le Blog du Rob

Blog #63

2012-02-09T11:34:00.004-05:00

Hey there, it's blog time. Quick glance to the right...yep, the sponsor banners are all gone. In my continued trend of change, I will no longer run for NB. And since I haven't really heard from the other two for a little while I figure they're gone too. Thanks to NB for all the support over the last few years, great group of folk and decent product. Thanks dudes (sorry Dave K! I'll miss ya!).
Like I said, lots of change going on, I've had lot of relationships end in the last month or so (lady, job, city, club, coach and now sponsors) Most of these have been pretty liberating and awesome, some have been annoying and others are just blah. But whatever the case may be, I have done an absolutely terrible job of setting up any sort of fall back plans. Quit the job? ok cool, where am I going to work now? umm...I'll figure something out. Leaving Guelph? yeah neat so where am I moving to? umm...I'll figure something out. Not running for NB anymore? that's good, so who am I gonna run for now? umm...I'll figure something out.
I have my life planned until April 15th. after that? Well who friggen knows man. I may fall in love with a lovely Dutch lady and never come home, ya never know. I have no ties to anywhere in particular, I plan to just roll with it. I'll end up somewhere doing something. It's pretty rad/scary. I've been talking to a few people about a few possible endevours, I think everything will be just fine...I hope.
One thing I do know is that whatever happens I'm gonna keep hitting the roads and putting in the miles. This change in my running situation has been really refreshing. Running is going great and I'm super excited about my prospects for Rotterdam. Pete's training is quite a bit different than what I am used to. We figured that I have put so many miles in my legs over the past three years (over 16,000miles) that my base is really friggen solid. We don't need to be hammering 160mile weeks right now. We just gotta get fast, fast is sexy, and we're gonna get sexy as hell. I'm talking 3-4workouts a week, I'm talking track stuff, back to back days and only 120mile weeks. It's craziness! I'm trying to figure out a way to add a tab to this here blog so that I can post my training log. Once I figure that out I'll do that.
I was out on a run the other day and I had a flashback to my youth, one of those memories that had been buried away in the depths of my brain somewhere, buried for my own protection. When I was in 5th grade I had a huge crush on this girl in my class, my little 5th grade heart was all about this girl. I dug her hard man. But I was weird looking and pretty shy, so I was afraid to say anything to her. also I was in 5th grade, so what the hell would I say to her anyways? I had no idea how to talk to girls. A couple of my buddies knew that I was into this chick and they tried to get me to ask her on a date. Obviously though this was never gonna happen. So as the school year progressed this crush continued to just linger and grow there in my heart, oh boy she was so pretty and awesome, I totally wanted to umm...I don't know exactly what I wanted, I was 11. I just knew that I wanted to hang out with this girl.
One day my best buddy came up to me and was like "Rob, I talked to Girl, she said if you asked her out she would say yes!" My heart started to race, "Really, seriously she said that?!" My friend continued "Yeah, you have to meet her after school to ask her out!" I was so friggen pumped about this, I couldn't believe this was going to happen, I was going to go on a date with the girl of my dreams!
I couldn't sit still in class, I couldn't wait till the day was over and I could get this thing going. I was nervous as balls, but my best bud said it was a sure thing, what could go wrong? The bell rang and school was over, by this time a few kids had caught wind of what was going on and they had decided to come check out the show. I gathered my buddies and we sought out to find my lady. We walked out onto the playground. I spotted her, it was go time! I was ridiculously nervous, but I hulked up and just went for it. I started walking over to the girl, I'm leading an army of like 6 boys, we are making a b-line towards her and all her friends. She looks up and sees me coming. I smile. She turns to her friend, they have a brief conversation. She looks back at me. I smile. A look of panic comes across on her face. I smile. She hesitates for a second...she turns around...and she takes the eff off! Bitch sprints straight off the playground and as she fades from sight my heart crumbles...I'm left standing there, a broken man. What the hell had just happened?
Well what had happened is that my best buddy and her best buddy had talked about my situation and tried to set us up. He made up all this shit about her being all into me and that if I asked her on a date I was golden. Friggen bullshit man, such bullshit! This plan was a disaster. I don't think they really thought it through. Like, what would happen if Girl decided to freak out and run away? I was crushed man, so humiliated! That is not how you set someone up Eric! No, not at all, that is how you embarrass the hell outta an already self conscious little kid. Eff you Eric, you're such a dick!
I had completely forgot about this until mile 17 of a 20miler this weekend. When this memory resurfaced I immediately turned bright red and felt an immense amount of shame. It was brutal, but I also think this answers a lot of questions about why I am so awkward around girls. So basically what had happened is that my best friend tried to help me score a chick, instead he ends up humiliating me and sabotaging my game...for the rest of my life!
Well, I gotta go bust out some 300's on the track. Gonna keep relying on the only way I've been able to get girls over the past ten years, Speed Goggles!
Have a great one.

-rob-

Blog #62

2012-02-03T10:24:00.000-05:00

Hey, blog #62 coming at ya. So Last week I was lucky enough to have an entire thread on the LetsRun message board dedicated to me! If you are unaware of letsrun than you should know that I am being incredibly sarcastic here. As soon as I saw my name in the thread headline I was just like "oh crap, this can't be good" I was right, it wasn't. I was thoroughly and mercilessly torn apart. I had a few brave souls stick up for me, that was nice. But the general theme of the thread was less than positive. I was called crazy, slow, ugly, stupid and impotent even, well not impotent but I wouldn't put it past those slimy trolls. Luke S. started this thread. Luke is a good kid and he started the thread with good intentions, but Luke clearly doesn't know how the LetsRun MB works, if I ever see Luke in public I am punching him in the dick. That message board is scary man, nobody is safe, nobody! They will find a way to talk shit about anybody, no matter how fast you are, no matter how much you've accomplished, you are never safe from those losers. People really can be mean when they are anonymous and there is no chance of facing repercussion for their statements, bunch of jerks. Yeah, so that actually didn't bother me at all, it was pretty funny stuff and it sent a whole lotta people over here to the blog. I'm still gonna punch Luke in the dick though.
Last weekend I went to one of the coolest things ever. This was something that I didn't even know existed before last weekend, probably something that most dudes have never heard of, but holy balls man, it was awesome! What was it? A Bridal Showcase, yeah you read that right, a motherfricken Bridal Showcase! Sister Kristen works for a bridal shop so she was working at this thing as a wedding dress model and she grabbed me a ticket. I had nothing else going on so I figured I'd might as well check it out and make fun of Kristin in her dress. Man am I ever happy I decided to go, it was money man, so friggen money! If you are a single dude I would highly recommend that you check out one of the these things ASAP.
So I walked into this place and the first thing I notice is that there are just tonnes of super cute girls, girls everywhere! of course many of them were the brides to be, but for each BTB there were like 4 giddy friends accompanying her. Chicks love weddings and they flocked to this thing in droves. Oh yeah, and these were southern girls too, southern girls love to dress up and they have really cute accents. Southern girls are hot. So yeah, just a tonne of hot southern belles frolicking all over the damn place. It was rad, if there were any other random solo dudes there we totally would have high fived, but I'm pretty certain I was the only dude who made a solo mission to this thing. All the other guys were either working or they had been dragged there by their BTB, it was clear that the soon to be married guys were having vastly different experiences at this bridal show than I was, they all pretty much looked like they wanted to kill themselves. Poor bastards.
After I spent a few minutes being creepy as hell checking out girls (I am a coward and I clearly wasn't going to actually talk to any girls!), I wandered around to see what this show was all about. Here is something I quickly figured out; the wedding industry is friggen competitive. There were so many different wedding specialty businesses at this thing. And these folks were all fighting for the same clientele, so they had to stand out, they had to figure out a way to lure people to their booths. So what is the best way to persuade people to come talk to you? Free stuff! just offer free shit and people will flock. That is a scientific fact! And the free stuff of choice at bridal shows is food. there was so much amazing food. I'm talking cakes, cookies, ice cream, chocolates...everything. I just kept eating, it was too good, I couldn't stop. I was actually kinda disgusted by the level of gluttony that I was achieving. Not really though. I even scored a glass of champagne, and it had a raspberry in it! why was there a raspberry in this champagne? I don't know why, but it was delicious and goddamn was it ever classy!
So here I was just blindly going from cake station to cookie lady to ice cream dude and so forth when I got kinda disoriented and ended up wandering outside. Well hot damn, what do you suppose was going on out there? Yeah,more food! There was an entire giant friggen buffet of normal food out there. But not just normal normal food, Amazing normal food! There was shrimp and grits, some sorta lobster quiche thing, some dumplings and stuff like that, I ate duck! I've never had duck before, but there it was. They killed a duck, took off its feathers, disposed of its beak, cooked it up, then put it on a cracker, it was simple and it was divine. I definitely gotta eat more duck. I love bridal shows. Sister Kristin came and hung out with me after she was done work and it gave me all the more reason to visit all the best booths again, it was great, I had so much fun.
Okay, gonna go get on some training, 10weeks, nice.
Hey! before ya go checkout this quick little chat I did with mt buddies at RunnersFeed.com: http://runnersfeed.com/a-brief-chat-with-rob-watson-letting-his-brother-take-the-reigns/
Good dudes over there at RunnersFeed, they're gonna help me out a bit and give this here blog a bit of a face lift. Okay, out!
Have a great week.

-rob-

Kristin and I killing the Bridal Showcase

Blog #61

2012-01-27T13:37:00.001-05:00

Alright, so lets have an update shall we. Where to start, well we'll start with the obvious. After I finished my huge mileage last week my leg promptly blew up and I had to take 5 days off, that was annoying, but hardly surprising. I've always wanted to run a 180mile week, so I did. And now that I have done that I know that it is really, really hard and kinda unnecessary. 160 will be just fine from here on out.

I went to a physio therapist when my leg exploded. Man, those people are amazing, so smart! PT's are a godsend. The human body is a crazy thing, and the most frustrating part for us runners is that whatever it is that we have hurting is generally not what is actually hurt. So your knee hurts? Cool, that's because your opposite hip is tight! Huh? How does that work? I don't know, but physios do, and that is why they are rad! It is so important to have a good physio, I've been working with BST in Guelph for years now and she is fantastic. But since I'm down here right now I had to go to a new dude. At first I was apprehensive with my choice because he was rocking Vibrams. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt and he ended up being brilliant. Brian (the Physio) was able to pick up on such a slight little hitch, then he connected it to this, and this was causing that and so forth and so on. And after a bunch of twisting and loosening I walked out of the clinic right as rain. It was fantastic. Balanced PT down here in Carborro fixed me up good and I'm rolling again, awesome. Sometimes a little forced break is alright. I probably needed it physically, and mentally it reminded me just how much I want this. Onward to Rotterdam!

Another update. I'm no longer working with DST or the SpeedRiver Crew. Just needed a change. I am going to miss the holy hell outta my dudes in the river though. Some of the best friends a guy could ask for. Whether it be pounding out some miles on the trails, or slamming back some pints at the bar, those bastards are top notch. But ever since Kyle Boorsma grabbed my balls that one time things have just been weird, and well one of had to go! Just kidding, Kyle and I got over that ball grabbing episode a long time ago. I still believe that SpeedRiver is the best club in the country. They have the best athletes in the country and they have some of the best coaches in the country. If anyone asked me where in Canada they should train I would not hesitate to send em' to the river. But man, sometimes ya just gotta try new things. So that's that. onward to Rotterdam!
During this transition it is quite convenient that I have a kick ass coach as a brother. It is also convenient that said brother spent a few years hanging around Dieter Hogan and his Kimbia crew while they were kicking ass and taking names in all the major marathons. Dude knows the Marathon. So dude is my new coach. Now I'm not saying that I'm gonna all of a sudden become a superstar, because DST sure knows the marathon also. Just saying that I trust the plan that Pete will give me and I'm excited to give something new a try, he's also kinda a hard ass so he'll keep me in line no doubt. Sister Kristen is gonna be my strength coach. She is damn good at all that fitness and strength stuff. We went to yoga the other night. I like yoga, but I always find it to be incredibly humbling. I am terribly inflexible, so generally just touching my toes is a chore. In yoga if I can rock a half decent Downward dog than I'll chalk the class up as a success.
So here we are doing this class, and we're supposed to be bending this and tucking that, all whilst keeping our auras aligned mind you. And I can't do it. I just can't. These bends are not natural! I am convinced that the instructor was messing with us or something. The positions she wanted us to mold into just weren't gonna happen, it's physically impossible! So I stop, sit down, then glance around the class...Everyone, and I mean everyone is nailing these poses! I can't believe it. I was literally the worst Yoga-er in the whole damn class. It was a damn embarrassment. But I will keep going back. I refuse to be defeated by yoga...I also like the way those pants make girls bums look.

