Everyone falls

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

I finally stopped painting for a bit and bought a new bike. Yes, it was a self-indulgent exercise but I had the all-clear on the home front, I bought it literally with found money and it was something I wanted to do.

For the people out there who care and ask (and there are some) it’s a 2016 GT Grade Alloy Tiagra. It has two wheels that go round and round and handle bars and … Look. It’s so far advanced from my 25-year-old Bianchi that it’s hard to explain the differences. But I took it out last weekend for a 55-km shakedown and it was great.

The rider was less than great, but better than he was a year ago. Maybe I’ll talk about that another day.

But for now, here’s where the story gets fun – for you at least.

For the first time I’ve bought a pair of cycling shoes. People who don’t cycle or spin will be surprised to learn that cycling shoes serve a purpose beyond making you look like some faux-Euro knob clicky walking through Starbucks. No, the actual purpose is to allow you to lock your feet onto the pedals of the bike. (An aside: for the record I don’t drink coffee so I don’t clicky walk in Starbucks, and I also don’t wear the lycra cycle shorts. Mine are baggy even though I’m skinny enough now to get away with Lycra. I just don’t want to cause a scene, right?)

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.

A price worth paying

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competing, family, fitness, hockey, Olympics, paddling, training, working out

There are benefits to social media beyond being able to show you what I had for dinner or complaining about the challenges of commuting in the largest city in the world that doesn’t understand commuting.

Social media is sort of like a never ending class reunion. You run into people you haven’t seen in a long time, you catch up, you meet their families. And sometimes you share a moment.

We have friends in Halifax who we were once quite close with – we worked together, shared dinner parties, that sort of thing. We moved away, life goes on. They have two kids – now young adults, a boy and a girl. Both were competitive paddlers, and one – the daughter – is a nationally carded athlete.

She won multiple gold medals at last summer’s Pan Am Games and is a tenacious competitor. Trains hard, competes hard, studies hard. Ever since she can remember, she chased the dream of being an Olympian.

And this week her life’s work came down to one race and she didn’t make it. Pause and think about the only goal you have had for a dozen years coming down to one race, a few seconds of your life.

It wasn’t supposed to be easy. It wasn’t

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

If it had been easy, he wouldn’t have called it a challenge.

The 81-day Athlete Training Centre Challenge is all but over. It was harder than it looked, but easier than some thought. I’ll let that contradiction ricochet around your mind for a while.

The brain child of Athlete Training Centre boss trainer Richard Clark, the challenge was meant to push us physically, challenge us mentally (in terms of exceeding our own perceptions of our boundaries) and stimulate us intellectually to fully understand the implications of our food choices on ourselves and the environment.

That’s my interpretation. Others may have heard other messages. The rules: no alcohol. No dairy. Meat only four times a week. A minimum of five one-hour workouts per week. Just do it. And have fun. No bitching.

The physical challenge seemed a success for many of us “adult athletes.” I lost more than a dozen pounds, I lift more weight and I’m stronger, I hit new lows in body fat readings, improved my cardio to the extent that I could actually run six kilometres, and made a lot of the new clothes I bought last fall feel a little baggy.

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.

Sort of running. But for a cause

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competing, diet, exercise, family, fitness, training, working out, world vision 6k

This Saturday I will do something I have never done before by participating in a six-kilometre “fun run” to raise money for fresh-water wells in arid African villages.

I quietly reached out to fewer than a dozen family and friends whom I figured would be sympathetic to the cause (and to me) and asked for modest contributions. They exceeded my humble goal, and now it’s on me to finish the route and make good on the commitment.

Me and running have an indifferent relationship – and you will note above I didn’t say I will be “running” the course, I said I would participate. I have no doubt my fitness level and cardio/respiratory capacity is more than sufficient for six kilometres – it’s my gimpy old knees that will likely require a run/walk/run/walk regime.

