MATT LEAHY like a lot of Active Warriors are training for many spring events. Matt is training for the Vancouver Marathon in May and he ran 32k (20 miles) yesterday.  This marathon is one year almost to the day when I had reconstructive knee surgery, so it’s been a bit of a battle rehabbing and getting back into running shape!  GOOD LUCK Matt!

Saturday morning, ANDREA RISHMAWI and HEATHER HAWKES hiked Cowles Mountain Sn Diego in 45 minutes! Awesome time!

Sunday, some of the Active Hiking Group, ANDREA RISHMAWI, ANDREW COLE, and RYAN DREW hiked Iron Mountain – the boys finished in just under an hour and ten minutes, with Andrea close behind in an 1 hour 15 minutes…best time so far!!  We followed that up with a little light lifting (of bloody mary’s and mimosas that is) at The Shore Club.

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STEVE MAZZA spent quality time with his teenagers camping and hiking in Big Sur last week. The weather and scenery were spectacular!  The waterfall is McKay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park.

MICHELLE ULRICH hiked with her sister while visiting aunt and uncle in Santa Monica and hiked the Backbone (Will Rogers) Trail in Pacific Palisades on Saturday.  It was a great hike!

KRISTI DUBIEL  had an exciting weekend of basketball, baseball and kickball.  I watched KU advance to the Sweet 16 and I also went to the Giants v Milwaukee baseball game.  My kickball team had an undefeated season and we won the division championship game on Thursday night.  We will be heading to Las Vegas in September for Nationals…should be fun J 

STEVE SKINNER AE said No way man, I didn’t sit on my haunches, this cat played rugby again.

As a 38 years old wanna-be jock (notice I didn’t say ex-jock) I made the pilgrimage to Pullman, Washington and participated in the annual “Old Boys Game” where the current Cougar rugby club hosts the Alumni, play them in a match, sell t-shirts, jerseys, hold raffles, etc in order squeeze support money for the youngsters.

It was fun to walk the paths of my old stomping grounds and participate for just a few minutes in a college kegger.  Got a chance to watch the Cougar Men’s basketball team stomp Notre Dame at Pete’s Bar and Grill with some old friends deep in the heart of Cougar Country. 

I am proud to say that in my 13 years of being a WSU Rugby Alumni, the Alumni prevailed 35-7, and yours truly, the oldest man on the pitch, scored the final try against the Cougs right before they head off to California for a play – in match to the National Championship Tourneay. They call it the Sweet 16, a different kind of March Madness…  Long Live Cougar Rugby!

RICHARD NEHER our resident Tennis God did much better than that. He worked at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. During the final 3 days of the Pacific Life Open, which is the 5th largest tennis tournament in the world(after Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open), and features the world second largest tennis stadium with 16,000 seat capacity, I had the privilege to help the Tennis Director, Tom Fey, run a so-called Tri-Level tennis tournament with 190 players from 12 of the 17 USTA Sections. Tri-level tennis teams consist of two players level 3.5, 2 players level 4.0, and 2 players level 4.5. Not only did the Southern California Section win the whole thing and displayed some awesome tennis at a lower level than the celebrities in the big stadium, but we were able to rub shoulders with some big stars, like Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, Novak Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic, andf Rod Laver. All in all a super weekend of fun work in the sport I love.

TOBY GUILLETTE, Online Community Specialist for Endurance Sports, celebrated Easter in Joshua Tree National Park. It was beautiful as the desert was in bloom and my friends and I camped out under the bright moon and stars. I did a short trail run on Saturday but mostly relaxed and enjoyed the 80 degree weather.

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT I LOVE THE EARLY TIME CHANGE, NOTHING LIKE HAVING MORE LIGHT IN OUR DAY TO PLAY! AND YOU FIGURE OUT AFTER READING THIS WHO SEMED TO BE IN 2 PLACES AT ONE TIME THIS WEEKEND. Mike

AxtiveXers ARCH & CHRISTY FUSTON (Some call Arch a workout masochist) SARAH MOOSBRUGGER, RICKY GRAY, JESSE HAMMOND and his girlfriend Emmy rode the Elfin forest 40 miler this weekend in SD County. Arch wants to know where the Forest was?

A group of ARCH & CHRISTY with SARAH, VICKY EYDELBERG & CHRIS BONHERT warmed up for the upcoming La Jolla ½ Marathon running a 10 miler.

STEVE MAZZA spent the weekend in the Anza Borrego Desert State Park in Southern California and hiked a 3200 ft unnamed peak and took in the wildflowers.