Yeah so Team Watson is ready to roll. Let's hit it folks. One last shot at it. Onward to Rotterdam!

-rob-

Blog #60

2012-01-19T12:39:00.000-05:00

Sometime during my 4th mile interval yesterday...
Left Leg: "Oh shit, do you feel that?"
Right Leg: "Yeah, man it's coming"
Left Leg: "Wow, I have not felt this in a while, I forgot how much this sucks"
Right Leg: "Yeah, this is brutal. Dude, it's really flooding in over here!"
Left Leg: "Yeah, it's coming in pretty quick, let me ask Brain what to do. Hey Brain!"
Brain: "Yeah Legs, what's up?"
Left Leg: "umm...we're getting some pretty good lactic buildup down here, what should we do?"
Brain: "Yeah, umm...just try to keep going, it'll be alright"
Left Leg: "Huh? really? That's the plan? Come on man we need some help, I don't think it's gonna be alright at all. It's really burning."
Brain: "Yeah sorry guys, I made this kid go out way to hard. Gonna be straight with ya here- he's in a whole heap of trouble"
Left Leg: "Are you serious? why did you do that?"
Brain: "I dunno, you guys just felt so fresh and frisky at the start, figured we'd give it a go."
Left Leg: "Dude! how many times do we have to have this talk? Save some friggen energy for the end! Geez!...well we can make it through this one, can't promise much more after that. How many more after this one?"
Brain: "Four."
Left Leg: "Four! oh sweet Jesus! what the hell Brain!? You've done it this time man, you've really screwed up here. You are a real bastard you know that? this kid man, this kid just wants to run fast, but ya just keep making him do dumb shit! Ya keep screwing him over. what the hell were you thinking? There is no way we can handle this for four more!"
Brain: "Yeah sorry...I...I umm...I screwed up pretty good here this time, you guys are pretty effed, this kid is effed. I promise though guys, I promise this is the last time."
Left Leg: "Bullshit man, that is such bullshit! You seriously do this to us all the time!"
Brain: "yeah, yeah I do. Sorry guys, I'm not a very good brain, I have some issues I really need to work on, I'm sorry I've let ya down, I feel terrible, maybe we should just go home..."
Left Leg: "Eff that man, no way. You got us into this mess now you gotta get us out of it. You can't just puss out because it is getting hard. That's not the way we roll. Here's the deal, me and Righty down here are straight effed', so now it's up to you to get us through this. Dig in man, suck it up we gotta finish this sucker!"
Brain: "Alright, I'll see what I can do..."
So my workout yesterday was difficult and my lack of pacing and self control made it that much harder. I ran my first few intervals to fast and then suffered greatly for the rest of the workout. Ended up averaging 4:38 for 8xmile, I'm happy with it. But, it is kinda frustrating when you start hurting 200m into your 4th interval, and you know that you have no one to blame but yourself. I am seriously so dumb sometimes. Overall though I got some really good stimulus and had to focus pretty good to get it done properly, great day of training overall.
Yeah so Here I am, still down in the NC. I think I need a hobby, or a job or maybe even just a nice southern girl to hang out with. But whatever it is, I need something folks, I need a distraction! When my days revolve solely around running, well than that is all I'm gonna do. Sure, you may be wondering what the problem is with that, isn't that why I quit my job and headed south in the first place? Didn't I wanna just focus on my training? well, technically yeah. But I tend to go a little bit overboard sometimes. For example; my last 7days I have run 182miles, 182miles! That is 292kms! That just isn't smart, not smart at all! (oh man, sorry coach, I am totally getting an e-mail over this!) I was hoping to eventually get in some 160+mile weeks, but 182 right off the bat!? Not cool man. And if ya know me than you know what I'm thinking right? Yeah, 292km is nice, but a 300km week would be cool, and than hell 300km is pretty damn close to 200miles, so why the hell not!? I'll tell ya why the hell not! Because that nonsense is a slippery slope man, and much like a literal slippery slope, if I go down it there is a hell of a good chance that I'm breaking my friggen leg in the process. So like I said before, I need a distraction. Back when I was working I would always do a morning run, but I'd only go like 7-9miles because I had to get to work on time(ish). But now what do I have to do all day? Nothing! The weather is beautiful and the trails are wicked, so why not go for a nice little 90min morning run just for the hell of it. Then I get home and I just eat a bunch of food and watch TV all day. Eventually it is time for run number 2, and I am full of energy because I haven't done anything all day. So then I put in another 90 just to burn some energy. It is stupid. I'm stupid. And what makes things worse sometimes is that the one activity that I may actually do consists of me walking to a coffee shop and just drinking coffee for a few hours. Yeah, just load upon caffeine, great idea! That is when the 30mile days start happening...But whatever, eventually my legs will rebel and I'll have to chill out a bit. But until then go big or go home right?

So I may not be the brightest, but as a somewhat seasoned runner I do know that recovery is important. Recovery and rest folks, we spend so much time breaking it down, it needs a little time to build back up. So for the next video in my NC Diaries I present to you the art of recovery, this is science, don't question it!
Thanks fer stopping by! cheers.

Blog #59

2012-01-13T16:26:00.000-05:00

Every so often here at blog headquarters I go and check someof the fancy stats that pertain to le blog. I check hit count, location of hits,referring sites and so forth, but my favourite thing to check is the searchwords people have used to find their way here. Usually it is simple andstraight forward like “Leblogdurob” or “Rob Watson, blog” Those people were clearly looking to get here (and congrats for finding your way!) but then thereare some results from people who obviously had no intention on coming here atall. Somehow through the mysteries of the internet though, this is where they endup. I wanna take a second to welcome allthose random folk. To those of you who are probably slightly upset that youhave not found what you initially set out to find, welcome! To those of you who are just blindly ridingthe internet search engine wave, welcome to leblog. To the guy who got here by accident while searching “is boxing painful?” welcome. But let's stop here, let’s take asecond “is boxing painful” Guy. Seriously? Did you really have to turn tothe internet to find out if boxing is painful? Do you know what boxing is? Do younot understand that literally the only goal in that sport is to hurt the otherguy? Boxing is a sport in which two guys go into a ring and then proceed to puncheach other in the face until one of them falls over due to the massive beatingthat they have just sustained. Getting punched in the face is painful, it is actually very painful. Although I suppose the moreproficient you become in the boxing game, the less you will be punched in theface, and therefore the less pain you will feel. So I’ll answer that question for yabuddy. Yes, boxing is painful. But if you insist on trying it I advise that youbecome really good as to make it less painful, also maybe stick to only boxingreally weak, possibly blind and even old people as to further reduce the risk ofpain.
To the person who stumbled upon this site after searching "Partying in Guelph". Welcome! Although this blog is not what you were looking for at all, I should let you know that I would be happy to party with you in Guelph. If you are between the ages of 19-24 we can go party at one of the kids bars, maybe Vinyl. Yeah, That place sucks so bad. Sloppy drunk chicks and tonnes of douchey bro dudes. We can buy cheap beer, have some jagger bombs and than throw up in an alley. If you are 25-32 we're gonna go to the Albion, I like that place. We can pay more for our beer, do some jagger bombs and then wait till we get home to throw up. And finally if you are between 33-80 we can go party at Shakespeare's, I've been there once after 7pm and it appears to be the place where all the old people hang out. We can have some reasonably priced beer, some Jagger bombs and maybe even a glass of scotch. but we'll be smart and stop before we puke. We will however proceed to drunk drive to get home. Seriously, I went there that one time and the parking lot was full, but everyone inside was clearly hammered, then when we left everyone was gone and so were their cars! It was troubling. That was also the night when some really drunk guy challenged Milne to a race. Milne crushed him, it was hilarious.

Finally to the guy who got here by searching “Calves sucking balls”please go away and never come back. I want to give you the benefit of the doubthere and assume you meant that your calves hurt a lot and you were just ventingsome frustration in the way you phrased your search request. But we all knowwhat you really wanted to find, and that disturbs me. It's just plain sick man! whatthe hell is wrong with you?

Alright, so after some frustration, heart ache and otherstuff I find myself in North Carolina. I was getting ready to suck it up andgrind out a Guelph winter, but the parents would have none of it. Theyabsolutely insisted that I get my ass on a plane and fly down here. So I did,because even though I may be 28 my parents are still running the show. Myparents are wicked, I love those people more than Milne loves old PatrickSwayze movies (That is a lot!).

I’m gonna be down here for 8weeks. Unfortunately BrotherPete has skipped town so it is just Sister Kristin and the two dogs here withme in the Hill. Pete had to take off to The University of Virginia to coachthere. I could tell you all exactly why he left, and exactly what happened, butI’d prefer not to. I want to continue to be amused by all the idiots on letsrunspouting out their own random theories.

So Reider is in Kenya and getting in some sick training.Gilly boy will be holding down the fort in Guelph, doing work out there on the“P” no doubt. And I’m down here doing what I can. We will all meet up back inthe Guelph in March and it will be beautiful. I’m gonna miss the dudes, but hopefullythis time around I’ll get fit enough that when I get back I’ll be able to keepthose two bastards within sight during our workouts.

Shout out to Milne, dude ran a very fast 1000m last weekend.It may be going to head though. Over the last few days before I left he wasconstantly walking around the house with shirt off and referring to himself as“Mr. 2:20”. He did the same thing after he passed his driver’s test last year(“Mr. G”) Dude is fit as hell, but it was getting kinda weird. He also madesure to send me off in style by hammering me on a pretty tough workout onMonday. Mr.2:20 is gonna have a great year I think.

Anyways, so yeah just gonna be down here. I wanna run fastin April, so I gotta put in some nasty work right now. DST is the man with theplan, I just gotta execute. It’ll be a mixture Mixture of Jedi and Rocky IVtype shit (as suggested by some comments by you folks). I'm also gonna put together some pretty inspirational videos that document my training. The first one can be seen right down there, it goes over my intense strength training regime. Another motivation isthe fact that they have NewBelgium beer down here. There is no denying thatfact that I will drink a lot of it. So Igotta make damn sure that I earn every single drop by putting in ample time onthe roads. Sister Kristin is going to mother the hell outta me, I’m gonna walksome dogs, I’m gonna run alot and I’m gonna drink beer. Life is good, I’m a spoiled little brat. Nomore complaining from me, I promise!
Alright, have a good one, gotta go put in some miles.

-rob-

Blog #58

2012-01-06T15:01:00.001-05:00

Holy shitshow batman! Sorry for the break folks. The last few weeks has been just silly, straight up wonky! So I went to Vancouver with the lady, that was an awesome trip I had so much fun, her family were a bunch of friggen saints. Honestly and truly, just good people. I'm pretty sure that they thought I was an alright dude also. The nanny even hooked me up with a bunch of socks and delicious cookies for xmas. That nanny, she was rad, I loved her. It was all good in Vancouver, top notch indeed! I spent actual Christmas up in the mountains with brother Mike. We drank a whole lotta beer, listened to music and had a frozen pizza for Christmas dinner (sorry mom). Mike is an amazing artist, and I hope to hell one day he has the chance to show off his stuff, he blew me away with his talents up there in those mountains. That was awesome.
I also got in some very, very good training on the west coast. Lots of miles on some of the nicest trails that North America has to offer. Basically, the Vancouver/Pemberton part of my break was been rad.
I even got an old buddy from high school so drunk that he threw up all over his own coat at the bar. Good on him for not wanting to throw up all over the bar, he aimed for his own jacket instead. What a gentleman!

