Over the weekend I had my first cross country skiing experience. Some friends and I took the Goat Creek Trail 19km from Canmore to Banff, and followed it up with a nice hot dip at the Banff Hot Springs.
Here’s a clip of my friend Duane zipping past the camera.
[Goat Trail – Flickr]
Footage by my friend Andy Davies.
Heating up or cooling down? Obsessionism.com graphs NBA teams by their last five years of stats. This appears, at first glance, to be a pretty good indication of how the teams will do this year.
Fred Syversen skiied off a 107 Meter cliff and set the world record—by accident. He lives to tell about it in this amazing YouTube video.
See also Fred Syversen’s full story.
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As I’ve mentioned (many times to anyone that cares to listen) my former house-mate is Canada’s fastest swimmer in the 50m freestyle. This morning at around 4:30am local time he will be swimming in Beijing!
I saw Richard’s photo on Yahoo News (same photo here) and caught a couple clips of him swimming and on deck on the CBC a couple nights ago. (I also saw his roommate Jonas swimming tonight to—he competed in the 100m breast).
Here’s what Richard has to say on his blog the night before the big event.
Another acquaintance of mine, Jim Steacy, qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The CBC wrote this article about Jim and his amazing hammer throwing skills.
I remember a couple of years ago, the night after the University’s Blue and Gold banquet (he won athlete of the year that night), most of the athletes were pretty tired after staying out late partying and I just happened to be driving by the track field early the next morning. Guess who was up bright and early and out practising by himself—Jim Steacy.
I love the beautiful (and very large) images found at Boston.com’s The Big Picture. Especially fun to see is the series from the recent US Olympic Trials where superman Michael Phelps broke another world record.
The Big Picture: Records Fall at U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials.
I just got back from my trip to Calgary and the Kid’s Hope Ethiopia Triathlon.
I didn’t swim nearly as fast as I had hoped but I’ll choose to blame it on the fact that I couldn’t get very good rotation on my arms while wearing my wet-suit. Every stroke meant pulling against the elastic fabric of the neoprene and I’m sure the lack of training never had anything to do with my inability to keep my time under 10 minutes.
JULY 5, 2008 — OKOTOKS, ALBERTA, CANADA — Triathlon competitor Bryce Meldrum, of Calgary, Alberta, makes a crowd pleasing mad dash sprint to the end of the Foothills Charity Triathlon for Kid’s Hope Ethiopia. — PHOTO BY JEFF MILNER.
Nevertheless our team did very well—especially against the other teams—not so much against the individual tri-athletes many who amazingly swam, biked, and ran faster than the three of us working together.
The race was put on by Kids’ Hope Ethiopia, the same charity organization that Bryce happens to work as a Project Coordinator.
So against other teams, we came in 8th out of 21 and my individual swim ranked me 4th. I think the highlight for me was seeing my team-mate Bryce making his crazy sprint to the finish line and then paying the price after the race. It’s not hard to love a competitive team-mate.
I can almost see myself getting into doing the whole thing myself, but then again, it’s a lot easier said than done, especially from the comfort of my office chair.
I’m away today taking part swimming in a team triathlon held in Okotoks (is it safe to call Okotoks a suburb of Calgary yet?) for the annual Foothills Charity Triathlon for Kid’s Hope Ethiopia.
I’m happy enough to just have one section of the triathlon, because I want to go all out, but I have to keep in mind that I’ve spent exactly no time at all training for this event.
I’m just shooting to break seven and a half minutes which looks to be a fairly competitive time (and a winning time depending on which year’s results you are looking at).
After running Lundbreck Falls in my kayak last month, the sport of running big waterfalls has been on my mind. I’m not too interested in doing anything bigger or scarier just yet, but the photos in this news story are even more awesome after having experienced my own little 30 foot drop over some falls.
Just to be clear, that’s not me in the photo, nor anyone I know. See more here.
When these adventurous adrenaline junkies first started using the flying squirrel suits in base jumping, it was to see how far away from the cliff they could get. But then things got “boring” and now the idea is to get as close to the edges without actually touching.
[Flying Suit – Extreme Base Jumping – YouTube]