Amazing Race Canada S10 — Leg 1 Recap! Niagara Falls
FIRST & FOREMOST… let’s start off by introducing team JULIA & OLIVIA! We are a newly married couple. No we are not sisters (as many people assume when they first meet us lol). Yes we are GAY and PROUD! We got married almost a year ago in August 2023, an intimate outdoor wedding with our closest friends and family. This year will mark 1 year of being married, and a total of 10 years of being together!
Check out our team bio below:
We love the Amazing Race Canada and have watched the show for years and years. It’s our favourite show to watch, always yelling at our TV with excitement and thrill cheering on the teams as they took on crazy challenges, and crying with happiness as teams win legs or go on to win the whole thing. We knew that could be us one day. It was always our dream to compete on the race and we felt like we would be perfect for it. We work so well together and have amazing communication. We love thrilling and exhilarating activities, trying new things, learning new skills, travelling, competing, working as a team tackling obstacles and challenges. There’s nothing we’ve ever seen on the Amazing Race Canada and said “we would never do that” or “we can’t do that.” We would actually be so envious that they would get to bungee jump, or cold plunge under the ice, or walk a tight rope between buildings… we always relished the opportunity to do these things. Even the disgusting and extremely physically demanding challenges excited us.
We are outgoing, adventurous, and athletic, with shared passions and hobbies including endurance sports such as marathon running and triathlon! We have competed in many marathons and triathlons together, including multiple IRONMAN’s. It is so much more rewarding to do these things together, crossing the finish lines side by side it such a beautiful experience.
We have an important rule we like to live by, “Collect memories, not things”. For our anniversaries and birthdays, we like to celebrate by DOING something new and exciting and adventurous. To celebrate we’ve gone sky-diving, scuba diving in caves, snowboarding, on a hot-air balloon, on helicopter rides, white water tubing, mountain climbing, and so much more. As time goes on you may forget about material things and gifts, but you will never forget the incredible memories and experiences you’ve made together — and the Amazing Race Canada is certainly an experience we will cherish for the rest of our life.
Season 10 was actually our 4th time applying… we applied in season 6, season 7, season 8, and finally season 10 (PERFECT for our 10 year anniversary)! We skipped season 9 because we were planning for our wedding, and there was no way we could leave and travel across Canada for weeks without phones right before the big day. Our planning would literally crumble and our wedding would be in shambles lol. We got the call for season 10 and we totally freaked out. It finally became a reality, all those years of waiting and dreaming and now it wasour turn. Let the crazy adventure begin…
LEG 1 RECAP
WHAT AN INCREDIBLE LEG! Absolutely exhilarating from the start line to the pit stop. We had no idea what to expect… but it DID NOT DISAPPOINT! We were so so so proud of one another and we had such a BLAST. We finally got a taste of what it was like and it was so much more crazy than we ever imagined. I don’t think watching it on TV can ever do it justice or truly show the pressure, the emotions, and physical and mental exertion the racers are going through. This is what it’s all about and why we wanted to compete on the Amazing Race Canada together. Maintain a positive mindset, tackle anything that comes at you, to push through difficulty, to test our limits, overcome obstacles TOGETHER and to motivate, encourage and cheer each other on!!! There’s nothing better than that.
Here’s an in depth RACE RECAP from our perspective. It’s also a nice way for us to have a little journal of our experience! For anyone who is interested, have a (long) read lol!
First of all — the weather was absolutely miserable. It was freezing, windy, and raining but I loved it. My mindset is that tough conditions means other teams were feeling it and that’s good for us because I know we can be resilient and push through. The harder the better, bring it on. And thank god we packed those semi-waterproof jackets… we were worried at first but they were so clutch. When you’re packing for the Amazing Race you have to be ready for ANY kind of weather — the race goes on rain or shine!
