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Dear Friends and Members of Club Fat Ass,
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Troll the malls or hit the trails? Decisions, decisions...
With the Pure Satisfaction Run and the Galbraith Mountain Tour coming up in the next 10 days, there are still opportunities to squeeze in a few more Club runs before Santa comes to call.
It's been a great year of running and camaraderie and 2010 is shaping up to offer even more Club events and challenges. Don't forget to renew or join the Club before the end of December... especially if you'd like a 2010 "collectors edition" yellow long-sleeve, no-stink Club Fat Ass t-shirt.
Rather run than shop 'till you drop? Get that special someone a Club membership ($75), a signature t-shirt ($25) or check out our cheeky merchandise at the Club Fat Ass store as a way to say you care about friends and fitness.
Already figured-out who has been naughty and who has been nice? Think about documenting your athletic goals for 2010 in the New Years Resolution contest and kicking the year off on the right foot with a resolution run and polar bear swim on New Years day.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays and peace on earth!
Happy Trails,
Sibylle Tinsel
Chief Executive Fat Ass
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UPCOMING EVENTS
 Pure Satisfaction: 13 December - North Vancouver, BC. 12km or 24km on slippery, wet, rooty, dark trails...the perfect way to start the busy Christmas season. Bring your jingle bells and wear your Santa hat. Details here.
Photo left: Collin Freeland during a past Pure Satisfaction Run
Photo right: amazing views of Mount Baker during the Galbraith Mountain Tour
Galbraith Mountain Tour. 19 December - Bellingham, WA. A 15-mile trail run on the Lake Padden & Galbraith Mountain trail systems. Prepare for the lack of stairs, boulders, roots and bears but with all the fun of the true single track. If we have clear weather there will be amazing views of Mt. Baker, San Juan Islands & the Northshore mountains of Vancouver. More details here.
 Vancouver New Year's FA 50 Run. 1 January 2010 - Vancouver, BC, Canada. A 50 km resolution run to kick off the New Year on the right foot. Those who are more hung-over and those with resolutions they are not likely to keep can opt for a custom course of 1 to 49 km. More details here!
Photo left: Snowy trails in Stanley Park during last years Vancouver New Year's Day Fat Ass 50km Run.
Photo right: Daniel Probst in shorts at the Squamish Scrambler
 Squamish Scrambler. 6 February - Squamish, BC, Canada. This is an out-and-back snowshoe hike/run up to Elfin Lakes Cabin in Squamish (22km). Bring the family as far as Red Heather, a 10km return snowshoe hike, or continue on up towards Little Diamond Head, or out towards Mamquam Lake, depending on conditions and motivation. Savour spectacular views of The Tantalus Range, Howe Sound and Sky Pilot. More info here.
NEWS
2010 Membership Registration. Registration and renewal for Club Fat Ass for 2010 is in full-swing. Don't miss out on the special order no-stink, long-sleeve, yellow 2010 collectors Club shirt... and be sure to kick the new year off on the right foot with your first Club run of the year.
2010 Club Garment. Did you know Club membership dues include a garment? Collectors take note... the 2010 Club t-shirt will be sunshine yellow for both boys and girls. It will be the same fabric and cut as our past "FatAssWear" long-sleeve garments that were custom-designed by CFA member Vanessa Fors and cut, sewn and screened in Vancouver, Canada. As in previous years, we expect to have the new shirts ready for mail-out/pick-up toward the end of February. To make sure you get the limited edition 2010 Club colours, you must sign up before December 31st, as that's when the order goes in. Don't miss out, sign up now!
Contests. You can find a list of all Club contests under Member Benefits on the left of the website. All contests will come to an end on 31 December. Winners will be announced during the awards for the Vancouver New Year's Day Fat Ass 50. If you participated in any Club contests, please review the rules to improve your chances of winning.
CFA Steering Committee. A small group of community minded people are selflessly working behind the scenes to build and manage your Club. We are always looking for help and fresh ideas. If you can spare a couple of hours a month to work with one of our committees, please drop me a line.
Business Members. A big, fat "Thank you!" to the business members of CFA who supported our Club this past year. Please make sure you consider them when shopping or looking for professional services. Please also remember that, apart from providing draw prizes, most of our Business members also offer Club Members a discount, so be sure to ask at the cash register.