The Active Hiking Group did a quick hike up Cowles Mountain (it’s not really a Mountain more like a small hill for the Vancouver and Colorado folks) in San Diego Saturday morning. ANDREA RISHMAWI, CARRIE JAMES, ANDREW COLE, JEN ROMINE, and SCARLETT DALGLEISH did the 3 mile hike up and down in about and an hour and a half.

JARED SYMONDS Marketing Assistant in Burnaby played on his Board this weekend at Seymour’s up near North Vancouver, British Columbia. He's a Marketing Assistant at the Burnaby office

BRYAN PAIJIT Web Developer in Consumer Media went crazy this weekend starting with Basketball dropping in 22 points, 8 assists, 2 steals in a 2 hour pickup game in Ocean Beach at 8am. Then he followed it up with 3 hours of flag football at 2pm in La Jolla. I threw about 80 passes and had 15 TDs and 4 Ints.

Then went bowling in downtown San Diego rolling a career high 186

MY RIGHT ARM FEELS LIKE JELLO!! Wonder if Bryan does anything during the week?

TJ HART Data Architect did a 60 mile Saturday bike ride the SD Bicycle Club up Mission Gorge road in San Diego. New to the area he is discovering the diversity of SD County.

BROOKE KIRKPATRICK AE in SD and her fiancée rode the Solvang ½ century and finished up the day with wine tasting! This ride was absolutely gorgeous…we are definitely going back next year to ride the full century!

STEVEN TWOHY Staff Accountant, Corp. Accounting/Finance decided to get the most from the weekend with a 90 mile bike from Pacific Beach to Camp Pendleton and back. For Ironman training that simply was not enough. Sunday morning I was in the ocean doing a mile swim, followed by a two-hour jog up and around Mount Soledad. Apparently the Gail Bernhardt Ironman Training plan is more than I bargained for, it is an excellent plan to say the least, and I felt good enough to bike to work today, so I did. I will be competing in the Arizona Ironman April 13th and am trying to finish strong among my 18-24 male age group competitors. GOOD LUCK Steven and I can’t wait to call you an IRONMAN!

MICHELLE VALENTI Content Producer in San Diego mountain biked in Morro Bay and did a little wine tasting in Paso Robles after. One of these days an Active person will do the wine tasting first then Mtn Bike!

MICHELLE ULRICH in SD is also training for the La Jolla ½ Marathon and had a GREAT 12 mile training run along the coast and finished the last few miles going up and then coming back down the Torrey Pines hill to prepare for the La Jolla Half!

KRISTI DUBIEL Implementation Specialist woke up bright and early and hiked Squaw Peak in Phoenix, AZ. I made it to the summit and back down without stopping in 58 mins…which may not sound like a big deal, but it is like doing the stair climber the entire way up. I am training for a couple of Grand Canyon hikes in June and this is one of the best training trails to hike. On June, 6th I will be hiking the GC Rim to Rim and then on June 13-15 I will be hiking Havasupai Falls. Great PIC looking down from Peak to Phoenix.

She also was a baseball fan this weekend taking in 3 spring training games.

Report from KIRSTIN HARTOS Implementation Specialist. This weekend marked the San Diego Surfers’ 25th Annual Champagne Classic Women’s Rugby Tournament at Robb Field in Ocean Beach, one of the largest women’s rugby tournaments in the country, drawing 15 teams from around North America – including several top ranked squads. I was the lone “Active” member playing for the Surfers this weekend as two of my teammates and fellow Active employees Marea Blue (Implementation Analyst, Endurance) and Emily Ogata (Application Specialist, Team Sports) were sidelined and recovering from their respective surgeries.

Our first match of the day against Chico Women was a bit messy on both sides, but we shut them out and put up at least four tries, making the final score something like 22-0. Our other pool C match pitted us against a tougher, faster and more experienced opponent: “Last Call” (a Beantown traveling team). Our speed on the outside paid off, and our wing was able to touch-down for the Surfers’ single try between the posts, making for an easier conversion. Last Call missed their only conversion, so we came away with a narrow 7-5 victory. In the first round of the championship bracket on Saturday afternoon, we played the Scottsdale Lady Blues. Despite committing a slew of penalties at the try line, we managed to ward off their repeated attacks and were finally able to clear the ball when it popped out the weak side of a ruck to end the first half. Our speed on the outside earned us more tries, and we capped off the match with a number-8 pick up and breakaway from the 50 meter to end the game 19-0.

Sunday morning we faced off against the defending National Champion Berkeley All-Blues in the semifinals, who had beaten their quarterfinal opponent 69-0 the day before. We easily could have resigned our fate before the game looking across the field at many of the best players in the US (USA Eagles), but we came out strong, fought hard, and held our own at times – only allowing them two tries in the first ¾ of the game. Their last two tries came within the last 5 minutes of the match on hard drives from their Eagle prop, making the final score 24-0. Berkeley went on to defeat Boston Women later that day by at least 35 points for the Championship. Great weather, talented teams and competitive games made for a fantastic rugby weekend in San Diego.