WHO’S DOWN TO GO FIRST? (Road Block)
We didn’t know what the challenge was but we decided before hand that I would probably be the one to do the very first roadblock — so we stuck with it. We are familiar with the Niagara area so when we saw “Horseshoe Falls” on the clue, we took off running. The run from the start line (Oaks Garden Theatre) to the horseshoe falls was so tough. Our minds were racing a mile a minute — the RACE STARTED and we were IN IT!! It was 2.2km of running as fast as we could with our backpacks. We knew that only the first 4 teams would get to repel and the rest would have to wait, so our jets were on. We started off towards the back but with our endurance… we slowly started passing other teams and got to the repel lines only behind Michael and Amari (beasts!).
To our surprise there were ALREADY 4 OTHER TEAMS when we got there and we were so confused…we had NO IDEA HOW THEY GOT THERE so quick! Ended up that some teams toward the back picked up a passing bus and got a nice relaxing and dry ride to the repel LOL (jealous). Olivia and I didn’t even see the bus pass us because we were running and so concentrated on getting there — there were also no taxi’s in sight!
Since the repels were already taken I had to wait a bit for a rope line to open up — it was a decent chunk of time lost. This shows you how important it is to be one of the first teams.
I was absolutely SO EXCITED to do this repel — it was like a dream come true and definitely a once and a lifetime opportunity. Moments like this are why it’s been a dream of ours to compete on the Amazing Race.
When I was first going down the repel it was pretty scary at the beginning because they tell you to lean back. And i’m like….UMM ARE YOU SURE??? You need to lean back over the edge and trust the repel. Once you get over that initial fear and see that you can trust the rope…the rest was incredible. You had a lever to control your descent. The falls were directly to my left and I was being splashed with water and moving with the wind — what a TIME!
At first I needed to go slowly so I didn’t pass the clue. Once the clue was secure I knew I could fly down. Liv was at the bottom yelling and cheering me, I could hear her and it was so awesome, I knew she would be proud and I was so excited to see her at the bottom. I think the first thing I said was “THAT WAS EPIC!”.
That was just the first challenge!?!? Time to move on. We needed to put that behind us and keeping going. We’ll have time to take in what just happened and reminisce later.
GAME TIME. (Detour)
Another 2km+ run back up to Clifton Hill to the Great Canadian Midway. OMG. Thankfully we can run. The backpacks made it much more difficult. We looked for taxis along the way but no luck. We chose game time because we love playing arcade games and thought it would be a fun time. We were also not in the mood to hit a memory challenge this quickly. We got to the arcade and it was hectic, flashing lights and sounds and people everywhere — we had to look for specific games marked with a TARC sticker. Those were the only ones we could play. We spotted the machine beside Kevin and Gurleen, tried to tap it a few times with our play card and it was not working. Probably because Kevin took all the balls… so no balls were releasing to start the game. Kevin told us it “wasn’t working” so we thought nothing of it and moved on to find another machine. To be honest I didn’t even remember this moment until we saw it in the first episode, because it really didn’t phase us. About 30 seconds later we found skiball — a childhood favourite. We played an waited for the ticket count…12 TICKETS? WHAT? At this rate we were going nowhere.
Our excitement quickly diminished because we had to get 400 TICKETS. We knew that 12 tickets a pop would take FOREVER so we had to strategize and move on to find another game that paid out…the clown throwing game would be the winner. We took turns playing the game and the more we played the better we got. One after another those clowns dropped!!!!!!! We ended up getting 25–50 tickets per play, which was amazing. It took a little time but before we knew it we were gone.
BRAVE THE FRIGHT….FOR THE FALLS TO LIGHT.
When I found out we would be in Niagara Falls for Leg 1 — I was HOPING we would have to do a haunted house challenge. I absolutely love horror and haunted houses. When I read the clue my face lit up. A short 400 metre up the hill and to the right. The people of Niagara were so great — they would cheer us on as we ran up and down Clifton Hill and the support was so awesome and motivating.
Nightmares Fear Factory was CRAZY! I think our photo shows the experience perfectly hahaha. 185,000+ people have chickened out in there for good reason! They made you go only 2 at a time and it was PITCH BLACK. It felt like forever, but it had to have been 10–15+ minutes long of terror. We had to follow these tiny red dots to figure out which way to go, while having monsters grab and touch us, yell our name, pop out at us, follow us and come at us from all angles. I was terrified but having a great time… Olivia not so much. At one point the walls started closing in on usand she was basically having a panic attack! We literally dropped to the floor to try and get some breathing room, and I had to calm her down and remind her it’s all going to be over soon!