Brother Mike and I doing Christmas right!

But then I came back to Ontario. Oh, crap folks. Here is where I start to feel sorry for myself, and here is where this blog post gets pretty damn emo (sorry) So we get back on the 31st and first thing to happen is that I get dumped. Seriously who gets dumped on New Years Eve? Come on Lady! I mean sure, it is good to start the new year with a clean slate, but how about a little buffer? I was really looking forward to partying and having a good time to celebrate the New Year. Kinda hard when ya just got dumped! Actually, it wasn't that bad at all, the now ex and I still partied and still had fun. She is a hell of a girl and we'll still be buds, I just don't get to see her naked anymore, so lame! We even went and saw HappyFeet2 the next day, what a cute little movie. Seriously though, this is a call to every other woman in my life; I need some back up here! I should not be turning to Jane to get advice and support on how to get over...Jane! that makes absolutely no sense, no sense at all! But this is what is happening, she is helping me, to get over her. It's friggen confusing.

Me: "you are a bitch, you broke my heart"

Her: "I know I am, it's okay, you're such a good dude, you're gonna be fine"

Me: "What the hell is going on here?"

That was annoying, but that shit happens all the time, poor me. So then I get back to Guelph and I'm just not feeling right, I feel like I may need a change. Feel like I gotta get outta here for a while. Remember a few blogs ago when I talked about how awesome my job was, and how much I loved everyone I work with? Yeah, well I quit that job. The grind was getting to me. I think I want a job in the area of my expertise (running) I'm looking into that as we speak. Anyone got any suggestions?

So I will admit, at this point my head is not quite right. I have a sad heart, I have caught some sorta sickness and I just hate the cold and snow. Needless to say I'm game for anything that will make me feel even the slightest bit better. And then I get a phone call;

Brother Pete: "Hey Robbie, heard yer in a funk"

Me: "Yep"

Brother Pete: "Come to North Carolina"

Me: "Okay"

So here I am, I'm single and unemployed. I have three months until my next Marathon (Rotterdam, April 15th) and I have nothing really holding me in Guelph, why the hell not just get the hell outta town for a while? Give it all I got for one last shot at it. Yep, that is totally what I am going to do. I'm outta here, I am headed down to North Carolina for a few months. Gonna just train, relax and try to wrap my head around life, I am really looking forward to it. I feel good. Wait! Hold the phone there Watson;

Canadian Tire: "Hello, we switched out you tires, but we noticed some very serious problems with your vehicle"

Rob: "alright, what do we got?"

Canadian Tire: "Well, where to begin...blah, blah, blah..."

Rob: "Oh Shit, that doesn't sound good. How much we looking"

Canadian Tire: "More than you can afford"

Rob: "Oh shit, that is more than I can afford"

Oh no, my car, my beloved Dieter is very sick. Looks like I'm grounded folks. Looks like I may be sticking around the Guelph for a little while. What to do? I know! I am going to friggen run. I am going to train my balls off and run myself ragged. Three months folks. The next three months are dedicated to operation "run yer balls off". I love running and right now that is all I wanna do. My head is cloudy and I'm not too sure where this is all headed. Just gonna try to control what I can and let the chips fall as they may.

I like that plan, I feel at peace with that plan. Maybe I can't just jump ship and just run away from my problems. I guess Sometimes ya gotta hang around and gut it out. Sometimes ya gotta stop being a little bitch and man the eff up! Life is hard sometimes, and life can be very frustrating. Things don't always work out the way ya want it to. But in time I'm sure I can make it all work out. I have good friends, great family and possibly the nicest ex-girlfriend in the world to get me through all this non sense. I'm not happy today, but I know I will be soon. In the words of a great man I know. "Sometimes to have a rainbow ya need a little rain"

Good god that was a cheesy post. Give me a week to get back on the training and I'll be back with some good shit to talk about.

-rob-

Blog #57

2011-12-09T13:13:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I do questionable things and sometimes I make stupid decisions. And well, next week I am doing one of those questionable things, and it was all set up by one of those stupid decisions. I have set myself up for disaster people, and I hope to hell that I can make it through this ordeal relatively unscathed. In typical Rob fashion this is all the result of one of my favourite vices. No, not liquor this time. It's all because of a pretty girl.
So here is the deal, I am headed out to Vancouver next week. Why am I going to Vancouver? Well a lady I dig is going there, so I'm going also, I wanna hang out with her. That makes sense for the most part right? But here is the terrifying part. Said ladies parents live in Vancouver, and it is inevitable that I am gonna meet these parents. Whatever, not a huge deal usually...usually! But not this time. You see, this girl is pretty damn awesome and smart and accomplished. The Mom is damn smart and accomplished, and awesome, and the Dad may or may not be the smartest most accomplished and awesome dude out there. Then there is me, not so smart, awesome nor accomplished. I am lacking confidence in my ability to win over these parents. I'm pretty sure that this girl likes me, so I can count on her for back up (I hope). But man, it is hard to make struggling, semi-pro runner sound very appealing to parents. Questions will be asked, and I'll be under some intense scrutiny. They're gonna want to know what I do, what I plan on doing and what I have done thus far. And right now the answers are not much, I dunno and not much (again). So now you see why this is a questionable trip, and buying that plane ticket may have been a stupid decision. It is a train wreck waiting to happen. I think maybe I should figure out a way to get on the no-fly list or something. Wait, No! It won't let it go down this way. I will fight this, I gotta make this trip awesome! And the only way to do so is to make myself appear to be more rad than I actually am. It's gonna take some planning, some acting, some bullshitting and some luck. Well, probably a lot of luck.
Okay, so here is where we stand;
Dad; "so Rob, what do you want to do with your life?"
Rob; *blank stare* "Uhh..." *thinking really hard* "umm..." *starting to panic* "well..." *knocks drink over on purpose in hopes of diverting attention*
Let's fix this. I need a plan man, I need to become awesome and smart and accomplished in the next three or four days. Okay. Let's see here. First I need a better job. Now don't get me wrong, being a runner is awesome. I will let it be known that I dig running and I'm serious about it. People tend to respect runners. But when you're not actually very fast and ya don't really make much money than pro runner as a "job" is kinda lame. I am technically also a "shop technician" this could be good because it is vague as hell and not very exciting. But I think I'm gonna take a different approach here. I'm gonna start allowing ads and shit on the blog. I'll make like $2.50/month from that. My blog will be making me money, and therefore technically I will be a pro writer. Yeah, the mom will totally dig that. I'll play the starving artist angle. The whole idea of being a starving artist is kinda romantic. It means that I'm misunderstood and others can't grasp my depth, or vision...or some shit like that. Being a starving runner just means you're slow. Okay good, going with writer from here on out. I'm ready for the first question;
Dad; "So Rob, what do you do?"
Rob: "Well I am quite serious about pursuing my running aspirations, but technically I guess you can say I am a writer. Sure I don't make much, but it's not about the money. I just feel the need to express myself and hopefully one day I will catch a break"
Ha, That is such bullshit. Being a fake writer is rad.
Okay next I gotta appear smarter than I actually am. I'm gonna build on my existing intellect and the vast knowledge base that I developed whilst earning a history degree from a State school, so this shouldn't be too hard at all. First thing I'll do is read a hell of a lot of random Wikipedia articles, gain some general knowledge there. I am also gonna check out a thesaurus, find some smart words that I can spout out here and there. And quotes! Man, quotes are gold! Such a good tool for faking the smartness- just find something that some legit smart person said and use it. But make sure to reference the quote. Smart people dig referencing. The most important part of this fake smart part will be making it seem natural. It is key to be really nonchalant whilst doing this. Can't force the smartness. Here we go.
Dad: "So Rob, what do you want to do with your life?"
Rob: "Well, I'm just striving to maximize my athletic potential and continue to pursue my creative endeavors (remember, I'm also a writer now), I will worry about the future when it is the present. I believe that Mark Twain once said; "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover" That is what I want from my life, I want to Explore. Dream and Discover"
Man, that is some good fake smartness! Kinda makes me sound like I have my shit together. Haha, nope!
Okay, now that I have a new job and I'm smart I need to appear accomplished. This is gonna be harder now that they can simply check the internet to verify my story. Well I'll do this first and see if any other Rob Watsons have done awesome things. Give me a minute...Okay so apparently there is a Rob Watson who is a producer, composer and keyboard(?) player and he did some cool stuff. There is even a Wikipedia article on this guy with no picture, sweet. Now as far as the parents are concerned I am the guy who worked on the soundtrack of such films as The Simpsons and Pokemon 2000. unfortunately, that is the best I could come up with. all the other Rob Watsons are lame or have pictures of themselves on their sites, and all the other Robin Watsons happen to be women (except for this guy). My accomplishments from the fake Rob Watsons are pretty weak. I think I'll also throw in that I have a black belt in karate (I took classes for one week when I was 6) and I once met Stone Cold Steve Austin (He was walking through a Casino and I drunkingly yelled some stuff at him). I should also make a fake Wikipedia page talking about a bunch of awesome shit that I have (not)done. That should be adequate.
Alright folks looks like have things covered, good...well actually damn, that seems like a lot of work. Screw it. I figure I'm a decently neat dude, I'll probably just stick to classic Rob and hope for the best. I make the daughter happy, that has to count for something right?
Running update! Had a good week last week, pretty uneventful just ran a whole bunch and got back on my regular running routine. I'm digging this and I'm pumped about my prospects headed into this next build up. I have been getting a tonne of support and guidance from Reider and Gillis, the experience and knowledge that those dudes can share with me is pretty rad. They are great mentors. Yeah so if anyone out in the Van wants to hit up a run let me know. I've got 140 miles to put in next week so It'd be nice to have company for a few of em'.
Over and out hombres.

-rob-

Blog #56

2011-12-07T12:30:00.001-05:00

Alright, so I get to start training hard again! I was super pumped about that on Monday. Now it's Wednesday and I'm tired and I don't really wanna play anymore. I laid in bed for an hour today before finally getting my lazy ass up for my morning run, my 7miler was a painful 49min shuffle, and when I got home I laid on my floor for another 20min just because it seemed like a good thing to do. I was very late for work today. This stuff is hard...and I'm only three days in! I blame this new strength and mobility routine that I just started doing. This routine in quite difficult and very humbling. All sorts of squats and lunges and balancing and jumping and other shit. It is really exposing how pathetically weak and uncoordinated I have become. I used to fancy myself as somewhat of an athlete. I was clearly delusional, because man, if it is not running in a straight line from point A to point B then I am friggen useless. I am now even avoiding running on tracks because the turns make my hips tight. Tight hips from gradual turns! Oh god, It is depressing. Not only has this routine made my athletic shortcomings painfully obvious, it has also caused me to be in a near permanent state of rigour mortis for the past two weeks. I feel like an 80yr old. Last but not least it has apparently also turned me into a whiny bitch. Sorry.
So the Marathon eh? back at it for another go. Third times a charm. Yeah that is a saying that I have been hearing a lot lately. People will be like "you running another marathon?" and I say "yeah" and then they look at me, and with a mixture of sympathy and pity in their eyes they say "well I'm sure you'll do great, third times a charm!" I don't like that saying, it is just something you say to someone who has sucked at something twice already and is to stupid to just move on. I'm pretty sure at this point I don't even like this event. I'm not even running it because I want to. I want to run a fast marathon just for spite. I am going to run a fast marathon just to show that bastard that it does not completely own me. Because as of now, the marathon certainly does own me. It has bent me over pretty severely twice now. My goal is to finish my next marathon in a solid time, give that event the finger, then become a miler. The mile is sexy, chicks dig the mile.
Seriously though, I am off my 6weeks of dick around time and ready to roll again. And I certainly am looking forward to cranking out the work and attacking this marathon game again. That was the best downtime that I have ever had. I partied a lot, had a lot of fun and I met some awesome new friends, now I am refreshed both mentally and physically. Time to get at it. We have a tentative plan right now and it's all systems go. Gotta get the mileage back up here for a few weeks, gonna loose a few pounds and shed this little beer gut I grew, then the marathon grind is back on. Sweet man, at it!
So that was a little running update. I figure that I'll probably give a little write up each week talking about my training and such. I generally don't talk to much about running because I find it boring, but I really like conversing with all you fine folks about the trials and tribulations that we all go through as runners. It is a cool sport because pretty much everyone can relate to each other on one level or another. We all basically go through the same stuff, both the highs and lows. Also I am about to become a very boring person and I'll probably have nothing else to write about!
Hmm...Do I actually have any non-running stuff to talk about? Oh man, so it has already begun, boring training Rob is here. Crap. umm...well, sonofabitch. back to work I guess.
Bye.