CRISTY PLUCHENNIK Staff Accountant ran 5 miles on Saturday as part of my long run training. I am training for the half marathon event as part of TNT in the Rock ’n Roll Marathon on June 1st. If anyone wants to read my story on why I am dedicated to running the half marathon distance and why I joined TNT, the link is www.active.com/donate/tntsdh/Christy4Todd

ASHLEY ELLIS Acct Exec Swimming & STEVE MAZZA did a La Jolla Cove swim this weekend with beautiful weather & cold water, what a great combination! WE know she beat Mazza out of the water!

SO MANY OF YOU SKIED, PLAYED GOLF, RODE YOUR BIKE AND DRANK SOME BEVERAGES THIS WEEKEND (MOSTLY IN THAT ORDER) SO THANKS FOR REPORTING IN.

AND I WANT TO GIVE A BIG SHOUT OUT TO TOBY GUILLETTE WHO IS RECOVERING FROM HIS BIKE ACCIDENT. YOU'LL BE BACK ON THE ROAD BEFORE YOU KNOW IT TOBY! Mike

The Active Hiking Group in San Diego ANDREA RISHMAWI, DEANNA ORGERON and ANDREA RISHMAWI (and her friend Kevin Bailey,) met up with LINDA MARKEY, who found us on the Active Community Blog, and hiked Iron Mountain in just about 2 hours Sunday morning.

Very Fast TOYA REAVIS raced in the USA Cross Country Championships/World Team Trials this Saturday at Mission Bay Park in San Diego. I surprised everyone by racing very strong and coming in top 20 in the nation. I raced in the 8K Master’s Championship. My time was 34:15; which is great for me considering I am an 800/1500 meter runner.

STEVE MAZZA went to Austin, TX to help his event and ran the AT&T Austin Half Marathon, amid the largest field of runners in the race’s history, on a hilly half course with start and finish on Congress St in front of the Texas state capitol and a 1:49 PR for me.

SCOTT ROBINSON up North is the General Manager of a team that just clinched second place in the BC Major Midget Hockey League this weekend.

Check them out at www.vancouver-canadians.com

ANGIE TOWERY in SD also went to Austin and ran the Austin Half this weekend with my sister (our second half together) and because I didn’t train, my time was a little slow (2:18), but the really cool thing is that I got to run in with the Elite Marathon finishers!! That was definitely the highlight of my run….maybe I’ll run all my runs at the expected finish time of the marathon finishers!

EDDIE STRICKLER a track star in Bothell ran the 800 in the University of Washington open indoor track meet on Sunday. I was quite pleased with my time of 1:53.43. We all would be pleased!

HAVE A GREAT WEEK TEAM!

A FEW OF US FROM THE SD OFFICE HAD A GREAT TIME AT THE 16TH COMPETITOR ENDURANCE SPORTS AWARDS THIS WEEKEND.  HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYONE AND MY HAT'S OFF TO ARCH FUSTON IN SD FOR PUTTING TOGETHER THE NOON WORKOUTS THAT HAVE BECOME THE TALK OF THE OFFICE. Mike

CHRIS CONNORS, Technology Consultant in San Diego and his Active friends/co-workers CHRIS BOHNERT, MARQUES CHARBONNET, CHRIS WHEELER, REBECCA DIVITA, and ANDREW COLE drove up to Mammoth Mountain Friday night and went snow boarding/skiing all day Saturday.  The conditions were pretty intense with 22mph winds and ended up being a complete white out and not being able to see 10 feet in front of you.  Saturday night it snowed almost 2ft. of snow and the winds were 33mph on Sunday so they closed the Mountain which was a bummer. Please see attached picture!  The weekend was a blast! 

NICO REIS, Account Manager, International in Germany, is well underway in his Basketball season. “We had a major game this Saturday, against our biggest rival in the league! The winner of the game would stay in the top position and get a lot closer to the championchip. Well enough said, we won a very interesting and tough game with 106 to 98. As often, I didn’t score too much (I think 6 points or 8) but had about 15 rebounds and about 4 blocked shots! But (again I finished on the bench with 5 fouls, I guess I shouldn’t have watched all the Pre Superbowl "Best tackles of all time" video clips...

CARRIE SMITH, Marketing Services Conversion Specialist in San Diego ran the Xterra Mission Gorge Trail 15k on Sunday.  In true trail running and Xterra form, there was plenty of rain, wind, and mud.  Luckily there were stream-crossings almost every mile to wash off some of the mud. It was sloppy and slippery, but a great time!