Sometimes that happens

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competing, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, junior hockey, training, working out

Parenting isn’t rocket science or brain surgery, but once it starts it’s a life-long commitment. Obvious, but true.

The front end is heavy lifting, the back end is more fine tuning. And after about 15 or 20 years – if you have any honest self awareness at all – you start to see how things are really going.

This will not be a soliloquy on the brilliance of my kids or our greatness as parents. There always things to do better, things we might have done differently. They still don’t know how to cook, do laundry, shovel snow, pickup clothes, or buy beer if there’s someone else in the house to do it instead. But, overall they’re better-than-okay kids and we love them.

No, today is about understanding that your kids will look at your example for a long, long time. The paths you choose, your conduct, your lifestyle, your generosity, honesty, work ethic, kindness, friends, choices. In short, your character. As the old saying goes, the way you behave when you think no one is looking.

Sweating it out today on a spin bike with 23 other people at 6am, I reflected a bit on this if only to distract myself from the heat of the room and punishing regime to be completed.

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A first

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AUS Hockey, competing, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, training, working out

Well, that wasn’t so bad.

I completed the World Vision Canada 6K Run for Water on Saturday morning, under brilliant sunny skies and comforted by the chill embrace of sub-zero temperatures. Moments of it were actually fun and rewarding.

There were about 200 runners at our location in north Mississauga. I’m not a runner and now I remember why. One kilometre into the run, we passed a sign marking the distance. It was one of the most demotivational moments I have had in recent times.

Really? I have to so this five more times? The first kilometre was the worst.

My route strategy was simply to run until I felt uncomfortable and then walk a bit. I never needed to walk.

The six people I ran with, all also members of The Athlete Training Centre, were younger and faster and better runners and I was content to let them sprint away from me. The fastest finished the run in about 33 minutes. I toddled in about seven minutes later, respectably in the middle of the pack.

It’s hockey, man

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family, hockey, Leafs

Watching the Leafs game last night – or at least the small portion of it I actually watched – brought back some interesting memories.

Those memories were not of the “brush-with-greatness” players on the Leafs roster whose careers intersected tangentially with my older son. One Leaf d-man was Pad’s defence partner in junior varsity high school tournament hockey for a couple games (Pad’s high school coach offered him “$100 and all the Quiznos sandwiches he could eat” to forgo junior and play high school hockey full-time); another forward was a player he played against for a couple of seasons in the OJHL.

No, my memories were triggered by watching all those AHL callups on the Leafs getting a shot at the Big Time and how exciting it must be not just for them, but their families too. And that made me recall when Pad got called up from midget AAA to play a few games of junior A. I was excited, too.

The OJHL is a long, long way from the NHL. And the Mississauga Chargers, in a universe of junior A hockey teams, would be the planetary equal of Pluto. Is it really a planet? Is it really a junior A team? Hard to tell from here.

But they called and asked him to suit up for his first junior A hockey game in November 2009. It was a home game for the Chargers at Port Credit Arena against the Aurora Tigers, which had in its lineup the tallest, beefiest free-standing hockey player I had ever seen in person.

Super Bowl stuff, other stuff

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AUS Hockey, budweiser, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, super bowl, training, working out

There wasn’t a whole lot “super” about Sunday’s Super Bowl, at least not from my perspective. The game was not exciting. It bordered on boring.

I’m not a hardcore NFL fan. I’m just a guy who likes watching elite athletes do their thing on a big stage. I’m also a journalist so I enjoy the stories within the stories as much as I enjoy the game line. I like the buzz, even if the Super Bowl has more manufactured buzz than any event outside of a manned Mars landing deserves.

It will not surprise you that I was hoping Denver would win. The aging quarterback going for something big perhaps for the final time, versus the brash up-and-comer. I will always tilt way more toward the Peyton Mannings of the world over the Cam Newtons. And lately, more towards the aging guy . . .

But off the field Sunday, both of their performances were not something I would commend my sons to emulate.

You’ll miss us when we’re gone

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BellLetsTalk, canadian politics, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, Mental Health, working out

I’m going to leave the health and hockey beat for a few minutes and talk about journalism and more specifically, local news. Local news coverage is dying in Canada and you should care.

Canadians read, watch and listen to more news in all its formats than ever before and they can find it more easily than ever. The problem is, few people are willing to pay for it via online subscriptions and the advertiser-supported models generally don’t come close to creating a sustainable revenue stream to support journalism.

So media companies – and I’m not going to apply “old media” and “new media” labels because, honestly, Yahoo! has been around for two decades so, when do they and MSN and Google become traditional vs. new? – cut costs by laying off people, including reporters.

And that means there are fewer different news sources covering city hall, or provincial court, or paying attention to your school board. And that’s when bad things start to happen.

My friends are well familiar with me saying things as I head to work, like, “just another day protecting our democracy.” Yes, I said stuff like that tongue in cheek. And yes, it’s actually true.

Strong local news coverage is the bedrock of democracy and journalism. Reporters in small towns create accountability in the system by reporting on town council and school boards and courts and chambers of commerce.

It’s like that old saying that integrity is what you do when you think no one is watching. It’s a good rule of thumb for assessing someone’s real character – and how much we need local reporting.