-rob-

Blog #55

2011-11-28T13:44:00.001-05:00

Alright, it's been a while. Suppose I should get on this blog. Here we go!

So I went to Japan last week. That place is awesome, but geeze louise, it is far away! I am not a huge fan of travelling to begin with, and man the flight over there was pretty friggen terrible. The Toronto-Vancouver part was fine. But then we had a quick little12hr jaunt over the Pacific. It was only supposed to be like 10-11hrs, but we hit some weather or something coming into Tokyo and we got put in this holding pattern. We kept circling the city until it was cool to land. Usually that wouldn't be a big deal, but we were circling around in the worst turbulence I have ever experienced. That plane was being tossed around like a son of a bitch. It just kept jerking and dipping and shaking and all that jazz, our plane basically had a violent seizure for like an hour. As the plane was bouncing around I was getting progressively sicker and sicker, I tried my hardest to hold it all in. I just kept telling myself that we would be on the ground soon and things would be fine. I think there was quite a few people going through the same thing as me, because when the captain came on and told us we'd be circling for another 30min all hell broke loose. And that hell came in the form of massive amounts of puke. That message broke our spirit and people just started to throw the eff up! It was chaos, disgusting vomit filled chaos! It was reminiscent of right around shot number 85 of the century club back in University, as soon as the first person blew it was go time man, puke everywhere. I really feel for the poor bastards that had to clean up that plane. Good god, that would have sucked so bad!

So that part was rough, everything else was awesome though. That was probably the most fun I have had on a national team trip. We had a great group of folks on the team. It was really cool having the River crew there with Milne, Moults and Snider. But everyone else was awesome also. Shout out to my girls Merchant, Woodak-Fraser, Vaughn-Beasly and Pidrehghehgsky. Maybe a few spelling mistakes in those names but whatever, you know who you are. Good stuff. Also shout out to rookie-bitch Terrance, quiet kid but a good dude. Wanna welcome PT Ron O'hare to the speed river family also. He was there in Japan to take care of us physically, but he also kinda messed with us mentally by smashing us all in ping pong and making us feel like losers before the race even started, seriously that guy beat the shit outta all of us. Complete ping pong domination by the Ron. And also thanks to Thelma, that lady is a firecracker, so much positive energy from such a small being. Oh yeah, also wanna thank my new Japanese friend Hana, she was my personal minion before the race. Every athlete was assigned a small Japanese child that followed us around everywhere and made sure we were good to go. It was awkward at first as she was a 12yr old Japanese girl who spoke no english and the only words I new in Japanese were "hello" and "thank you". But then we bonded over her love of 80's rock music and smart phones. She also gave me a bunch of chocolate covered almonds which I was afraid to turn down in fears of offending her. Not the best thing to eat 20min before the race, they were delicious though.

Alright lets talk about the race. Race was good, team did okay and I think everyone had fun. My individual leg was decent. Coming in I was kinda fit but I really had no expectations, the plan was pretty much just run hard. I didn't run particularly fast but I ran pretty hard and it hurt pretty good. I did a nice little FFTF type style. The American team got the sash 12seconds ahead of me so I spent the 1st part of the race trying to run that guy down. I finally got him around 5km which I passed in 14:30. It hurt, I'm kinda sad that a 14:30 put so much crap in my legs, but man it really did. So then I basically just raced the Yank and ended up out kicking him at the end. I was pumped about that because I haven't outkicked anyone for like 4years. My leg was 29:47 (do the math...yeah huge positive split!)

I did get my heart broken a little bit out there though. Do you know those vibram shoes? you know the ones that look like gloves for your feet. The minimalist shoes that are all the craze right now. Yeah, I can't stand those shoes man. I hate em', so ugly and it seems like everyone who wears em' can't stop talking about how awesome their shoes are, and how natural they make running feel and blah, blah, blah. Minimalist stuff is quite the craze right now. All this talk about how we have evolved to walk and run in our bare feet and how shoes are the enemy and so forth and so on. Sure, fair enough, maybe the human species has evolved that way. But if you as an individual have literally been wearing shoes your whole entire life and than all of a sudden you start doing the barefoot thing you're gonna mess with your own unique bio mechanical patterns. If you put in any sort of decent volume you need real shoes with real support or you're gonna break your self.

*note, I have no actual science or evidence to support this rant. It just my personal opinion on the lameness of vibrams and minimalism as a whole.

So yeah, I had come to the conclusion that the Vibrams were kinda just a gimmick and no real runners would wear them. Well shit man, in that race I got absolutely stomped by a dude wearing Vibrams! Some Aussie rocking Vibrams man, he kicked my ass. They got the sash 5seconds up on us and I figured I'd just hammer him. But he just torched that thing and absolutely destroyed me. Score one for the Vibrams, I'm confused by it. Maybe I'll start putting in some miles in my NB Minimalist shoes. They are quite comfortable after all.

After the race there was an awesome banquet in which the Aussies won quite convincingly. Most of team Canada ran nats XC on the weekend so our party squad was depleted. Aussies and Kiwis are great people, I really got get down there are party with them. Do you another country that is awesome? Romania. The Romanian team was hilarious, they are my boys. I'm gonna facebook friend those crazy dudes.

We went to Tokyo the next day before we came home, and due to some communication errors ended up drinking a bit more sake than planned, we tried to order 4shots but ended up with 1litre, it ended up being awesome though, It was kinda trippy walking around that city with a fairly substantial buzz. Two things that really stood out were that people in Tokyo dress amazingly well and Japanese women are beautiful. Seriously, those ladies man, wow! Awesome. (Coolis, you're still top notch!) Tokyo is rad. I sure hope to go back some time.

Okay Friends, I'll talk to ya'll later. You Rock.

-rob-

Blog #54

2011-11-17T12:50:00.001-05:00

Maybe you have heard about this news story coming out of Toronto. The story about a school that has decided to ban balls. No, it's not becoming an all girls school! ha! (sorry, that was brutal). This school is banning the use of actual balls, you know, like the balls kids play with. A parent of a kid at this school was hit in the head by a wayward soccer ball and got a concussion. Unfortunate for sure, but instead of just chalking it up as an accident and moving on, the principal of this school has decided to ban the use of balls at school. No soccer balls, no basketballs they even banned tennis balls! Yeah, makes perfect sense, pretty flawless logic there. This is probably one of the biggest over reactions to anything, ever. If I were a kid from that school you'd be damn sure someone would be getting a concussion from a flying textbook pretty damn soon. Get those friggen things banned, they're dangerous! Clearly this principal is a huge idiot, and hopefully the parents will not stand for this shit and get the balls back at this school. Come on everyone, let's occupy Earl Beatty PS. get the balls back!
Seriously the principal said that balls are dangerous and that kids keep getting hurt and complaining. Good god, first off it is not the balls fault that these kids are complaining about being hurt. Some kids are just pussies. Whiny little bitches that will find anything to complain about. Balls are not at fault there. Also, balls are dangerous? Get the eff outta here lady! I guarantee you that some kid has fallen out of their chair at this school and hurt themselves, gonna ban chairs? This lady has to stop contributing in the pussification of our kids. This is an epidemic that is plaguing our society.
When I was a kid my school had a decent playground. There were old tires and shit to climb on, the slide was decent and there was some metal stuff to jump around on. Now that playground is a friggen embarrassment. They got rid of the cool slide and replaced it with a crappy boring slide. The tires are long gone and anything metal has been replaced with plastic. There is absolutely no way any kid could have fun on that lame ass playground, seriously, it sucks so much balls. Everyone is so afraid of kids getting hurt and lawsuits and stuff. That is a damn shame man. Our kids are missing out on valuable life lessons, kids are supposed to get hurt, it's part of childhood. You learn from that stuff. A kid will fall down and scrap their knee, they will cry for a minute or two then realize that it isn't too bad, suck it up and move on. I was by no means a tough kid, but I probably had a scab on my knee constantly from the ages of 6-12 and that was just the way things went down.
And balls man, kids need balls! Ball sports teach kids teamwork, leadership and it triggers their competitive instincts. I swear man, we just keep getting softer and softer. Kids are also getting fatter and fatter, but that is another rant all together, although I'm pretty certain that there is a pretty close relation to the fattening and the pussification of our kids. I'll save that for another day.
Anyways, this story is so friggen stupid. It makes me sad. As a dude who loves history I think it is safe to say that at this current moment our society is the most pussified that it has ever been. It's not even just kids, our entire society is soft man. It's just an attitude that people carry, everyone feels so entitled to shit. And when stuff is hard instead of just biting their lip and giving it hell we complain and whine and call lawyers. We hit the friggen jackpot by being born when we were and living where we do. Listen! Sometimes shit is gonna happen. Some really shitty shit for sure, but that is life. We can get through it, to take our lumps and move on, learn from the shit, get stronger from it. But remember how much it sucks and be there to help people when they are going through it themselves. Less complaining, more grinding.
We can learn a lot from old people, because old people are hard as hell. Anyone who lived during the wars is inherently tough as nails. Think about this, there were people who starting at the age of 18 went and fought in WWI, they survived that hell, came home and worked their balls off, then suffered through the friggen depression, then those damn Germans started shit again. So they took off for another war across the ocean.
Can you even comprehend that? That was the life that so many people had to go through. Those people are friggen hard! They are the reason we live in such an awesome country. Remember that people! Remember that when we are complaining about stupid, minute things. Old people are awesome.
I get the irony here that I am doing the exact thing that I am ranting against with all this complaining and whining. But whatever man, at least I know I'm a whiny bitch. So many people are oblivious to this fact.
What's going on here? I don't even know what I'm talking about any more.
So running is awesome eh? Right on. Okay some logistics. Hey don't ya'll love Nature? Nature is awesome (just covering my bases here, don't ask)
You all should follow a few running friends of mine on the Twitter. Lots of new twitter action recently from the river crew. We have Milne on the twitter; @taylorpmilne, Coach is on there @realdst, Hilary is pretty awesome follow her @hstellingwerff, John the Farmer has a fantastic blog and is now on the twitter also @jwmquality, and last but not least, my favourite female runner and blogger is rocking the twitter @shoelesscoolis.
Huge congrats to the Guelph Gryphons for dominating everyone out there in Quebec City at CI's awesome stuff there. Nixon takes the win! I love that guy, so happy for him.
Bye Love ya'll.

