Canada's Toughest (and nicest) Couple - Claude Godbout (2x Spartan World Champion) and her Olympic teammate/boyfriend/OCR World Championships teammate (also a Spartan champ) Marco Bedard bring us inside their lives, training, and more!
Spartan Canada founder Selica Sevigny and I spoke a few weeks back and she promised the Canadian Ultra Beast course that would be harder than last year’s Vermont Ultra Beast. Spartan Canada is taking this Ultra Beast very seriously and they want to put on an event that will be known as one of the hardest Spartan races in any country to date. As the Ultra Beast approaches, I reached out to the Ultra Beast race director Dan Luzzi and find out everything
This was my fifth trip to Canada in 2015 for an OCR race weekend and this one started out with more drama than the others. I arranged a place to stay via airbnb and arrived in Ottawa just after 8 pm on Friday night, but unfortunately the person I had to meet for the keys to the place was not available and explained via text messages he unavailable until 10 pm. After hours of waiting he was a no show and we ended up having to drive to the Spartan Ottawa venue parking lot around 1 am and all three of us slept in my Prius. An interesting beginning to the trip.
I anxiously jump out of bed early and check to see what the weather has in store for us; this is one of the first challenges when racing outdoors in a Canadian climate. The ideal weather is one that is not too cool so we can reduce our layers and not too hot so we can push through without the worry of dehydration. We were in luck, warm and overcast with the risk of showers later in the evening. We loaded the car and headed off to Commando Paintball in Ottawa.
Mud Hero was part two of a recent trip north to Canada. I figured I was already the country for Xman Race and decided to get as much Canadian racing experience possible in one trip. I researched Mud Hero and knew it would be a course that is designed for all levels of racers and happy to have a second race with such long distance travel involved in a weekend.
When deciding my 2015 schedule, I researched races in England, Canada, and America and set a goal of trying to do almost every OCR race that looked amazing. When I researched the Xman Race and watched the videos I found, I could tell it was a great race and I decided right away I wanted to do an Xman Race. I drove from New York to Canada on Friday night.
My experience with Spartan Canada has been awesome and I had very high expectations for this race weekend. The drive from Upstate NY to the Mont Tremblant area was a long one (over 320 miles each way), other than an hour and half delay at the Canadian/USA border entering Canada the drive was a good one.
My excitement level was high as I headed to Polar Hero, first, this was my first OCR in Canada, second, it marks my third country to have raced an OCR this year and lastly, this “should” be my last winter/snow on the ground race this winter!
Warrior Dash started their 2015 season over the past weekend in California and Texas. In Canada, Elite racers Claude Godbout, reigning Spartan Race World Champion, and her BattleFrog teammate Marc-André (Marco) Bédard began their OCR season at Polar Hero in Quebec.
Marketing Director Brian Townsend for the Canadian based obstacle races Dead End Race and Super Splash 5K Race announced recently that both events will be featuring OCR OBSTACLE CAMS a new service free of charge to all participants.