TECH TIPS
System Emails Go AWOL. Our Club website should automatically send new account confirmation, event confirmation and a short summary of messages that are posted to the "online clubhouse". There was a hiccup that saw some messages get sidetracked. Sorry! Thanks to Ran's detective work it is fixed now. I should have touched base with you if this impacted you, however, if you are still waiting for an activation email or new password, please drop me a line.
Website Content Notifications. Our website makes it possible for you to subscribe to a variety of new content. This means that if you are subscribed you will receive an email notification when new content is posted. The settings for this feature can be customized. For example you can subscribe to all blogs or only your friends blogs. By default, you will receive notifications of any comments made on posts you submitted. You can subscribe and unsubscribe at any time either from a link directly below the post in question, through a link in the notification email or in your user account settings at http://www.clubfatass.com/user (log in before going there). If you find that you are getting too many or not enough updates, please take a moment to adjust your settings.
GPS Maps. Wouldn't it be nice if all our events could provide GPS course coordinates? We rely on you to make this happen. If you used a GPS device to record a CFA event, please send us the GPX file, a map image and/or a link to the map you created. We'll add this to the course page to supplement our course descriptions.
CFA ON THE WEB
    
PAST EVENT RESULTS AND REPORTS
 Seymour Super Fun Run. Event Host - Michael Wardas. This run was blessed with lots of water. We almost needed snorkels to navigate the rivers on the trails. Read Jason's report - Midwest U.S. Style here and savour Reagan's ode to the Super Seymour Fun Run:
15 of us set out from the coffee shop to run, walk, jog, slosh, slide and teeter, until we petered
out and about the misty Seymour mountains.
2 of us turtlepacers stuck together
We bounced down Ned’s and over the Bottle Top
2 became 1 when a calf cried stop!
3 times alone I thought I might quit,
My legs and lungs felt like s***
1 PB&J, 2 Clif bars, and 85oz of Gatorade kept me grooving,
1 foot in front of the other kept me moving
Then 2 dudes on bikes told me, “We just saw a running pack, up on Bridle.”
With a new surge of energy, I would not idle.
Up the trail, only 5K to go!
2 gals on bikes now = instant go go go!
… and to boot, they knew  the way to Horse Loop!
Old Buck we’re here! Thank you mountain biking hotties,
So stoked, I shed a tear - I kid you nottie.
280 minutes after we all set out,
I crossed the goal and let out a shout!
27K on a day like today was something else,
and when my 2 eyes saw the other Club Fat Asses
I let out another shout!
Cool people and good times means…
…we’ll do this again.
How convenient - only 15 days until Pure Satisfaction begins! I should be able to feel my legs again by then…
Foolish Gerbil 100 Mile Trail Run: Flash Event Host - Karl Jensen. A determined group of 8 runners started out at 9:00 am to run a loop or two ...or 16 at the Foolish Gerbil 100 Mile Run. The air was crisp but the skies were dry for a moment and at least for the first three loops it never rained hard. By the 3rd loop the eight runners had picked up 5 more Foolish Gerbils.
Claudia went AWOL after two laps. Pushpa's friend Harold who had never run more than 10km was seen on his 2nd loop and Wendy Montgomery, Caroline King, Neil Ambrose and Sibylle Tinsel called it a day after 3 loops or 30km - just in time before the forecasted heavy downpours hit. Lorie, Karl, Kirsten, Barry, Tim, Pushpa and John pressed on.
While we started in pretty decent running weather, the conditions deteriorated as the day wore on and by late afternoon it had become wet, cold, miserable, nasty and generally unpleasant. Karl's full report is posted here.
Chilly Willy. Flash Event Host - Lorie Alexander. Chilly Willy was a great success and a lot of fun if I do say so myself. The course was amazing and beautiful as I promised hills and more hills with the added tumble weeds every time the wind blew. Van and Jess and I started early to accommodate travel for the girls. I took the high trail and they found the tumble weeds.. Amazing amounts of them, they just arrived the evening before and covered about 150ft of the trail. We moved them and they came back! What's a few extra scratches on legs. We all arrived back to the start in time for a pics and the race was on. Read on...
