Ice Donkey 2011

I intended to write about this but as things go, time passes and then you think .... meh!

It was a fun race though. We kinda sucked. We came in 4th place team. I dare you to go look at the results. Our team name was On-On which I will explain by saying: It's a Hasher thing. 


We took about 2:45 minutes to complete the race which was about 10km of biking, 8 or 10 km of cross country skiing, 1 km of running, 3 km of snowshoeing, and 6 km of skating. It was challenging. That was by far the hardest cross country ski I've done in my life, it was uneven, double poling, tree limbo-ing goodness.  We are all pretty good skiers and we passed quite a few people in this section (only to get passed back on the snowshoe and skate). And it was one of those races where we went into it saying, "Training? What training?"

We all had our weak points and we all had our strengths. Some of us hadn't been on a bike since before the snow fell, and for those of us who had been on a bike trainer (perhaps too much on a bike trainer), not much of it has been outside. Someone couldn't snowshoe worth beans..... or run for that matter..... someone whined and cried about her legs that whole section. Can't imagine who that would have been. Some of us hadn't put on a pair of skates in about 25 years.

So we had the endurance, we just didn't always have the skill.

L & C at the start of the race.

Thanks to my good natured teammates Lisa and Clayton. Clayton stepped in for Dan aka "SUDs" last minute when Dan's wife decided it was time to have a baby. (What a freakin' lame excuse to bail that was -- it was boy #2 by the way).  So Clayton got the hot chick sandwich Dan was so looking forward to, instead. Although you wouldn't know it from the one hideous picture I was able to snag of myself for free. Lisa was hot though. She always is.

I'll keep this one small.

This picture was taken right after that one kilometre run to the river from Whittier Park and I think I was about to cry here. My calves were screaming at me so bad. It was worse than childbirth. I could do no more than walk the rest of the snowshoe.

Sorry team.

Other photos can be found but you have to pay for them which just makes me think we are a little too used to being spoiled in cycling circles (photos here).

There is a great little video too that's linked to facebook with a great little Pushing Daisy's song looped into it. It is one of those funny things where I JUST had a conversation about this very song and heard it for the first time less than 2 weeks ago and here it shows up again.  You can catch me 4 or 5 times in this video in the Tribalistic colour blue and gold sleeves. And the red hair. We can't forget the red hair. We are team #74. And there is one very precious moment in this video of me nearly going down on snowshoes. That about sums up my experience with that section of the race (video here).

Will I do it again? Sure. I'll try anything. Twice.