-rob-

Blog #53

2011-11-09T12:05:00.003-05:00

There are a two things in this world that will make me do weird things, cause me to venture outta my comfort zone. One is obviously alcohol, and the other is girls. But that is not really saying much. Pretty much any dude does dumb shit under the influence of these two awesome, awesome things. So I'm not alone when on occasion these two vices combine forces and lead to strange/interesting/awkward/hilarious/awesome situations. Case and point, on Saturday night I found myself in Toronto at a DeadMau5 (Deadmouse) thing. For those of you out of the loop (like I was up until like 5days ago) Deadmau5 is a guy who dresses up as a mouse and then plays computer music for the masses. Apparently he is good at it because thousands of people take strange drugs then flip the hell out when they see him do it live. I don't know exactly what to call this thing I went to. It is a concert? rave? performance? whatever the hell that flashy, loud and confusing fiasco was, I was there, it was...interesting. Now if ya don't know me very well than this probably doesn't sound like a big deal, and if you do know me well you probably think I have lost my mind. Once again, it comes back to those damn vices of mine; alcohol and girls. I'm weak, but I regret nothing.
This was my first time attending an event of this nature. Apparently these events pretty much revolve around listening to really loud computer music and dancing. I kinda run into some issues here, because well, I don't really like computer music and boy oh boy, I do not dance. It is very unusual for this guy to dance. There are the rare occasions when I find myself deep in the bottle and a lady will trick me into dancing with her. But often about half way through my awkward shuffling and half assed fist pumps the girl realizes she has made a huge mistake and escapes, I will then drag my ass back to the bar and everyone will pretend that it never happened. Therefore I was way outta my comfort zone when I arrived at the deadmouse thing and the plan was to just listen to computer music and dance...for 5hours! good god, I was awkward as shit. It was hilarious and actually pretty fun.
Then there is that whole thing about the computer music. I am a huge music fan but I tend to lean towards guitars and drums and such over robot music. I'm actually not gonna rag the computer stuff too much though because it was kinda cool. I did however witness one of the lamest things that I have ever seen at a live music show. So here is this DJ guy (not the Deadmau5, some other dude) just playing his music, he's having a good time and such, just dancing away and slamming whiskey. People are digging it and it's all good. But then this DJ reaches down and grabs a knob on his computer. And what does he do with said knob? Well, he starts to turn this knob. I think maybe this DJ was electrocuted or something by that knob, because all off a sudden this dude just starts rocking so hard, I mean he was flipping the hell out man! it was like he was Jimmy Hendrix and he was shredding the most epic guitar solo ever...but this actually wasn't the case at all. He was literally just turning a knob, on a computer. The amount of rocking that was associated with this knob turn was completely unnecessary. Weak man, so weak.
Yeah, so that was a weird night, girls and alcohol, what are ya gonna do man?
Lets talk a bit about running. I've been back at it for a couple weeks now and things are actually going quite well. People keep asking me if maybe I'm coming back to soon after running a marathon. The answer is no, because I didn't run a marathon. I ran part of a marathon then stopped. It was lame. Mentally I was tore up as hell, but physically I was fine. So as my brain is slowly recovering my body is good to go. The brain will come around soon, but what better way to fix the brain then by just getting back at it and givn'r hell all over again? Hey brain, we're gonna do this, so get on board and man the eff up!
Actually going to Japan next week to run a leg on the Chiba Ekiden Relay team. The Chiba Ekiden is a road race in which teams of 6 (3dudes, 3chicks) cover a marathon distance relay style. It's an international event with teams coming from all over this fine planet to partcipate. I think that it will be a fun trip The River will be represented strongly with Milne and Snides going as well, Moults is also the coach. I'm gonna roll a 10km leg for the squad, go team! I've always wanted to go to Japan so I'm pretty excited. I'm also pumped to drink a beer in Asia. I have a life long bet with my best bud about who can be the first to drink a beer in every Canadian province/territory, US state and on every continent. Asia is a big one to strike off that list. I am winning this bet so far as I have a big lead in the USA with 30 states covered, (road trip to Montana anybody?) but I still have a long ass way to go. I plan on using running as a way to get to as many of these locations as cheaply as possible. I gotta run fast then get invited to a race in Australia asap!
Alright, have a good one everyone. Keep at it.

-rob-

Blog #52

2011-11-02T15:58:00.002-04:00

So I write this blog here, and in my head pretty much only my buddies and a few other people read it. But in reality, there is a whole bunch of fine folks out there who have ventured to this here blog. It kind of freaks me out when random folk mention that they read the blog. When this happens I immediately get this blank look on my face and I have an internal panic. I quickly scroll through my memory and make sure that I have not written anything that may have offended said person. It's scary. But I guess that's what happens when ya post stuff on the internet, that shit is out there for the whole world to see, it's the world wide web after all. (except maybe in North Korea, they have a weirder more facist type of internet, I don't think they can get the blog over there)

Yeah so recently the I've come to learn that a few folks I work with have stumbled upon this blog. I definitely know that I have mentioned the Syntec on here before. Actually I believe that a few times I have made light of the fact that I was blogging whilst at work...uhh...yeah, so I was totally joking about that...haha...right?
Update! Since I wrote that last paragraph a few days ago my work/blog situation has taken a pretty severe twist. The blog has been mentioned on an office wide e-mail, they all know know! So I guess that's that. I can't blog anymore. You see, my secret plan is to eventually move up and run that whole damn company. But now that they have access to this blog, they can find out about all sorts of stupid stuff I have done. They may use it against me once I start my full on, gloves off, relentless rise up the corporate ladder. I wanna be the boss, and when I get to the top, watch out man, heads are gonna roll!
I'm coming after Todd first, he dressed me up as Katy Parry for Halloween, it was humiliating. Next I'm coming after you Rowlands, make me stand in a friggen fridge for 15min taking air quality readings. The air was fine! I was freezing! The only person who is safe is Dave B. he's my boy.

Actually my job is awesome and unfortunately I am about 5 academic degrees short and I lack the basic understanding of what the hell these people are actually doing all day to be anything more than the shop guy. That's cool though because I get to use power tools, and power tools are manly as hell. I really gotta start using them more often. For now on every job I gotta do I will figure out a way to incorporate power tools. Recycling some boxes? gonna grab the power saw, cut that shit up. Gotta put together a fielding kit? gonna convince the field tech that they need a power drill, then I'll have to make sure to test said drill by drilling holes in various things. I'm gonna grow my beard back and use power tools on shit all day.
So work people read my blog that's cool. They're not gonna fire me because I get drunk and do stupid shit. But a problem that I may have is the fact that parents can read this. I can now only date ladies who don't have parents or who have really old parents that can't use computers properly. The way things work now a days is that people are always googling each other. Ya meet someone, then ya google em'. It's standard social practice. This is what's gonna happen to me; check it. I'm gonna find a nice young lady and it's gonna be great, awesome even. We'll get along great and have fun and so forth and so on. Eventually though I'm gonna meet said ladies parents, I'll be charming as hell and make a decent impression, it'll be alright. But then they'll google me, they'll stumble over here to the blog. They'll read a few posts and I'm done. That'll be it man, I mean I use bad language and I talk about my balls. Dad's may find it funny, but mom's man, mom's will not dig it. Hell my own mom who has known me for 28yrs is disgusted by some of this stuff;

"Hey mom did ya read my blog?"
"Yes, Robin, you are obsessed with your penis!"
"haha...yeah."
"It's not funny Robin!"
I'm friggen cock blocking myself, lame.
Running update. I'm gonna go to Japan and run the Chiba Relay, gonna be rad.
See ya!

-rob-

Blog #51

2011-10-25T16:12:00.001-04:00

Last week was fun, drank some beer, hung out with friends and made some interesting decisions. It was generally awesome, but man all friggen week I had this little nag in my brain, right there just hanging out in my head. And this nag wasn't in the back of my brain where nags usually hang out. This stupid nag was front and center. Right there in the frontal lobe (I just googled a brain map, I was hoping for a more complicated name for the 'front part of the brain' I wanted to fake some smartness, chick dig smart dudes) so yeah, this nag would just casually remind me that I had DNF'd Scotia and that I had to get my shit together. That nag was a real bastard. So now I'm getting back to streets, gonna appease that nag and do some work.
Alright, so did ya'll read my last blog? yeah it was nothing special really. But ya know what was special? Ya know what really made my heart smile? It was all those comments from you fine folk. Holy balls people! that was so cool, seriously guys it was very touching, thanks so much! Here I am, being all sad and such. I gots my moms and pops shoulders to cry on, my teammates got me nice and drunk and I was thinking how lucky I was to be surrounded by such good people. I was starting to feel alright. Then I writes my blog and bam! I have all sorts of people that I have never even met just saying the nicest damn things to me. That was it man, that love got me so pumped. I'm inspired, I just wanna run fast. And when I do run fast I want all ya'll to come out and party with me. Just a huge friggen blog blowout. 1000's of beers and shots (no tequila) and piles of peanut butter themed snacks. It will be awesome. I want this party to happen so bad. You're all invited, let's get on this.
Let me tell you about a time I went to a celebration that occurred after one of buds ran super fast. This was back in 08' and Milne had just busted through and killed it that summer. He went to the Olympics and everything, it was rad. So after all that Olympic jazz, Milne's home town decided that they should honor their Olympic guy, so Calendar Ont. came out with the appropriately named "Taylor Milne Day". A bunch of us piled into cars and headed north to celebrate his awesomeness. Well you can probably guess what happened next. Yeah, we drank about 1000 beers and celebrated like champs. We went to a bar and at some point I passed out on a piano. I woke up from said Piano a little while later and all my friends were gone (Taylor Milne day doesn't stop just because one dude can't handle the party!). So what did I do when I woke up all confused and lost. Well I did what anyone in my situation would do, I peed on the wall. I'm sorry to the owner of the bar. That was pretty inconsiderate of me, but it was probably pretty entertaining when the Piano kid woke up, stumbled over to the wall, peed on the wall then stumbled outta the bar. So now here I am on the street in Calendar and it being my first time in this place I had no idea where the hell to go or what the hell to do. Honestly though, at this point had I been in Guelph I would have been equally lost and confused.
So anyways here I am, drunk/lost/scared/confused and slightly urine soaked in Calendar. So I made another practical decision, I broke into a random closed down building, it was all boarded up and everything, seemingly abandoned. I found the back door and got in the place, I found a couch and went to sleep on it. Perfectly excuted B&E if ya ask me. Well this random closed down building happened to be home to some locals, and they were not happy that I was there. I was approximately 10seconds away from a nice Northern Ontario ass kicking when someone was like "Rob? what the hell?..." Yeah, Milne knew these fine folks and he was partying with them! I guess that I had a sixth sense that took me to the next party. Pretty awesome. Man-o-man DrunkRob was in fine form that night. DrunkRob sure likes to mess with SoberRob, that guy is bastard sometimes. For example, back in highschool;
StupidFriend; "Lets go get tattoos"
SmartFriend; "Can't man, all the shops are closed"
DrunkRob; "Yeah man, but we can brand ourselves, it'll be awesome!"
8hrs later...
SoberRob wakes up in a haze, clearly something is messed up, looks down, *violently shakes fist* "Goddammit DrunkRob!"
Another example, this time from University;
StupidFriend; "Lets go get tattoos"
SmartFriend; "Can't man, all the shops are closed"
DrunkRob; "Yeah man, but we can brand ourselves, I've done it before. it's awesome!"
8hrs later...
SoberRob wakes up; "sonofabitch! not again! ahh well, fool me once..."
Hangovers are so much worse whilst accompanied with 3rd degree burns. DrunkRob is responsible for most the scars on my body.
So yeah, back to the grind. Gonna make this happen people. Thanks for everything.

Blog #50

2011-10-18T20:40:00.000-04:00

Okay, let me get something off my chest real quick...ahem...okay...FUCK!!!
Yeah, that felt good, I needed that. I'll remember how much this sucks and use it to fuel the fire. That fire went out there for a few minutes, but it was re-ignited as I watched the TV and saw Reider loose his shit as Gillis dug deeper than a mothersucker to score that Olympic qualifier. Anyone who didn't get chills from that is a bastard. That scene pretty much summed up why I love this sport and why I love the Guelph. Those guys have put in thousands of miles together and now they are both gonna be Olympians together. DST, Reider and Gillis, the dreamteam. It's beautiful man, it's downright poetic. It is that kind of shit that gets you out the door everyday, it's that kinda shit that gets you to put your body through the ringer day in day out. That is the kind of shit that we dream of. Reider and Gillis, man those guys are incredible. I am not the least bit surprised that they did what they did on Sunday. But man it is awesome when a plan comes together and is executed with such perfection. Okay maybe stopping for a shit wasn't exactly part of the plan, but ya get my point.
Despite one big glaring disappointment this weekend was pretty awesome. Want to say congrats to Mario, I met him at the start line, he came over to say hi, then he went and crushed it to get a new PB, congrats man. Also wanna say thanks to Anthony D. for coming over and chilling with me as I waited to be picked up by the medics crew, it was nice to have someone to talk to.
Thanks to random stranger Sam for taking care of me and covering me in like 10coats as I tried to take a nap in that random driveway out at the beaches. I felt so drunk, all I wanted to do was take a quick nap! Also thanks to all those folks for letting me use your coats as my bed.
So wanna hear a weird story? I was at the expo on Saturday just chilling at the NB booth. Some girl and her sister were there and we kinda started chatting. We were just making small talk and then the one girl was all like "did you used to do the steeplechase?" and I says to her, I says; "Sure did" then you know what she says to me? she says; "We sat beside each other on a plane ride to Paris" Then I was like, "uhhh, Holy shit! I remember you!"
So get this. This girl, Marie and I sat beside each other on a plane ride to France back in 08' we chatted the whole way and became best friends. She even helped my buy a train ticket when we got there because she spoke french and I did not. Then we parted ways. So that was a bit of a mindfuck seeing her again. If I ever run into her randomly again I'm gonna ask her to marry me because obviously it's fate...actually no, scratch that. Both times I've run into her I've had shitty races. Stay the hell away from me Marie! (just kidding, that was mean).
So back to the weekend. Thanks to everyone for being so awesomely supportive. It was absolutely amazing running down Lake Shore and having people cheering non-stop. And yeah, also had about 100people give the blog a shout out. I am kinda getting a little afraid that I am becoming what I hate. Here I am writing about running every week and giving off the impression that I am pretty good. But given the evidence over the last few months, I think I may be a fraud. I'm nothing but a hype machine media whore. Damn. Well I think maybe I'm gonna stop blogging until I run a decent race.
Hopefully I'll be back sooner rather than later.
Love ya'll.