Once we made it out alive lol we immediately needed to memorize a sequence of 10 colours… and then make our way to the “Illumination Tower”. No notes allowed. I took 5 colours and Liv took the next 5. We used a specific memory technique so I knew we had these nailed down — but teams BETTER have their colours memorized before leaving. If you made it to the Illumination Tower and you couldn’t remember your colours, you would have to go all the way back in order to see your specific colour sequence again! This is definitely something that would cost so much time and could get a team eliminated, so I knew we needed to take the time to memorize before we headed out. The technique we used is something we practiced at home to prep for the race and it worked like a charm. We associated each colour with a specific part of our body, starting from our head and working our way to our feet. Then, each colour has to represent something (a symbol of the same colour), and needs to be associated with a part of your body.
The memory technique is so effective I can still remember 4 out of the 5 colours to this day.
Blue — represented by blueberries. I imagined blueberries squished in my hair.
Red — my red jacket I was wearing on my torso.
Purple — for the light purple colour on my shoes, associated with my feet.
Green — representing grass, I imagined stepping on the grass on the floor.
In this way, you know the order as you work your way from your head to your feet, and you create a story that really sticks in your mind because its memorable.
To prep on for the race we practiced and learned all kinds of memory techniques so I was 100% confident. I was memorizing scripts, speeches, I could recite poems in different LANGUAGES, indigenous words, song lyrics, numbers, absolutely everything. Memorization is such a huge part of the Amazing Race Canada.
It was another approx 2km run to the Illumination Tower. We had never been or heard of this place before so this is the first time we felt like we could get lost…and we did for a few moments. It was dark and we were running aimlessly down the street in the direction we thought it was in based on some directions we got. We desperately tried looking for a cab but there were none in sight. The whole time we did not see ONE CAB!! How is that possible? We were convinced we would just hail one down on the street eventually. In hindsight it was definitely the right decision to ask someone call us one and just wait a few minutes. Learning lesson!!! That would have saved us so much time and energy in running.
We finally got to the Illumination Tower — a huge lighting system that illuminates and lights up Niagara Falls in different colours. HOW INCREDIBLE!! You had to remember and enter your colour sequence, and as you entered each one it would light up the falls to the corresponding colour. Honestly such a cool moment. Another once in a lifetime opportunity.
TIME TO SEE JON. (Pit Stop)
The first Pit Stop was at the Niagara Parks Power Station. The first major power plant on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. For 100 years, the “Canadian Niagara Power Company generating station” harnessed the powerful energy of the Horseshoe Falls and turned it into a great source of electricity. We were so pumped to rip the clue and know the end was near.
As usual…no TAXI!!!!!! The location was remote and off the strip and there were barely any people or cars around. Another 1km run to the Niagara Parks Power Station. Once there, we had to take the elevator 180ft down while the operator told us facts about the power station. Once the elevator descent was over, we had to run down the 2200 foot-long-tunnel to an incredible observation platform of the falls and meet Jon. It felt like such a long run. But when we got there our job was not done, to officially finish the leg we had to answer a question correctly about the power station…teams who answered incorrectly had to run all the way back and do the elevator ride again to listen to the facts, and then run back to the mat. The pit stop view was INCREDIBLE! We highly recommend anyone who is in Niagara to visit the Power Station. That was our first time there and we will definitely be going back!
4TH PLACE!!!!!! What an incredible first leg and way to start the Amazing Race Canada. WHAT JUST HAPPENED? We could finally take it all in! We were so exhausted but were running on so much excitement and adrenaline and we were so relieved make it through to leg 2! I think we were one of the only teams in the top 5 who ran the entire leg, and we still came 4th! Our endurance training for our triathlons really paid off in this leg.
ON TO THE NEXT ONE! WE CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU ALL TO SEE WHAT WE GOT UP TO IN LEG 2!!!!!
The Amazing Race Canada airs Tuesdays at 9 pm ET/PT/MT/AT and 8 pm CT on CTV, CTV.ca and the CTV app.
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