from her nap on the patio. In the end, no success - and no bike ride.

When 'Bent came home, he went into the basement and within minutes had installed a different type of map holder that rotated without hitting my handlebar light and still kept my bike computer visible. My hero - it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Bicycle Repairman!!

If I really wanted to grasp, I'd log an additional two minutes of swimming and call it a brick for today. Just before sunset, when we hoped that everyone had left the beach, 'Bent and I snuck over to Lake Albion to test out our new paddling suits. We looked so silly that I really am sorry I forgot the camera. To an outside observer, it would appear that a couple of people in matching hazmat suits parked their car, strolled down to the beach and walked right into the lake. We tried wading, floating with PFDs and swimming without our PFDs to test the neoprene neck, which isn't as watertight as the latex neck on a true drysuit (for twice the price).
http://www.kokatat.com/product_paddlingsuits.asp

When we first strolled into the water, water pressure pushed the air toward the top of the suit, giving us that trendy StayPuft Marshmallow Man look. We burped the suits, although in a real situation, that air might make nice insulation. With our PFDs on, it was virtually impossible to get water into the neck of the suit. With our PFDs off and half a dozen dips under water, I managed to get some dampness into the top few inches of my shirt.

The eye opener was how *cold* I was - and it's August! I know that these suits don't provide any insulation, but I'd figured that with the air temperature at 17C, I'd be OK with polypro top and bottom. Wrong. To paddle in 4C water, I'll have to dress a lot more warmly. And the kicker is that we hope to *never* go into that water, so I'll be roasting as I paddle if all goes well. The other thing I noted is that wet hair is really chilly. I'd better get some of it cut off before the weekend.

Easy bike ride in Palgrave and Albion just to make sure everything is working OK. 'Bent is disassembling his bike this afternoon to put it into the bike box he built, so that's it for him until we get to Blanc-Sablon. It's another couple of days until I get The Minister's box for my bike.

After doing "unclip repeats" with my new shoes with the new cleats on the new pedals last week, things went more smoothly today. I still don't get out of the pedals quite as easily as I did with my old set-up, but I think that's partly due to the running-shoe-style bike shoes that I'm testing for adventure racing. They'll be better for hike-a-bike sections, but they aren't as snug-fitting as I'm used to, so it takes a bigger foot movement to get the shoe to move. I'll have heavier socks in the race, which should help.

Being conscientious, when we arrived at our property, I advised 'Bent to follow the route I was taking because of some doggie landmines near the driveway. It would be nasty to pack up the bike right after an untoward incident. Being a guy, he smiled indulgently, rode in the exact direction I'd warned him about, and sailed on through, commenting that he'd seen and avoided the obstacles. As a loving wife who can, when necessary, accept the heavy burden of being right, I sidled over and discovered a recumbent-bike-tire-shaped track in exactly the place where he wouldn't want one. 'Bent took it like a man (i.e. whimpering slightly) and headed off to the bike wash.

5K rolling trail loop after our bike ride. I'd planned an easy run, but 'Bent and BulletDog joined me, and I ended up taking 1:45 off my time from a couple of days ago. Still 17 seconds short of my record on this loop - and loads of room for improvement, of course.

Last night was the social event of the season - Crash's send-off party for Rocky and Slowrunner as they start to taper for the 6-day TransRockies Run in Colorado. Go Team Achilles Heals! Woo hoo!



Crash's mountainous trail running cake was a true work of art. Wow, she must have a great dentist. ;-)

Power Yoga for Endurance Athletes #1. I'm not sure if my arms have gotten weaker or if I've just gotten heavier, but my yoga push-ups were a disaster.

Yet another party tonight! This one was an Olympic opening ceremonies bash at the Shepleys' place. They're heading to Beijing in a few days where Barrie will commentate on triathlon for CBC, and Caron will be one of the testers of the Olympic triathlon course.

We were asked to dress with an Olympic theme, and Crash generously offered her genuine Canadian Olympic team parade wear from Barcelona in 1992. Let's just say that the fashion designer responsible for *that* outfit has undoubtedly moved on to a different, more suitable career, such as auto mechanics. Regardless of how, um, unusual I looked in it, people were quite impressed to see the real deal instead of the usual Hudson's Bay imitation.

You often hear bad stuff about teenagers in the media. But Rocky's son Jeff is a local hero after helping out in an emergency last week!
http://www.caledonenterprise.com/news/article/5389...

Ran our 5K trail loop, and it felt pretty good, but my time was 2:17 slower than when I pushed hard on the same loop in May. Maybe there's something to this business of running regularly...? Also, I'm a princess when the temperature goes over 25C. I don't know how Boojums manages to stay so fit in Tucson!

'Bent and I rode the rail trail to Inglewood to pick up Knobless and Gorgeous, then climbed the big hill out of town to ride the trails to Belfountain. I was wearing my new, looser bike shoes with the new, tighter cleats on my new pedals. I ended up falling 3 times because I couldn't get unclipped in time - argghh. It's been years since I've had that problem, but I guess my old cleats had worn down so much that I barely had to do anything to get unclipped.

We got to The Shed Coffee Bar in Belfountain, and I washed the blood and mud off my leg because I was afraid that I would gross out the normal people. A nice iced cafe mocha with chocolate zucchini bread replenished my carbs and protein - yummmm. And then we did the same thing in reverse, skipping some of the trail back to Inglewood so that Gorgeous could be on her horse by 6 p.m.

I worked on keeping my cadence higher and using my hamstrings more. I wanted to see if that would help my knee, but it was kinda hard to tell, given that I smashed myself onto rocks when I fell...

Paddled out. Mmm, I love Algonquin Park.

After eating our food, the portage out was speedier - although it's amazing how much weight we still had left! (Not that we tried very hard. I even brought a hard cover book.)

We explored Louisa Lake, experiencing a wide variety of weather in the process. In addition to the paddling, we took the dogs on a hike along a different portage trail. Much nicer without the canoe and packs! We saw an enormous bull moose with a big rack at the end of one bay we paddled into.

ThunderDog continued her birthday celebration in style. She paddled.



She swam.



She took over 'Bent's Thermarest chair.



Then finished off with a good snooze.



The weather improved in the evening, and the sky was beautiful after dinner.

It's ThunderDog's 12th birthday on Wednesday, so even though the weather forecast for Algonquin Park was dubious, 'Bent and I really wanted to take the pooches canoeing, which they love (and so do we). We'd been thinking that ThunderDog might be getting too senior to go on future canoe trips, but she did so well this weekend that we seem to have been wrong about that. I certainly hope so.

We paddled down Rock Lake to the portage to Louisa Lake, then continued on to the best campsite on Louisa!



It had awesome views on all sides.



But unfortunately, waves of rain and thunderstorms kept rolling through all day.



On the bright side, we got lots of reading done.

This 2.9 km portage was unpleasant, but it didn't take as long as expected. The trail was great, but I was carrying a super-heavy pack (including such essentials as biscotti, smoked oysters and a Klean Kanteen full of wine), and the pooches were a little hard to wrangle due to the annoying deer flies (FDFs for my American friends).