Stanley Park and Tough Mudder Whistler

Hello and welcome all!  Here's hoping the summer finds you well.  British Columbia seems rather stuck in the past weather-wise, and we still live under clouds and rain for at least half of every week.  Not to worry though, as the good stuff usually waits until July to show up.  Classes at UBC have been out since April, but work on the research project continues and things have been pretty busy in the lab.  I've still been getting out as much as I can, and I'd like to tell you about a couple of recent workouts!  But first, I wanted to mention that all you wonderful donors have reached $10,000,000 in contributions to the 2013 PMC!  So thank you!  The PMC is still a long way off of its goal however, and so am I!  Please donate to this great cause if you can.  This time around I'll be taking you back to the great Stanley Park here in Vancouver, and to the Whistler Olympic Park for Tough Mudder Whistler.

Taking a photo break at Prospect Point, Stanley Park.
Lions Gate Bridge and North Shore Mountains in background.  

 Vancouver is a famously bike friendly city, with wide lanes on most major routes and some neighborhood avenues designated entirely for bike use.  There are also a couple of large parks that are well suited for longer training rides, one of these being Stanley Park.  Located adjacent to downtown, Stanley Park offers forests, beaches, swimming pools, golf courses, playgrounds, sprawling lawns, an aquarium and a beautiful 6 mile, two-lane, one-way loop of road that encircles it all.  On a recent beautiful British Columbia morning, my lab-mate Evan and I decided to bike over to do a couple of laps and soak it all in.

Evan being Evan.  

The day was crisp and dry and great, the kind of weather that makes a northwest coast summer so awesome.  There were a lot of bikers out on the roads, but we started early enough to avoid heavy car traffic which made the ride through downtown to the park a little more pleasant.  The route around the park is perfect for a training ride and one is treated to a variety of beautiful views. The North Shore Mountains, the downtown waterfront,  English Bay, Burrard Inlet and of course the views inward to the forests and greens of the park itself.  The loop is long enough to not get boring with great road for some speed on the downhills and a solid climb to the top of Prospect Point.

Bikers on Stanley Park Drive and the slow moving seawall bike path.
Vancouver Harbor in background.  

We enjoyed a great morning cycling and taking in the scenery.  We did a couple of laps before heading back through the city and over the bridge to Kitsilano.  It was a solid 18 mile ride, and another excuse to get out and appreciate all that we have in this beautiful city.

Evan being Evan.  

Next, a ride up the Sea-to-Sky highway to the Whistler Olympic Park for Tough Mudder Whistler.  The Olympic Park is located a few miles south of the Whistler Village ski resort area, and was the location of the nordic events for 2010 Winter Olympic Games.  Today its trails remain open for public use and professional level competition, and occasionally a ridiculous event like Tough Mudder.  

Me in the middle, hopping fences.
Whistler Olympic Park.  

Tough Mudder is a 12 mile 'mud- run' with 20 obstacles spread throughout the course, apparently designed by British Special Forces to test physical and mental endurance.  The company that runs it tours the country setting up these courses, and for the past couple of years have been making a stop here in Vancouver.  My brother Rob had done a couple of these courses in his home state of Florida, and decided to fly out here to do this one with me.  It had been a while since I had seen him and we had a great weekend of eating seafood and drinking beer before the race, which probably did not help matters come race day.

Nice scenery at Tough Mudder Whistler.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

Monkey Bars obstacle.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

The obstacles set up on any Tough Mudder course will vary depending on location and time of year, but will invariably involve some combination of swimming through ice, wall climbing and electrical shock.  We had a great day for it and got off to a good enough start, but no sooner had we started encountering obstacles did Rob dislocate his shoulder pulling himself out of a dumpster full of ice.  Thankfully there was a medic nearby who twisted his arm back into place after telling him he should probably go to a hospital.  Instead we hung out for a few minutes, got Rob a sling, and kept running.  He would not be able to complete all the obstacles, but he did what he could and cheered me on through the ones he could not.  The obstacles were a lot of fun for me, and not to toot my own horn but they were not particularly difficult.  This was probably due to the fact that I could not, in my wildest dreams, run that entire course.  It was 12 miles of mud and forested trails and gravel roads, and being in the B.C. Coast Range, almost all of it was steeply up or downhill.  Rob mentioned several times between huffs and puffs that this was way harder than the courses in Florida, and  I believed him.

The ice bath, I almost died on this one.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

We ran probably one half to three quarters of the course, and definitely more than the average participant, and I was pretty happy with that considering I don't like running and running is stupid.  I will give TM credit where credit is due, the obstacles would be a much different story if you attempted to run this entire thing, and anyone able to do so would have to be the highest level of athlete.  That ain't me, so I would run up a hillside until I thought I was going to  die, and then I would take a little breather.

Idiots running up the 2010 Olympic ski jump track, this was a bitch.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

 All in all it was a fun day and one hell of a workout, though I felt bad for Rob having flown halfway around the world to watch me crawl through mud.  In retrospect I am on the fence about Tough Mudder in general.  It is a great way to get your average person inspired to get up off the couch and train for a goal, but its real purpose is a media marketing machine.  I wouldn't have any problem with this except for the fact that they seem to make a lot of claims to supporting the Wounded Warrior Project, a great non-profit aimed at assisting severely wounded veterans coming off of the battlefield.  From my experience, Tough Mudder simply gives the participants the option of donating through them, on top of paying the rather steep entrance fees.  I can't ague with this, any way to raise awareness and funds for a good cause is a good thing.  However I can't help but notice that it is TM participants who donate and the TM company itself, as far as I am aware, has not donated a dime.  I feel like this kind of activity would be vastly cooler if it were arranged as a non-profit organisation, with a portion of participant fees covering operational costs and everything else going to the WWP.  If people are looking for a way to get out there and challenge themselves, we might as well channel that energy into some good.

Your correspondent running through live electrical wires to the finish line.
Ridiculous.  

Rob made the webpage.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

That's it for me folks.  This weekend I'll be scrambling up in the North Shore Mountains and going back to Stanley Park for another ride, and next weekend hopefully getting some time away from the lab to get up onto something high and snowy before I go crazy.  My old climbing partner Jamie will be flying out to Oregon in late July,  and we're making some big plans so stay tuned. Thanks for stopping by, please go to my PMC profile to donate if you can!