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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Five for Friday: Vol. VI

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AUS Hockey, canadian politics, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, journalism, music, tiger woods, training, working out

Time for five for Friday. I have no idea what to say. I’ll be honest. I’m just filling in the spaces right now and hope it makes sense.

–

Item 1: Awesome workout today. The group was a little smaller than usual but the music was a little louder and everyone was having a good time. Why do Fridays always feel more fun?

It was as much of a good time as you can have running suicides, doing ropes and sweating at 6 a.m. , but me, I enjoyed it.

There was a funny moment yesterday just before spin when Richard asked Mike – one of the top athletes and nicest people at ATC – what music genre he wanted for the spin. Mike got the honours because he was the winner of the November challenge. Mike was flummoxed so Richard turned to me to name a genre and I picked Motown.

And then much chirping ensued.

Five for Friday: Vol V

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AUS, Black Friday, cooking, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, running, training, tug of war, working out

Some things are old. Some things are boring. Now you can have both in the same place. Welcome to Five for Friday.

Item 1. A couple notes about the Athlete Training Centre, where I work out. There is an open house there tomorrow from 1p to 5p and if you live or work on the west side of greater Toronto and have an interest in getting fit, come take a look.

The bad news tomorrow for the regulars is that the morning 9a class is cancelled owing to the elaborate preparations for the open house. And given that I have a peewee hockey game to help coach at 315p and another pair to convene after that, I won’t be taking part in any of the demos. That’s probably good news for the ATC.

Champions Tour: struggling to make the cut

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cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, training, weight loss, working out

It was a good day for me on the Champions Tour on Wednesday.

The Champions Tour is what the six or seven of us at the gym call the Monday and Wednesday sessions where we are culled from the herd and spend time working on specific exercises aimed at increasing range of motion, improving balance and flexibility, building stability, etc. We are (mostly) a little older and all in need f work on fundamentals to help handle moving more weight.

Most days it’s all fine. Monday was – for me at least – not intense enough. The data showed I had my least taxing experience in a session at ATC since I started in June. Now there are two ways to look at that.

One way is to say we – or in this case, I — weren’t pushed hard enough. The second view is I didn’t ramp it up. I think the reality was somewhere in the middle – you can’t get your cardio going with some routines no matter how hard you work it. And you can also cut corners if you let yourself, especially at 6a on a Monday morning.

Today, we were given a more taxing set of exercises to go through and I made an effort to do more and do it harder than our trainer instructed. If he said do eight reps, I did 12. I held my finish until I felt that . . . burn. By the end of the workout the data showed I was four times as engaged today as I was Monday.

Five for Friday: Vol IV

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Athlete Training Centre, AUS sports, canadian election, canadian politics, competing, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, training, weight loss, working out

The calendar says it’s Friday so . . . time for Five for Friday.

It was a particularly Canadian experience heading to the gym this morning. The outside temperature may have said 6C, but I think the wind chill was probably -35. Give or take. I can take the spin room and the suicide runs and the hateful pushups and pullups … but the darkness and cold at 530a really does me in. Being the clever sort, I’ve determined that part of the issue for me is wearing shorts out to the car at that hour. The sensation of November wind whistling up the Under Armour may not inspire a folk song from Gordon Lightfoot, but it’s hard to imagine a more visceral Canadian moment.