Back when I used to walk for fitness and stress management, I had a route of 6.25 kilometres that I could do in about 55 minutes. Most people don’t walk that fast. So, I know that I can finish the course on Saturday in less than an hour. It will be managing my ego to ensure I’m not the last person out there that will be the challenge while not grinding my joints into powder.

One day more

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

Tomorrow we’ll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more!

— One Day More, Les Miserables, Boubill and Natel

It’s March and that means playoff hockey in Oakville.

Our team – the peewee red Packers – faceoff tonight in a semi final with the season on the line. There are no best-of-five or two-game-total-goal series in house league. It’s one and done. Win, and you get to be sweaty on the blueline after the championship game, win or lose. Lose and your season ends.

It’s not life or death and Donald Trump won’t show up and make fun of us if we don’t get the outcome we want. But it’s still a big deal.

Our opponents are a solid squad. They have beaten us, we have beaten them (the last time just two weeks ago in the last game of the regular season with 2^nd place on the line.) But after nearly two decades of this I know that in a one-game playoff, expect the unexpected and stuff will happen.

Win or lose, we are already proud of our guys.

One year

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competing, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness

It was one year ago today that I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. And later that day at lunch with our CFO – a very fit, active guy – I said “that’s it. I’m making changes. I’m going to get fit.”

As of this morning (after I shoveled snow for a workout because the gym was closed!) that conversation was 366 days and 68 pounds ago. It hasn’t always been easy but the truth is, it’s not that hard, either. You just have to want it. And I did.

I started walking on the treadmill every night and as the weather improved I took it outside. In July I joined a gym. The last calendar year has been nothing but change for me and I have had moments of elation, despair, failure and success. But I know I’ve changed.

I was way overweight. My diet wasn’t horrible (at home it was quite good) but it wasn’t terrific overall. Like many people I had fallen into a rut of a couple of beers after work every day; some easy, comfortable snacks before dinner and on weekends and no exercise. Empty calories and bad, lazy habits, and generally self-destructive living.

I’m not trying to sound dramatic but candidly, I was on a path to something bad happening. (Something bad could still happen but now it’s more likely to be from a dumbbell falling on my foot or getting crushed by a truck on my bike. At least now I’m trying.)

For a lot of reasons it doesn’t feel like a stand up and cheer moment today but I’m sharing the anniversary for a couple reasons.

Hey look! Progress

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

A quick catch up for readers interested in my daily torment.

Wednesday was running, today was a spin preceded by hand weights and metabolic punishment. It was a grueling day today. We took a vote. We agreed. Challenging, which I guess is at least part of the point of the challenge.

Plans by our leader Wednesday to benchmark and record our efforts in the punishing 300×3 shuttle run suicides eventually were abandoned. But I did run my heat twice and proudly finished last (out of five runners) in each.

I don’t honestly care. A few short months ago I was not able to run a single 50-metre length of the indoor turf. So to run it six times in succession, twice, enduring the stopping and starting is progress even if my splits could be timed with a sundial.

A spin for a winter’s day

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competing, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey, spinning, training, working out

Every now and then a day at the gym turns out better than you imagined it would and today was a day like that. And that’s saying something because I really like working out and I like the people at my gym, so most days are good ones.

Today is Day Two of the 81-Day Challenge. And today’s benchmark test was a 25-kilometre ride in the spin room. No one was looking forward to this. The race was strictly against the clock. It wasn’t so much a race at all as it was – for me at least – a benchmarking of modest progress over the preceding months.

But spinning is hard work, if you’re trying. You stop spinning, you slow then stop and you’re trapped in the spin room that much longer. And today, no one was allowed to leave until you did 25 kilometres. So go fast, leave fast.

Do the math. If you peddle at a 25 km-per-hour pace, it will take you an hour. I wanted to be out of the room by 7a so I would have time to shower and catch my usual train. Plus the weather made driving slow. So, add on another 10 minutes for that mess.

We went in the spin room about 620a and were quickly at it. I needed to be sub-40 minutes to make my train.