CONTESTS
 New Year's Resolution Contest. It's time to stop thinking and to start acting about your New Year's Resolutions! We're again offering CFA members and anyone else who is interested a place where they can log their 2010 fitness resolutions. You can look at this as a goal-setting tool, as a way to keep yourself honest or as a contest to see how close you come to meeting your goals. More information at New Years Resolution Contest.
 On a similar note, the 2009 New Years Resolution Contest is coming to an end... only a few weeks to the end of the year! This year's contestants are asked to provide an update as a comment on their original resolutions by December 20th. Please rate your achievement in percentage points. You can check out any musings related to the contest here: http://www.clubfatass.com/contest/NewYearsResolutions/2009.
The member who comes closest to their resolutions will win a pair of running shoes courtesy of our friends and sponsors at Kintec Footlabs.
Photos left and above: Bill Dagg, his son and Jess Bassil enjoying a tropical vacation in Belize
Photo below: Bill Dagg in the Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park
 2009 Travelling Colours Contest. Time for some scheming and scamming...if you submitted photos to this years contest, you might want to ask your friends to comment and fave your contribution. The image recording most views/comments and faves (as determined by Flickr) will win this years contest and win a full refund of his or her 2010 Club membership dues. Pictures of your 2009 adventures wearing your Club shirt (any colour) can still be posted to Flickr following the instructions here. All submissions to date are posted here.
2009 Point Series. Craig and Sibylle have been creatively collecting photo, garbage and referal points and are leading the pack. Up-to-date standings here. Read here about how to collect points and win a pair of spanking new trail shoes. Point collection will end 20th of December, all points submitted/collected after that date will count for 2010.
Refer a Friend Contest. This contest is intended to recognize those hyper-active Club members who share their love of Club events by dragging along their friends. Tell them on a run. Tell them at work. Tell them when they ask about your Club colors at the gym. Tell them in person or tell them on Facebook. However you tell them, be sure to tell them you told them... because you could win a SOLE footcare package valued at over $200! Check out the simple Refer a Friend Contest rules and meet the competition here. Currently in the lead is Kristie Congram, followed by Tim Wiens, Yours Truly and Gary Robbins.
CAUSES YOUR CLUB SUPPORTS
If you have any causes close to your heart and want to raise awareness and/or funds let us know. A number of CFA Event Hosts use their events as fund raisers. Be sure to consider the special section on the Club website that offers ideas on how to raise money for your favorite cause while hosting a free CFA event.
North Shore Rescue. NSR is a volunteer Mountain Search and Rescue Team based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The team consists of approximately 40 volunteers skilled in search and rescue operations in mountain, canyon and urban settings. A few of our members are also NSR members. We'd like to continue our record of not using their services and rather help with their promotion of back country safety. NSR depending on your donations... consider a few bucks donated as a life insurance policy for yourself or a loved one!
Run for the Cure. The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure is Canada's largest single day, volunteer-led fundraising event dedicated to raising funds for breast cancer research, education, and awareness programs. If you would like to support one of your fellow members, please click here.
Easter Seals 24 Relay. The Easter Seals 24 Hour Relay is an annual community based fundraising event that challenges groups of people to run or walk Relay-style for 24 hours. Teams of runners and/or walkers made up of Corporate and Recreational groups collect individual pledges or organize team fundraising events to raise funds towards their collective team totals.
CFA member, Glenn Pace, again ran the 24 hour relay (this time he completed 110 Miles) to raise funds for less fortunate children. Here the link to his fundraising page. Read about his 2008 adventure here.
BC Lung Association. Event Host, Craig Moore, uses his events to raise awareness and funds for the BC Lung Association.
Mary Leliveld Tri BC Fund. Mary was a friend and member of CFA. The fund was established in her memory to help deserving athletes get to competitions they otherwise might not be able to race in.
PRPAWS (Powell River Parks and Wilderness Society
The boys who ran the Sunshine Coast Trail 180 in 2003 and 2004 vowed to help raise funds for PRPAWS, a society that aims to protect old growth forest in the Powell River area. You can help, too, by participating in the Marathon Shuffle.
SPONSORS
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CFA does not sell or otherwise distribute our member list.
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