The weekend following Mountain Masochist in Virginia, Tamsin and I heading back to Newfoundland to attend the wedding of my best bud from High School. I hadn't been home in just over two years, since my other best bud from H.S. got married, so it was long overdue!
Flying to 'The Rock' in November is to roll the dice on the weather you could face. My B.Day was on the 19th, a few days after departing Nfld and returning to North Van, yet I recall numerous times growing up where we saw whiteout snow storms on my birthday. Somehow Mother Nature sided with us though and we had virtually nothing but sunshine for the entire trip...which was all of 72hr long! Yeah, I didn't even realize it when I booked the flights, but out total ground time in Nfld was almost exactly 72hr...so we hit the ground running...
In three days of being home, from mid-day on Friday till mid-day on Monday we managed 2x trail runs, one short scenic run of only 5km and one longer coastal run of 15km. There is a trail in Nfld that follows the coastline for over 200km, aptly named The East Coast Trail...and I have aspirations of heading out there again in the not so distant future to run it in its entirety. To my knowledge only Ray Zahab has accomplished this so far, so unfortunately the 'first baggers rights' have already been claimed! On my last visit home in 2007 I also ran a 25km section of the trail and it's incredibly beautiful and rugged. It would be a dream to conquer it one day.
The Wedding was great and we stayed well into the wee hours of the morning yet somehow managing to rise early enough to run the following day. We also managed to hit up the waterslides at the local pool with my niece, visit/Tamsin meet the Grandparents, and to cap it all off I had absolutely no idea that The Olympic Flame was passing through my hometown while we were there! Just six hours after landing, my beautiful Niece Kayla, my beautiful girlfriend Tamsin, and my own beautiful self (sounded like it might fit), were freezing our assess off in a bitter east coast wind while celebrating the spirit of The Games.
My family also managed to genuinely surprise me with a delicious Gluten Free b.day cake, of which my Mother has become a master GF chef since being diagnosed herself. And to cap it all off I got to check out my bro's new business, of which he's doing incredibly well at custom car rims/stereos/starters/alarms.
Could not have asked for a better weekend, just a few more hours/days at home...hopefully next time, while running 200+km of course!!
Here's the slideshow of the best pics from the trip (lots of trail pics), only thing we forgot in all the rush was to get a full family shot!
Oh yeah, and shortly after Trans Rockies I e-mailed the local St. John's paper to inform them of the fact that there were four of us Newfoundlanders competing down in Colorado. Topped off with the fact that half of the 'open mixed' final podium (3 of 6) were from a province with less of a population base than the average large city, at just over 500,000. I wrote an article about our collective accomplishments, of which the editor followed up on by calling me for a phone interview. Ironically enough the article finally ran while I happened to be home! It ended up being more about myself than the four as I initially intended (sorry guys), but either way I was shocked and amazingly appreciative over a full page spread! Article Here
GR