Yow, yes I do love the trails, Nicole is not that adventurous, but she did run her two legs in MT110's and had a great experience. She is a minimalist who loves her Vibrams but will surprise me with a long run barefoot when I am least expecting it.
The boys actually ran the Kid's Death Race, my oldest finished, the youngest didn't quite make it (he's 5) and was still worn out from being up all day and night the day before cheering mom and dad on to the finish.
Training in Winnipeg for mountain runs, easy, we have this really cool hill thingy called a overpass and there are a few speed bumps around, so all is good. But seriously, Nicole our other partner Dan and I took part in the CDR Training Camp in June and it gave us a huge advantage over a lot of the other runners. We got to run the entire course over 3 days and got tips from the creator Dale Tuck, Tracey Garneau from North Face and a multitude of other soloist runners who had finished multiple times. It was the best $100.00 I ever spent for a first hand training regime. But other than that, we do have a couple of spots around that helped in the training, so all was good.