If you are comfortable with leaders who are lying and cheating and behaving badly because they think no one is watching, you will love where local reporting is headed right now. When they find out their bad behaviour was actually known? Sputtering indignation.

Caution: men thinking

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AUS Hockey, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, training, working out

Only 10 more weeks to go in the New Year challenge at ATC.

Only.

Week three of the eat-better, get fitter challenge is upon us. Assuming people stick with it, April 1 is an ocean away.

I’m not certain how success will be defined at the end of this and whether everyone who started out two weeks ago will still be involved at the end. Actually, I think I know the answer to the second part of that statement – not everyone is going to hit the tape at the finish line. Some are falling off already – or in fairness, perhaps they were never really volunteers to the cause.

But the group enthusiasm is there for now. The 6a class continues to bring in about 20 people on weekday mornings in spite of the cold and dark. And people are in a decent mood, considering the time of day. The tempo of the workouts has changed with much more focus on strength. We’re lifting heavier weights to build muscle, taking advantage of the new diet regime of less meat, more plants.

We still do cardio – Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday still feature fairly intense spin sessions. But the emphasis is on strength. Some respond better than others but I feel it after a “lift” day. Today was front squats (barbell rest on front shoulders and then full squat with progressively more weight.) Wednesday is dead lift. Friday is bench.

I excel at precisely zero of these but that doesn’t stop me from showing up and doing what I can. Richard told me I’d be “shredded” by April 1 so, that’s the deal.

Five for Friday: Vol IX

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cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, training, working out

The five for Friday lazy blog is back. As we hear at the gym, pitter-patter let’s get at ‘er.

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We have a bunch of our out-of-Toronto managers in to head office for a couple days of meetings as we do annually. I was told this morning that in my absence from one gathering it was decided an intervention was needed to get me off my training regime.

All in jest of course, but it does highlight at least a little what is considered “normal” in our society and what isn’t. And a guy who takes a pass on drinking with co-workers (subbing Perrier for beer) or opts for the vegetable ragu over a steak and fully loaded baked potato is going to become a target.

I’ve been at this long enough now that my efforts are not news. But people now react with “are you STILL doing this?”

It’s mostly good natured but there’s no doubt it makes some people … well, uncomfortable isn’t the word, but it does leave them a little off centre.

Live and let live, say I. If people ask what I’m doing, I tell them. The physical changes in my appearance are significant enough that colleagues who haven’t seen me since July ask.

Otherwise, I just do my thing.

Patrick’s mountains

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ATC, christmas, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, training, working out

I was driving home from the gym a couple days ago. The sky was a funny colour of grey and white and black. The clouds didn’t so much blend into one another as they sharply contrasted and layered upon one another.

It gave the impression of looking at an old Tom Thomson painting and it reminded me of a morning long ago when Pad and I were driving to a hockey practice as dawn broke.

Clouds hung over the far side of Lake Ontario and reached down to the horizon. Pad was in the back seat and said, “Hey dad. I’ve never noticed those mountains before.”

I looked again and he was right. The clouds looked every bit like a distant mountain range — dark and ominous and inviting all at the same time. I’m pretty sure I didn’t take that moment to inflict a geographic lesson on him — it was just too pure a moment of wonder. By the time we emerged from the rink the mountains were gone. But I never forgot the sky that day or my kid’s take on it. Patrick’s mountains return every now and then, usually in the morning. I always smile at the memory.

He got it right, even if there are no mountains outside Rochester or Syracuse or Utica. I’ll always know they’re there. My kid showed them to me and every now and then I’m lucky enough to see them again, if only for a few moments.

More mountains

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AUS Hockey, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, training, working out

An elite mountain climber is said to have been asked what he saw at the top of the mountain. And he said: more mountains. So with that inind . . .

After losing a bunch of weight and improving my fitness, it’s easy to fall into a trap and think the beast has been slayed, I’m a fit guy and Men’s Fitness is holding on line 2 to arrange a photo shoot.

I don’t often have such moments – almost every day I work out, there is an actual National Lacrosse League all-star training with us, as well as three or four other youngsters who actually are very fit. I mean, machine-like athletes with highly tuned bodies.

Not a middle-aged guy in danger of pulling a hammy unloading empties at the Beer Store.

So, we older folk don’t need to look far to see what work remains. And for me, it’s all work.

But there are days when you are rockin’ some new clothes and the sales women were a little more flirty than you’re accustomed to and you lose all perspective for 10 minutes. And then you show up at the gym on Saturday and Richard throws in an exercise you’ve never done before and later you feel like you should spend the rest of the weekend in a Jolly Jumper.

Hey Nineteen

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competing, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, houndmouth, music, training, working out

Back in the summer – which feels like a million years ago right now – I decided I was tired of the same old music and made an effort to shake off the cobwebs and be a little daring.

And it was during such a foray into the wilds of alternative music that I happened upon Houndmouth – a bunch of kids from Illinois who have a great sound and energy and singalong lyrics of love and heartache and the pounding, relentless pulse of life.

They are not yet a “big deal” but Chris and I love the band and today they are in Toronto. They are playing a free show at noon at The Edge 102 and then at the Mod Club tonight, which is a small venue already sold out.

I watched one of their videos last night and it made me happy and melancholy all at the same time.