Marathon – Lessons Learned
As I sit on the couch nursing my legs back to health I’ve nothing but time to think about all the right and wrong things leading up to and including the marathon. First thing first, I finished! I feel great about that. 4 years ago I couldn’t run 2K, it’s important for me to remember my starting point and how far I’ve come.
Hydration – to maintain a fluid balance.
Around the 3oKM mark, I severely cramped up and realized quickly that my strategy or lack there of with regards to staying hydrated was for lack of a better word..bad.
The next 12 KM was an exercise and battle of the mind and body. I struggled through keeping in mind the finish line and my friends and family rooting for me. While shuffling along during my muscle cramps I realized a number of things.
(1) Marathoner are insane. This was an exercise of not just the body but of the mind.
(2)Preparation is everything. Not properly hydrating for the first 25KM (which I felt great for) can’t be made up.
(3)My cardio was awesome! I know now that there are different ways to train for a marathon.
(4)Support is everything. When I hit the wall hard, I kept my thoughts on the people that came out to support me. It gave me strength.
(5)Never give up. I learned this early from Square One CrossFit and this came in handy during my run. Give props where it’s due and the trainers at Square One CrossFit took me to the next level.I’ve never looked back.
(6) I’ll live to see another day and compete again. Lessons Learned.
(7) I will better my effort, training and run time!
Ben Franklin said ” By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”
Swallow the EGO and prepare. Preparation isn’t just about what you do before, it also what you do during.
Special shout out to my family(Beverly) and my kids(Alyssa, Lucas, Kira), Mom and Dad, my newest niece Soleil Jasmine! Karen, J, Alex, Genie and their lovely kids for coming out to support me. Thanks everyone, I felt the love!
Marathon Training Update: 9 days and counting….
So here we go! The Mississauga Marathon is just under 2 weeks away and I’m ready! I’ve trained hard with consistency, intensity, smarts and with a positive mind.
A while back I wrote about my training philosophy: Train Hard! Run Less and happy to report that I’m very close to achieving my marathon training goals. I’ve visualized my training path, expected and ran into a few speed bumps and had to adjust and review my training. All that’s left now is to Remember the Future and Hold on to my Vision.
It’s the next natural step in my training. I’ve really tried to keep my goals simple and Remember the Future is a catchy phrase that just means:
Visualize running the marathon happy, confident, with a clear mind and see the finish line. Every stride with purpose. Every breath with ease.
That’s it. That’s all.I’m ready.
If you’ve got some free time Sunday May 6th 2012, come on out to support all the runners in the Mississauga Marathon. The course route is online and there are numerous places where you can cheer participants of this awesome event. I feel privileged that I’ll be a participant this year. Another thing off my list! Nothing like a Before & After – To hold on to my vision.
The Power of Tolerance
Here’s something I read a little while ago that I felt the need to share.
“We need to promote greater tolerance and understanding among the peoples of the world. Nothing can be more dangerous to our efforts to build peace and development than a world divided along religious, ethnic or cultural lines. In each nation, and among all nations, we must work to promote unity based on our shared humanity” – Kofi Annan
Inspiring words. There are countless examples of fraught racial and religious relationships in history, unfortunately we’ve not learned lessons as history is repeating itself today. I’m not sure how you feel but I know I feel nauseous every time I watch the news; stories of for profit wars, genocide, religious extremists teaching us about their god by killing, bullying and hurting people. This isn’t what I want. I’m sure this isn’t what you want.
So here’s a thought, understand that all human beings are different. Anger and hatred towards someone for their different thoughts, beliefs or ideas will only consume you. Act with love compassion and gratitude towards your fellow human being and make a conscious effort to practice tolerance.
Subtract: Race, Age, Status, Gender, Religion, Nationality
Add: Acceptance+Understanding+Respect+Love+Gratitude
Impossible is nothing
Do you believe it? Impossible Is Nothing. Repeat it. Every time I think that I’ve run into a situation that’s insurmountable I remember that Impossible Is Nothing.
Human Spaceflight – We’ve done it! Numerous times actually. Granted, there is a lot that we don’t know but human spaceflight people! HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT! In other words – Manned Spaceflight. In 1961, human history recorded it’s first manned spaceflight and in 1969 we took a giant step as we walked on the moon. We walked on the freakin moon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ7ME9VSJjU
Watch the video above and there is no doubt – Impossible Is Nothing!
The World’s Story According to John Steinbeck
Powerful and Beautiful writing is just that – Powerful and Beautiful. Here is something that made me think – I’d like to share from John Steinbeck.
“…A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, in their kindness and generosity too – in the net of good and evil. I think that this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story.
A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?
Herodotus, in the Persian War, tells a story of how Croesus, the richest and most-favoured king of his time, asked Solon the Athenian a leading question. He would not have asked it if he had not been worried about the answer. “Who,” he asked, “is the luckiest person in the world?” He must have been eaten with doubt and hungry for reassurance. Solon told him of three lucky people in old times. And Croesus more that likely did not listen, so anxious was he about himself. And when Solon did not mention him, Croesus was forced to say, “Do you not consider me lucky?”
Solon did not hesitate in his answer, “How can I tell?” he said. “You aren’t dead yet.” And this answer must have haunted Croesus dismally as his luck disappeared, and his wealth and his kingdom. And as he was being burned on a tall fire, he may have thought of it and perhaps wished he had not asked or not been answered.
And in our time, when a man dies – if he has had wealth and influence and power and all the vestments that arouse envy, and after the living take stock of the dead man’s property and his eminence and works and monuments – the questions is still there: Was his life good or was it evil? – which is another way of putting Croesus’s question. Envies are gone, and the measuring stick is: “Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come of it?”
I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said, “Thank God that son of a bitch is dead.”
Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some of the perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died he nation rang with praise and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead.
There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, “What can we do not? How can we go on without him?”
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our deaths brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”
20 Genetically Modified Foods(GMO) coming our way
The acronym GMO should scare the hell out of you and if it’s not well prepare to be shocked! Now more than ever we need to pay close attention to what we consume. Check out this article listing out these 20 food items coming our way via GMO.
The items on this list that surprised me: Salmon, Cotton, Sugar Cane, Honey and Bananas!
I’m officially stunned.
http://wakeup-world.com/2012/03/29/twenty-genetically-modified-foods-coming-to-your-plate/
Friday 13 April 2012
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up-
Today’s sign of the Apocalypse:
Some of you reading this fine morning may or may not know that the 116th running of the Boston Marathon is going down this weekend. You also may or my not know (who really cares) that one of our dear team members here, Sister Margaret has been in Boston all week preparing for the run.
CERN Cranks Up Large Hadron Collider To Record High Energies
After four months of downtime for maintenance and modifications, the Large Hadron Collider, CERN’s newest and the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, set a record for the highest-energy collision of protons, 8 TeV. Two proton beams each at 4 TeV were accelerated to near light speed and collided, generating a shower of particles and consequently data that will take a lot of computing to evaluate.
Fuels From Algae
In the spectrum of alternative fuel sources, biofuel made from algae is perhaps the most easily mocked.
How could the slimy green muck that grows in your aquarium and washes up on the beach be a future cornerstone of American energy independence? So when President Obama stood before the University of Miami recently and said algae could provide up to 17 percent of our transportation fuel, we wanted to know: Is he right?
The Ancestral Context
Written by Beau DeCourcy
We exist today in a paradox of elusive wellness and abundant medical treatment, and it makes no sense. We look to conventional medical treatment to manage symptoms and we accept our declining health as a normal part of aging. We need to re-evaluate this process, own our individual health and look deeper as to why we ended up here.
