RAID THE HAMMER and Janji Projects

It’s FRIDAY!

I don’t know about you, but I have a doozy of a weekend planned. I am catching up with some friends, checking out a brand spankin new restaurant called PURE with some local bloggers and hopefully cheering some of you on at the Road 2 Hope Marathon. I’ll be straight up blunt, I am getting a little weary of being a bystander at these races and am MORE than ready to be on the course myself, but I am giving myself another week of rest before getting out there.

Speaking of getting out there, I wanted to talk about an amazing local adventure race next weekend that I cannot wait to do!

RAID THE HAMMER offers two distances between a full RAID and a half RAID. The full RAID is a 22-26 km course that includes intermediate trail running and trekking skills and endurance and intermediate to advanced navigation skills. The half RAID is approximately half the distance of the full raid (11-13 km) course that includes many of the same elements of the full raid. I am falling more and more into the adventure racing community and I was thrilled to discover the Don’t Get Lost series existed.

They have seven races over the course of the year. This was the 2014 lineup.

RIGHT?!

I am set to check out the course with the gentlemen of Explore the Backcountry next week end and although I won’t be able to run it, I am looking forward to being a part of the event and practicing my developing orienteering skills! We all chatted and I was very honest about my running abilities at this point. It isn’t safe for me to do any running on a healing stress fracture, so we agreed to make it a hike in the woods and some solid practice for some of adventure races next year!

I have the go ahead to slowly start incorporating running into my training, but for the sake of safety and because I have my eyes on a strong and healthy Boston marathon in the spring, I will be only walking this event.

I was able to chat to the director and she had a couple words about the course:

Raid the Hammer Adventure Run builds on Hamilton’s running history by mixing together road running, trail running, navigation, and trekking into Ontario’s gnarliest running race. Teams of three can expect lots of mud, rock and calf killing climbs as they Raid the Hammer. The course route is not known until teams pick up their race kits on the morning of the race. 

 

The race is hosted by DontGetLost Adventure Running, a non-profit organization run out of the Hamilton area. Race proceeds go back into the Adventure Running Kids & ARX programs. More details on programs are at www.adventurerunningkids.ca or www.dontgetlost.ca

Come join me next weekend. You can still sign up here or come observe and test out the atmosphere for races in 2015!

Another thing I wanted to chat to you about was a really exciting project by Janji. They have introduced their very first project this week where they are looking for crowd funding for a special water initiative.

The breakdown: 

In rural Uganda, waterborne illness is the NUMBER ONE cause of child mortality. Providing a dispenser for safe water near an existing water source will provide clean water to 350 people. This project strives to do that.

What do you need to do?

Wear a shirt. Literally. To back the project, you go here and back a tshirt design. Once the project is fully backed, they will remove the image from the website and send the exclusive design to only those who helped fund the project and 350 people’s lives will be changed.

 

There are only 4 more days left to participate and they are already over halfway to their goal! If you are new to backing projects, you will not be charged unless the project is fully funded. Head on over to Projects at Janji if you want to participate. 

That’s all I have until Monday, guys. Happy Halloween!

Tell me what you beautiful people have on tap for the weekend!