You Know You're A Running Geek When...

You're WAY more excited to meet a top international runner than you would be to meet any 'A List' Hollywood celebrity!

Today was another great day, Canada won their second gold medal of The Games, first on home turf by a woman. Local girl Maelle Ricker laid it down in a big way in Border Cross to snag the gold virtually untouched in the final. HUGE CONGRATS! Yet another great person inspiring the youth (and adults) of this great nation!!


On a running level today I had the pleasure of meeting one of the greatest mountain runners of all time (arguably the best) Jonothan Wyatt! If you don't know, click on his name and check it out. LEGEND FOR SURE! It just so happens that he's in town for The Yeti Snowshoe Series' World Snowshoe Invitational on Feb 27th. Series owner Marc Campbell has done an incredible job of organizing a top notch international field of competitors, and I'll be in charge of their social media for the day! You can expect LIVE UPDATES throughout and hopefully some elaborate video, interviews, and fun clips along the way!

I'm also intending to do a video blog interview with the 6x World Mountain Running Champion, though he doesn't know it yet! Since I've moved all my stuff in with my girlfriend Tamsin for the two weeks he's here, so that he can utilize my place, I'm pretty confident he'll be down with it! (otherwise he's out on his ass!)


SECONDLY TODAY...big day for this running geek...I finally had the pleasure of conversing with Canada's own Ray Zahab. It was a phone conversation but we're hoping to get out for a run together, if possible, while he's in town for a few days this week. Again, if you don't know click on the name. Ray has won some major international desert stage races, but he's become more famous in the last few years for his epic expeditions. Two of the biggies were 'Running The Sahara'(this video is a must see), all 7,000km of it! He followed that up shortly thereafter by setting the speed record to The South Pole!

The coolest thing about Ray, other than his genuine personality and amazing energy is that he created an organization called Impossible To Possible, and through this he is helping to truly inspire the youth of today. Like I said to him on the phone,

"You are the blueprint for succeeding in making your dreams a reality! To top that off you've managed to help inspire youth around the world, that's very, very impressive!"

Next up for Ray, along with North Vancouver local Kevin Vallely, starting March 1st, they are intending to run the entirity of the world's largest lake, Russia's Lake Baikal, while frozen of course...I guess he'd be a true running god if he managed to pull that off in the summer!!

They do live updates the whole time so you can follow along and wish em luck!

On a personal note, Ray has been kind enough to offer up some very valuable maps to help me pursue my own mini-expedition later this year. Full details to follow shortly after 'The Greatest Show On Earth' departs town forever, sigh.

GR