-rob-

Blog #49

2011-10-13T19:37:00.000-04:00

Oh Shit man, I gotta run a marathon in 3 days. Pretty excited about this. I'm out for revenge. Remember last time when I ran a marathon and it kicked the shit outta me? If not see video evidence of said ass kicking below.

Yeah, that was lame as hell. That hurt a lot and I scrapped my knee on the concrete. I think that I am prepared and ready to ensure that won't happen again on Sunday. Well actually there is nothing wrong with falling over at the finish line, it was just annoying that it took me 2:16 to get the damn finish line in the first place. The only bad thing heading into Sunday is that potentially some serious winds may be a blowing. That is not so cool, wind is stupid. But eff it man, what you gonna do? It's time to get on the line and just get at it.

I've noticed that Reid has gotten quite a bit of hype headed into the STWM, and it is much deserved. Dude is a champ and he is ready to throw down. I also noticed that he got a lot more publicity once he publicly announced he was going for the Canadian Record.

So all this Reid hype got me to thinking, you know what I was thinking? I was thinking; Reid is getting a lot of hype, chicks dig Hype. I want some chicks, therefore I need some hype. So then I continued to think. Thinking about how I could get some sweet hype. I'm not as fast as Reid and I'm not as handsome as Gillis, so I need some other way to score some hype. I channeled my inner Dean K. to think of some stupid way I could fool people into hyping me up. You ready for it? ok, I, Rob Watson will be attempting to go for the WORLD RECORD on Sunday!!! yeah, you heard that shit right. I am going for the World Record...as the fastest ever dude to run a marathon despite having had his dink crushed in a pogo stick accident as a young child (explanation at the bottom) Yeah! I'm not only doing it to get sweet hype, I am also doing it for all those other dudes who have pogostick vs. dick accidents. I want to show them that it is possible to live a normal life despite having a pogostick crush the hell outta your dink causing it to swell and turn all black and blue and shit. I'm basically a goddamned hero! So hopefully the newspapers and such pick up on that story line, it's quite riveting.

So yeah Marathon this weekend, sweet.

Wanna say good luck to each and everyone of you out there who may be racing this weekend. Get out there and enjoy the first half, then nut the eff' up and hammer it home. The faster ya finish the faster ya'll can have your celebration beer!

Good luck to the TarHeels this weekend in Wisconsin and congrats on yet another thread on LetsRun bashing you guys. The bitter and petty douches of running world have once again directed their internet rage on you guys. Good stuff, remember dudes, they don't bash the shitty teams.

I think I may just leave it at that for this week, sorry about that. I promise a better blog next week with a full race report and such. I will be on downtime so I may even be a little hammered whilst I post, that would be awkward.

-rob-

Blog #48

2011-10-06T11:10:00.004-04:00

So picture this; You're in a small LasVegas wedding chapel. You are there for your best friends wedding, you've known this guy since you were 4, but then when the wedding starts he's not your best friend...he's Elvis! and also, the preacher is Elvis! You're caught kinda off guard, taken aback a bit. Then you glance to the left, you see that the groomsman is dressed in a full on velour suit, he's a pimp! and the maid of honor is actually a dude! Now look down, you're the best man but you're not even wearing a shirt, just really short shorts and flip flops. What the hell is going on? Oh wait, music is playing now. Elvis starts singing Love Me Tender, he has a beautiful voice, quite angelic. In comes the bride. She is stunning, very pretty indeed. But the "father of the bride," something is not quite right there... he isn't wearing pants! Now all of a sudden the bride strips down into a Hooters waitress get up! and that's when shit gets weird...That shit happened folks, that was my weekend. (video of ceremony; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqQmBkHd8wE&feature=feedlik)

best wedding ever

So yeah, I had a pretty awesome weekend in Vegas. Was there for the North American version of my best buddies wedding (original was in Korea). It was so much fun. So good to see the dudes. Especially Eric (Elvis) we've been buds since Junior Kindergarten when we both had to go to speech therapy. Apparently neither of us could speak properly. I escaped pretty quickly, but Eric was in ST for a while, he really had trouble saying "Telephone booth". His English is now quite advanced, so advanced actually that he teaches it to people for a living. He can also speak fluent Korean! Suck on that person who sent him to speech therapy, homeboy speaks mother effin' Korean now, he don't need no Engrish.

Yeah so the social aspect of the weekend was top notch, but you know what wasn't? Yep, the running, running in Vegas is the worst damn thing in the world! I had to get my long run in on Saturday. I woke up bright and early (just as my friends were coming in) and headed out to get that sucker over with. I decided to ask the front desk folk if there were any decent places to run. The dude at the front desk had three suggestions; The treadmill in the fitness room, up and down the strip or around the track at UNLV. I asked if there was anything else as I had to put in 20miles. He said no. Thanks for nothing Carlos. I headed out the hotel and just hoped for the best. A little over two hours later I returned to the hotel after literally the most brutal run I have ever been on. And folks I have had some brutal runs. This was worse than that 28km I did in Kingston a few years ago when I was so hungover I threw up 3times in the first 20min. Worse than 10miles of loops around a 150m indoor track. Hell, it was even worse than that run I did with my parents when I was 11 and I pooped in my pants. LasVegas is a horrible city for running. Vegas is actually terrible for anything other than partying, getting married or gambling away your 401k.

Seriously though, why the hell does that place exist? It is just a massive pile of concrete and sin in the middle of the scorching desert. Who was the genius who arrived in that hell hole of an evironment and decided it would be a good place to build a bunch of whore houses and casinos. It only exists as a place for people to come to and throw away all their money...Well, actually that is a pretty solid plan, and clearly it has worked out. I don't know what I'm arguing about. Vegas is awesome!

Okay, but you know what city should definitely not exist? Laramie Wyoming. That city is the coldest, windiest, lamest place in the whole gosh darn world. There are no whorehouses or casinos either. Just a brutal windswept wasteland. I wanna talk to the guy who stopped there with his wagon and was all like "Yeah, this will do." It's possible that maybe, just maybe that dude got there on a nice day, and maybe for a week or so Laramie gave the illusion of being hospitable. But eventually that wind was going to pick up, and that temperature was going to drop. When that happened that asshole should have gotten the hell out of Laramie asap. Why didn't he leave? Why did he stay? I'm so confused by this. It's like homeless people in Winnipeg. Why the hell are there homeless people in Winnipeg? That place is cold as hell, go be homeless somewhere warmer. Anyways...

Alright Folks, we are less than two weeks away from the Scotia. Man, that came fast. Training for this marathon as been all over the place. Luckily though I have managed to rock the past 5weeks pretty well. I hit up my last hard session of miles on Friday before I left. I averaged 4:26 over 5miles. That is pretty solid for myself. It was my first time in that VO2 zone in a while. It felt like I was sprinting the whole damn time and it hurt quite a bit. I got exactly what I needed from the workout, I was happy.
We are now in taper mode. We're working into the taper slowly. I get to do a decent amount of work this week, so I haven't gone too crazy yet. Next week though, man next week is gonna be rough. I'm gonna need to pick up a hobby or something to kill the time. Oh well, we'll worry about that later. I'm going for a jog now, beauty of a day here in the Guelph. Have a great week everyone!

Blog #47

2011-09-24T21:50:00.003-04:00

Random Thoughts that went through my head during the Zoo run today;
Coming up to 1km; "Oh man, I sure hope this is a 2:55."
Guy with watch: "3:01, 3:02, 3:03..."
me:"balls"
3km; "what the hell? Joesphat is sprinting, that bastard is straight up sprinting, holy shit!"
Guy with watch: "8:55, 8:56, 8:57"
me:"balls"
5.5km: "Where did Reid and Gillis go?"
6.5km: "Oh look a Zebra...hey, cool a Giraffe...why the hell are we racing in a goddamned zoo?!"
8km: "alright, go get those bastards!..."
8.1km: "never mind"
10.01km: "ughh that was rough...If I ever meet the dude whose idea it was to race in the zoo, I'm gonna punch him in the dick."
So I raced a race today. It was the Zoo run and it was hard. That is a fairly challenging course and my legs were pretty heavy and tired from the get go. That was kinda expected 3weeks out from the marathon though (someone let Reid and Gillis know that, geez man, those assholes killed it!) I ran pretty hard and I it hurt pretty good. That was pretty much the goal, just an all out race effort before the big boy in 3weeks. I would have liked to place better and I didn't really like getting so thoroughly destroyed, but I'm satisfied. It was much better than the Acura 10miler and my hammies felt pretty good. Onward to Scotia 3weeks!
I had the opportunity to meet a few people who read the blog today, that is always really cool. Thanks for the support dudes! And once again thanks to the CanadianRunningSeries crew, good show.
So yeah like I said Scotia Toronto Waterfront Marathon coming up in 3weeks. I'm getting pretty excited about it. My build up has not been ideal, but things have really come around in the last 4weeks. My hammies have been better and I'm feeling pretty good fitness wise. Unfortunately I don't think that I am fit enough to go after my initial goals, but I think I am fit enough to get some solid work done.
I went down to Toronto early on Friday for a pre-Scotia press conference. It was a good event and there was a pretty good turn out. Reider and Gilly were in high demand, but as one of the slower guys I really didn't need to be there. Good thing Gillis and Reid have already destroyed my ego in workouts over the past 10weeks, because no one wanted to talk to me and I essentially just sat there and got a free meal.
Come on WVU! I am watching the West Virginia-LSU college football game right now and WVU is playing terribly. Did you know that I went to WVU my freshman year of university? Yeah, sure did, I'll prove it.

