Thank you to our sponsors for a great year! Stuart and Gaye Harden have created a photo montage of some outstanding moments from last season.

Every year I await the RMR August Haig Camp with anticipation because this particular camp has so many wonderful traditions.

RMR August camp traditions include:

The annual boat race – Teams of two have to craft boats in accordance with strict guidelines and pass an inspection before being entered into the race. The real competitive spirit starts to shine mere moments after John yells the official “GO!”. The teams are allowed to throw boulders into the competitors’ boats to try to prevent them from crossing the finish line intact. At the finish, an official jury awards the prize to a team whose boat arrived first while having all its’ pieces still attached.

The club’s unofficial baker Andrea Dupont’s birthday-always seems to happen at the August Haig camp. Nobody is really sure when exactly is her birthday, because the whole celebration lasts for a good portion of this camp, as freshly baked cakes, cookies, banana breads, and sometimes even cinnamon buns are produced daily by our birthday girl.

Fishing trips to the Maude lake-might be the real reason why our coach John is so excited about this camp every year. In fact, the official “Recommended things to pack” list suggests that we bring a fishing rod and a fishing licence to this ski camp.

Pictures from the camp

Dasha Gaiazova

RMR is looking for energetic youths aged 10-14 for a new multi-sport program. Click here for more information

Just 10 days after finishing our last day of skiing in Sunshine Meadows, we kicked off the season of glacier skiing with a short 4 day trip to the Haig glacier. The Rockies got so much snow last winter that there was still quite a lot of snow on the hike into base camp. Although the leftover snow made me appreciate my down slippers and jacket at camp, it made for some amazing summer skiing on the glacier. This early summer on snow camp is always a good time to focus on any technique changes that need to occur early in the training year. This translates to: long skis in the morning and long video analysis sessions in the afternoon. Thanks to all the Haig staff for making this another great camp!

Andrea Dupont

Submitted by Alex Mahoney

RMR did the yellow jersey three-peat at the 2011 24 Hours of Adrenalin. The race, now a staple of RMR’s mid summer training programme is one of the few actual team events that the club does each year. While each rider’s lap is the individual’s race, we win as a team. With everyone coming off the Creston road bike camp not long before, everyone had found their riding legs and were ready to give’r.

Congratulations to some of our riders for posting times in the top 20 fastest laps of the event, both on day and night laps. Thanks to Erik the team captain, who spear headed the day with his usual superior run and killer ride, and Kurtis for the team’s fastest time of the 24hrs. Kudos to Danielle as the lone woman and first time racer for doing the team proud.

Our team accomplished an 8^th place overall and 22laps, each 18km. Our good result was mainly due to the legs and lungs of the athletes, but fewer mechanical difficulties and significantly fewer injuries than previous years certainly helped.

Of course, with any event of this magnitude it’s necessary to have people working off the race course to make sure everything flows smoothly. Thanks to coach John for entering the team as soon as the registration opened almost a year prior to the race, as well as his tips for riding the course; his experience humiliates our young legs any day. My Dad and Dan Madlung for commanding the wax room/workshop and making sure people were on time for their starts. Sherry and my Mom for being the race required team volunteers, and to everyone who supplied us with food and drinks and cheers. It is truly amazing how many people it takes for us to have fun and look good racing in our yellow jerseys.

Submitted by: Emma Lunder

Our team had  an awesome road biking camp in Creston BC in June, and while we were only there for 4 days most of the athletes  got over 400km under their belts! Les & Marilyn Poffenroth were kind enough to provide accommodations which were absolutely perfect. We were right on the water so after a long day of riding we could cool off, or even go for an evening kayak! My favorite ride was from Creston to Kaslo and back, with a hard climb but also some super fun downhills. We also rode Creston to Nelson, and on our second ride we did Salmo Pass, which was not the “20km” we were told it would be, but actually 47km! On a few of our rides we had the opportunity to take the world’s longest free ferry across Kootenay Lake which was really neat. We had an amazing amount of support with the Poff’s hosting, cooking and driving, the Vrielink’s shuttling our sore legs to the next stretch, Gaye Harden driving, as well as Luke and the Jaque’s. It’s early season camps like these that allow us to be feeling good in time for the race season, and with a camp focused solely on road biking we couldn’t have picked a better location.

Image Courtesy of Gaye Harden

RMR will be adding a limited number of athletes to the club for next season. If you are interested in joining please fill out the application and send to hugh_harden@kindermorgan.com by May 15, 2011. We anticipate that invitations to join will be sent out by May 15.

Check out some fantastic photos from Saturday and photos from Sunday, from our official photographer Ray Schmidt. If you would like higher resolution versions of the pictures, email phantomcourier (at) hotmail (dot) com

Mt. Sharkfest 2011 – Alberta Cup 5&6 will be at the Canmore Nordic Centre this year. Check out our sponsors, the race notice, course maps and stadium maps. Registration is now available on Zone4. Deadline is Wednesday, March 2nd at 9pm MST.

The Rocky Mountain Racers are hosting The Tour Duh Rockies stationary bike sprints for the third time and again we have some great prizes! Held at the Drake Pub in Canmore on October 31 and Wild Bill’s in Banff on November 3, the fundraiser promises the best in the newly popularized sport of indoor bicycle racing. Come and test your mettle against some of the best athletes in the Bow Valley for a chance to win the prestige of being crowned the Bow Valley’s fastest indoor riding champion.

Details here.

Check out the Facebook pages for the Tour Duh Canmore and Tour Duh Banff