Stud.

sweet action shot

So anyways, like I was saying watching some WVU football. Even though the WVU athletic department is horribly, horribly incompetent, and they cut the track program forcing me to leave I can't help but cheer for WVU sports. They love their Mountaineers down there in the mountain state. When I was there the football team won a big game against Virginia Tech. It was an away game, but a bunch of students broke into the stadium, tore down the field goal posts, and then proceeded to parade them through downtown Morgantown as everyone set fire to all their furniture. It was chaos, and it was awesome.
I roomed with a dude named Ben freshman year. I want to give a shout out to Ben, he's a Marine now. That is pretty damn cool. Good job buddy! Protect the shit outta your country.
So I may have told this story before, but it is relevant to this topic of freshman year stuff.
One night we were partying at the track house. It was fun. Some random dudes showed up. They sucked, big douches indeed. My buddy kicks the douches out. They start talking trash and all of a sudden my buddy is fighting this guy! Douches friend jumps in and it's 2-1 against my buddy, so I jump in and start fighting douches friend. I don't really fight very often and I'm pretty little, but I was doing really well in this fight! I was just hitting this guy and all of a sudden he screams out "aghhh! Stop hitting meeee!" so I did and just told them to go home.
It should have ended there, but during the melee we had spilled out into the middle of the street. We were blocking traffic and all these cars were honking and shit (understandably). We decided they were being assholes and proceeded to start yelling at the cars. All of a sudden 4guys and a girl jump outta this SUV and come at us. These dudes were significantly bigger than us and one dude came right at me. I immediately went on the defensive. I grabbed his arms and tried to make sure he didn't punch me in the face. So I'm just swinging around with this guy and he throws me to the ground. He is just about to pounce and start pummeling me when one of my teammates goes all ninja and just comes flying in out of nowhere, kicks this guy square in the face. It was sick. There is shit going on everywhere, pandemonium, there was even two girls fighting! So I get dragged inside to cool off. And I did, I did cool off. I even decided that I would try to play peace maker. So I went outside and was all "ok guys, that's enough lets all just settle down. blah, blah, blah" But in my stupid drunken stupor I wondered over to kickfaceguy, he was all bloody and just screamed at me then punched me in the face. So. Friggen. Hard! It sucked. I was now bleeding quite violently and was dragged back inside.
Fast forward 1hr. The party is over and I'm still at buddies house nursing my mangled eye. My friend was at the hospital because his girlfriend broke her finger in the fight. It was just me, another dude and his girlfriend. we hear this mumbling outside; "is this the house?"
"yeah, that's the one"
*BANG, BANG, BANG* "get out here you motherf**ers"
me: "ohhhhhh shiiiiiit"
SUV fight crew had gone home and assembled their entire frat army to come and counter attack. If they had gotten through that door I'm pretty sure that I would have been beaten to death that night. It was terrifying. We friggen booked it downstairs and hid in the laundry room and called the cops. The frat boys hung around a bit then decided to leave. We watched them drive away. They were then promptly pulled over by the police. It was awesome. My run the next day was not very good.

-rob-

Blog #46

2011-09-14T12:28:00.001-04:00

Yo, so I have a bunch of older brothers. I love them all very much and they are great guys. But when I was 8 they were 9, 13 & 14years old respectively, and they were all assholes. We took a family vacation down to Florida that year. We drove, that is a long friggen drive. my brothers quickly became bored and to entertain themselves they decided to torture the little one (me). Their favourite thing to do was to flick the back of my ears, like really hard. For two days straight these dickheads were constantly flicking my ears, over and over, they wouldn't stop. They literally had me surrounded by all sides, I could not defend it. Now you may not think ear flicking is so bad, and it's not, if it is only one or two flicks, but when it happens hundreds of times over the course of a 2000km drive that shit adds up, kinda like a stress fracture. And that's what I got. My stupid brothers gave me a stress fracture...in my head.
We finally get to Florida after the marathon drive and it's party time. It's sunny, we're on this awesome beach, I'm gonna build sick sand castles, pee in the ocean and eat candy all day. It's gonna be friggen amazing right? Wait! Hell no! I'm gonna get there just in time for my friggen eardrum to explode. Eff you Pete, Mike and Scott! My Eardrum man! that shit blew right the eff up! I would lie down and blood would pour outta my head. Hurt like hell man, I had to go to the doctor, an American doctor, shit's expensive! So yeah I had to wear a damn toque for 6weeks straight and take these disgusting pills. Brothers are assholes.
Hey, Congrats to Matty B! The Champ got married! Yeah! Good job Matt and Lauren, now go make a bunch of babies you crazy kids. This is my second friend named Matt who has gotten married to a girl named Lauren, craziness! I almost got married to a girl named Lauren as well...actually not really. But my high school "sweetheart" was named Lauren. At one point or another I'm pretty sure we agreed to marry each other, we were friggen head over heals in love. Man it was smootchie cootchie shit all over the place, it was disgusting. She was a hell of a girl though, she let me touch her boobies on several occasions. I think she reads this sometimes. If so, hi Lauren. Remember when you let me touch your boobies? Yeah, that was awesome.
So anyways back to Matty B. (The Champ). The Champ is best known for his stunning back to back CIS XC championships. That kid comes to get down for big races. He has this ridiculous ability to just call on every bit of his strength and fitness to get the job done when it matters. I swear man, sometimes you'll see him out at practice just dinking around and not looking very fit, but then when a big race comes, BOOM! sonofabitch just hulks up like a crazy man, proceeds to go beast mode and tear shit up. It's weird man, but boy is it awesome!
So in 5weeks I'm gonna try to channel my inner Champ for Scotia. I'm gonna Hulk the eff up for that shit and suck every possible bit of energy outta my body. I think that if I can hulk up to an adequate level than I will be able to run pretty well. It's gonna be a good day. I've decided to keep my beard growing and not cut my hair until the race either. Why? What does that have to do with running? Well no reason really, and it has absolutely nothing to do with running. It's just that I have never had a decent haircut and I can finally grow a decent beard. So I'm giving up on haircuts and I'm giving the beard a go. Beards are manly as hell, and there is no denying the facts, I am going to look homeless as shit out there.
Okay, so this is my 46th blog. I have been hit with some gnarly writers block. I can't think of a damn thing to write about. So I opened it up to Twitter and asked for a topic. Thankfully Dr. Mark Kubert has offered up a suggestion. So here we go people. Top 5 things running has taught me, and my all time favourite post run/competition meal.
I'll start with favourite meal because that is much easier. Start with about 5-6 NewBelgium Sunshine Wheat beers, so good! Outside magazine just ranked NewBelgium Brewery as the 13th best place to work in all of America! Good for them. One of my biggest goals in running is to run fast enough to get sponsored by New Belgium. I think that they should partner with Powerbar and make some killer powerbeer. A nice dark porter with protein and shit in it, that would be amazing. Yeah, someone make that happen asap! Anyways and to pair with the beer I'm gonna have to go with a PowerWaffle. What is a PowerWaffle? Well it's a waffle, but with much more power! I'm talking nice thick and awesome Belgium waffle topped with peanut butter, bananas, yogurt, granola, and some pure Canadian maple syrup. Man, that is a great waffle. Some people may say, but Rob, don't you love Crepes more than anything else? Yes I do, but as it has the most solid foundation, a waffle is necessary to handle the shear mass of all those toppings.
Okay so question one answered. Favourite post run meal; Beer and Waffles.
Question two; Top 5 things running has taught me.
This is a much harder question. Well actually, it's not so much that it is hard. there is literally dozens of lessons that running teaches you. I could list shit off all day. I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna go with one for now. The single most important lesson running has taught me. Well, after what I just said I'm gonna go with a lesson that running hasn't necessarily taught me. This is more something that I have used running as a vehicle for. Running has helped me to illustrate and live out this lesson. That lesson is; Do what make ya happy. Cliche, cheesy and kinda lame, sorry about that, but whatever man, I can't help it. If ya just live the way that makes you happiest then everything else will fall into place. I'm 28damn years old folks, I live like a broke ass university student, in terms of most other peers my age I'm kinda far behind. I don't have a house, wife, kids or any real person shit. I have decided to persue running, but hell man. I am doing this because it makes me friggen happy as hell, I love it. So all that real person stuff can suck my ball for now, I love runnin' and I'm gonna continue to chase those happy feelings.
That was friggen lame, no more questions from the audience.
Out!

-rob-

Blog #45

2011-08-31T12:29:00.001-04:00

Hey there everyone, who's ready for a blog? Hells yeah, lets do this.
Remember last blog when I talked about my lame 6th grade teacher? Yeah, well I remembered another lame thing about her. One time she said the capital of Florida was Jacksonville. I corrected her and told her it was actually Tallahassee. She disagreed, I persisted in saying it was Tallahassee. Then she said "I've been to Florida several times, I think I'd know!" What a stupid statement. Anyways, we left it at that, but I sure hope she went home and looked it up and then felt like a damn fool once she realized she got owned by an 11 year old. (11 or 12? how old are you in 6th grade?)
I only remembered this because I was checking out a map of the USA the other day. I'm a huge geography nerd and I love maps and topography and stuff like that. There was a time in my life where I knew the capital of every country in the world. Why would I know that? Well it was part of my training for my favourite sport; "Reach for the Top" RFTT was basically the the trivia team, and it was my favourite sport in high school. My buddy Ian and I rocked that shit. Our senior year of high school our team went undefeated in the regular season. We were good and our squad had mad swagger, we were the perfect collection of nerds. Each nerd played a specific roll; my specialties were geography, sports and pop culture. Ian was of the similar skill set. We had this one nerd was really good at ballet, opera and other snooty things like that. Throw a few science geeks in the mix and you've got yourself a powerhouse. We dominated fools on the regular.
So here we are, undefeated as we go into the Reach for the Top championship playoffs, our first round opponent was some random catholic high school, we had obliterated them earlier in the season. But I swear to god people, we got the worst packet of questions ever. Every other damn question was about the bible or Jesus or some other religious BS. Our weakness was exposed, we lacked a religion nerd to go along with all us other nerds, we were defeated. I still remember dejectedly walking out of the room after the match. Our coach came running down the hall with a look of panic on his face (he had be reffing another match);
"How'd you guys do?"
"Not good coach, we lost."
"ahhh, I knew looking at the packet that you guys would struggle with this one."
"sonofabitch!"
"Geez that's a tough break."
"sonofabitch!"
"it's okay guys, lets stay and support the other teams."
"Screw that, I'm going to go get hammered."
That was literally the most upset I had ever been about losing at a sport. Friggen heartbreaking. I'm convinced to this day that it was a conspiracy against our team. We had to much swagger for the RFTT higher ups and they sought to neutralize us. Neutralized by religion, Bastards!
So that was sad, lets get positive now.
My running has really turned around. About 10days ago I was ready to throw in the towel and just say screw it all. But DST helped me to see the bigger picture and take a step back. I have re-evaluated my goals and just learned to relax a bit more. BST has been working diligently at fixing up the ole' hammies and I have started with IMS therapy on them. If you don't know what IMS is, it's basically acupuncture on steroids. They just shove needles into your muscles to force them to so some shit that fixes em', I'm not to sure exactly of the science behind it. Chris Winter and Reid got me on to this, I trust those dudes so I figured I'd give it a go. Anyways, it feels weird and kinda hurts, but I really think it's helping.
My running workouts have been going great and I'm supplementing them with a bunch of cross training. I'm pretty content with the whole situation, well except for when I'm aqua jogging. Holy balls folks, aqua jogging is lame. But I only have to do it for a few weeks and it's worth it in the long run. I wish I had more time, but I'm still confident that I can get out there and give it a go at Scotia. Hopefully I can roll there and then set things up for a fast spring marathon.
Reider and Gillis are runnin' a half this weekend in Virginia Beach, I don't want to put to much pressure on them but, shit dandy sally and mandy, those guys are good and I think they will do quite well. Good luck to them.
Also want to give a shout out to the UNC XC teams. Brother Pete has assembled a top notch squad and they'll be looking to do work this season. I can't wait until they start hammering fools, gotta shut up those idiots on LetsRun. He's got a few Canadian ladies on his team this year as well, that's exciting. good job brother Pete.
I'm going to go get a coffee now, therefore I must say goodbye for now.

Blog #44

2011-08-22T12:35:00.000-04:00

In 6th grade I had a hippy teacher, her name was Ms. Morrow. Our class was supposed to go on a whale watching field trip in Quebec. I was very excited for this trip because whales are majestic and awesome. Our class embarked on a rigorous fund raising campaign. We seriously must have raised thousands of dollars via raffling of goods and bake sales. One day she said that we had not raised money enough to go whale watching and that the trip was not going to happen. That sucked, I was very excited to see some sweet whale breaching action. But something I have always wondered is what the hell happened to all the money we raised? I seriously think that bitch just pocketed our whale watching money. Usually hippies are cool...and ethical, she was most certainly neither. I really did not like her. 6th grade was weird. I also got chicken pox that year. I went back to class before I was fully healed and I gave like 12kids chicken pox. Sorry about that other kids. The only thing cool about grade 6 was our class play in which we adapted Dr. Suesses' The Lorax into a theatrical masterpiece. I was part of the chorus, I wasn't much of an actor. I did however star as the Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk in 4th grade. We were in charge of making our own costumes for the play. Guess what my giant costume consisted of? Yeah, a New York Giants football team sweatshirt/sweatpants combo...nailed it!
So anyways, I would like to take the opportunity to announce that I am coming out of retirement and will continue to pursue my running career. In case you missed it, I retired from running at the 7km mark of the Acura10miler a couple weeks back, I believe my exact words were "fuck this stupid sport, I quit." I have had time to re-evaluate my decision and figure I'll keep at it.
Yeah, so I dropped out of the 10miler, it was a miserable experience. I have had chronic hamstring issues for years and they have been acting up quite a bit over the last few weeks. By 7km at Acura it felt like I was being stabbed in the leg every step I took, it was lame as balls. It was pretty funny though because as I was dejectedly jogging back to the start line some guy ran past and yelled "I love your blog" I had literally just dropped out 5min prior to this and I was basically in melt down mode. But this fine young mans words made me smile. What a guy, thanks to whomever that was!
I went back to my hometown of London Ont. for a 10km road race this past weekend to try to get some redemption. Brandon Laan of Runnersfeed organized an excellent event there in the Rock the Road 10km. It was better than the 10miler for sure. I utilized FFTF pretty solidly. I had done a 40km run with tempo on Friday so I knew that I'd probably be a little flat on Sunday, I just hammered the shit outta the first 5km hoping to build a big enough lead before the full weight of the 40km workout hit me. It went pretty much as planned, I was rolling along pretty well and then during the 7th km the dam broke and a deluge of lactic acid and other random shit flooded the legs and I got pretty damn tired. Luckily my lead was big enough that I could back off and cruise on in. I finished in 30:08, I was happy with the effort and the fact that my hammies were somewhat decent.
Wanna give a shout out to our awesome physio BST, she popped this and cracked that and now my hammies are feeling a bit better. Let's keep going people! onwards to Scotia!
Hmm...anything else going on? Oh yeah, I bought a fiddle. Yep, went with the fiddle over the guitar. Why? Well the guitar is cool as hell but I'm afraid that if I play the guitar then people will also expect me to sing. I friggen suck at singing, seriously just horrible. When ya play the fiddle you can't sing, that is ideal for my situation. I suck really bad at fiddling, but it's pretty fun. I named my fiddle Seamus.
World Champs start soon. Wanna say good luck to Alex and Matt, those dudes are gonna rock the steeple for Canada out there in the Korea. Oh, that reminds me of something kinda funny. So when I was at World's in Berlin in 2009 we had to fill out these forms for our uniforms, just telling them sizes and such. I asked for a medium sized distance singlet. I got an e-mail back saying that they didn't have any mediums and if a small would be ok. It wasn't a big deal so I got a small distance singlet and a medium sized sprint singlet. Anyways, we were at a training camp, and before we left camp we singed some team Canada stuff for the fine people who worked the camp. We had to sign a team Canada singlet. Yeah, so guess what singlet we signed? A medium sized distance singlet! It was pretty funny yet kinda annoying at the same time. Hopefully Alex and Matt got the proper uniforms and they are ready to roll.
Okay, back to work everyone!

-rob-

Blog #43

2011-08-12T16:37:00.000-04:00

Hey, I was waiting for something exciting to happen in my life so that I could blog it to the world. This event has failed to occur, but I should probably blog anyways. So I'm just gonna blabber on here for a little bit.
I have a race this weekend. I have absolutely no idea how this is gonna go. Training has been very average, some days I'm fine and some days I suck. Training for this marathon so far has been underwhelming to say the least. It is also making for a downer of a blog, so I'm gonna change topics.
You know what is certainly not average or underwhelming? Las Vegas. Yeah I friggen love that place. I've been twice and both times it's been an absolute shit show. A good shit show though, like one of those shit shows where after the shit has been shown you're just like "Man that was amazing, but now I have to sleep for a week and I never want to see tequila again."
So I love that place and I'm heading back there in a few weeks. My best buddy is getting married in Korea, but he has also decided to have a little thing in Vegas for us chumps who can't make it across the ocean for the official thing. He's going full Vegas and having an Elvis themed marriage celebration, it's going to be amazing. I can't wait. I'll try my best to behave though, as it is only two weeks before the marathon.
I had another very good friend get married in Vegas once. I had to miss that wedding and I still feel terrible about it. I love running, and it is a great sport, but it makes me sad when I have to miss important life events because of it.
Something kinda interesting happened since last time we talked. My grandmother, who is amazing and whom I love to pieces let it slip that her mother was Jewish. I have a Jewish grandmother! and a Jewish mother! and I'm kinda Jewish...well not really. I was baptised so I think that officially washed away any sort of Jewishness that may have been lingering. I guess being Jewish doesn't really transfer through DNA either. I guess I'll just let that whole thing go.  It's a shame, I was hoping to pull a Whatley from Seinfeld and turn to Judaism purely for the jokes. Okay, we shouldn't talk about religion, it's a faux pas on this here runnin' blog. I don't wanna offend anybody.
So I just made a reference to Whatley from Seinfeld, some people probably got the reference and some people were probably like "huh?" It's fun to make pop culture references sometimes. But ya gotta be careful, if you whip out a PC reference and people don't get it, ya end up looking like an ass. It is an all or nothing deal.  I had the nothing part of a PC reference happened to me the other day. I was talking to a guy and I had the perfect opportunity to use a Seinfeld reference, so I went for it. I thought it was well executed and quite humorous, but the three other people in the conversation just stared blankly at me. Not Seinfeld fans I guess. So awkwardness ensued as I first tried to explain myself and then just gave up and tried to change the subject. It was brutal, that's what I get for hanging out with people who don't like Seinfeld. Who doesn't like Seinfeld? That show is gold! gold bloggers, gold!
So speaking of pop-culture stuff. In the past couple years the phrase "that's what she said" has become a popular way of humoring people. I can appreciate a good "that's what she said " joke just like as much as the next guy. But do you know what bugs me? You know what really grinds my gears? It's when people say "that's what she said" in a situation where it doesn't make any sense. If someone uses the term "hard", "fill a hole" or other vague terms that can be construed to imply sexual innuendo, it doesn't automatically qualify it as "that's what she said" worthy. ex.
construction worker 1: We'll need a lot of dirt to fill this hole
construction worker 2: that's what she said!
This  is certainly close to a "that's what she said" but not quite. Construction worker 2 is equating "fill this hole" to putting something into a vagina, we get that, but what he is implying is that some random lady is saying that they would need a lot of dirt to fill her vagina. That doesn't make sense and it is weird.
If it was;
worker 1: It's gonna take a lot of work to fill this hole
worker 2: That's what she said!
That works as a "that's what she said" I just think that sometimes people get to excited to whip out that "that's what she said". Just a little pet peeve of mine. The misuse of "that's what she said" is very similar to when people use the term "literally" incorrectly.
I'm leaving now, bye.

-rob-

Blog #42

2011-07-29T12:22:00.002-04:00

Before we get to the blogging this week I gotta give a huge shout out to my speedy french friend Alex Genest. Alex rocked an 8:19steeple in Barcelona last week. Friggen right! I watched that shit on the Internet and basically blew my load in my shop down here at work. After training and racing the steeple with Alex over the last couple years I could tell after 3-4laps that he was having a huge run. It was awesome watching him rolling through the field and then finishing with his patented blistering last 600. No matter how a race is going Alex will always finish strong, always! He is quick man. At nationals 2010 in the steeple I was leading coming into the final two laps. I looked back and Alex was probably 40-50m behind, I immediately knew I was screwed. I was right, Alex thoroughly and brutally destroyed me over the last two laps. I think he beat me by 10sec. Eff that, he basically ran me outta the steeple and into the marathon that day. anyways, 8:19 unreal! He just had a baby as well, Alex is pretty much having the best month ever. Good job buddy.

Okay, as for myself, I'm not quite that awesome.
Couple conversations I've had with myself over the past couple weeks;

During 160mile week:
We should probably go to the gym.
You should probably shut up.
But we gotta get in our supplemental training.
Shut it, ya nerd.
But it's important.
Hey dick, listen! We're running 160mile weeks, I'm tired, I'm sore, hell I don't even have the energy to whack it let alone go to the gym. Not gonna happen!
hmm...ok, good point, what's for dinner?
Peanut butter.
Mmm...Peanut butter, I'll get the spoon.

During 130mile week:
We should probably go to the gym.
Hell ya man, let's effing do this.
Yeah supplemental stuff is important
No shit, I'm not running as much so we gotta do everything we can to maximize fitness. I'm talking plyos, drills, core and all that shit.
I like your moxie.
I think you're handsome.
*blush*

So yeah, I've cut back my volume and I feel like a new man. I actually have energy and bounce in the ole' legs. I just couldn't handle the real man mileage whilst doing these long ass workouts. I was friggen useless and life was not fun. I'm just chilling out a bit more on the recovery days now and things are much better. Marathon training is fun again. I'm happy about that. I've got 10weeks of pretty big mileage in the bank, so I think 130-140 will be fine.
Another reason for this happiness is the fact that I have really good teammates and a really good coach and a top of the line support crew. Everyone knows about Reider, Gilly and DST, but we have a few other dudes in our crew that I think you should meet. There is Wild Bill and Farmer John. I'm gonna introduce you to these fine young chaps.
Wild Bill is a pretty unique character. No one knows his age and no one knows where he is from. All we do know is that he is burly as hell and can wield a chain saw like a sonofabitch. He is working diligently towards his statistics masters, even though I'm pretty sure he hates stats. He's almost done though, good job Bill. Bill is a great guy to have around, I dig the wild man.
Then there is Farmer John, I like John, but he makes me feel lazy. This guy is blue collar as hell! He just gets out to practice, gets work done, then builds stuff outta wood and rides bulls the rest of the day. If you live in Southwestern Ontario and need some shit built call the Farmer, he'll build ya something pretty. I also like John because he feeds me after runs, he brings delicious dried cranberries and his mom makes one damn delicious date square. John is a good man. He also bought me a cheeseburger once.
Yeah, so those dudes are pretty solid. Cleve is also around somewhere, but I haven't seen him in awhile. Hey Cleve, if you're out there I love ya man! We have decided to grow beards together. Beards are pretty manly, hopefully by the time our 10miler rolls around here in a few weeks we'll be sporting some serious beard action.
Hey, so I have decided that I want to learn how to play an instrument. I have a bit of down time here and there and I figure I should do something productive with it. I have narrowed it down to a Violin or a Guitar. What do you think? I can't read music and I generally suck at instruments. I played the clarinet in 7-8th grade. I sucked so bad that one day the teacher literally grabbed my head and shook it because he thought I was sucking on purpose just to mess with him. So I fully expect that I will really suck at the guitar or violin, I will become frustrated and quit within the first week or so. I hope that doesn't happen, but I hate sucking at things and my patience is lacking. Usually when I do suck I become a huge baby and quit. This is why I hate golf and think video games are lame. I suck so bad at video games. I was always that kid who'd get like 2 kills in James Bond or Halo. It's okay though, video games are for fat people anyways.

-rob-

Blog #41

2011-07-20T14:43:00.001-04:00

FFTF (fade from the front) is kinda something I tend to do in races. I like it, it's fun. Usually people who are involved in the sport of running tell me that it is a stupid idea and that I should probably be smarter. I usually ignore these people and tell em' to suck it. I then proceed to go out, FFTF, and lose the race whilst suffering greatly. It's all good though, it's just what I do. But now science has chimed in on the FFTF debate; http://sweatscience.com/pacing-and-cognitive-development/. Alex is a very smart guy, and he's using science to bring down the FFTF race strategy. Science people! you cannot mess with science! Basically science is saying that my race strategy is on par with that of a 4th grader. You know when you go watch an elementary school XC race and all those little bastards take off like crazy, and then are reduced to walking and crying to the finish? Yeah, that's me. Damn. science makes a pretty strong argument as well, there are charts and everything. I still believe FFTF is all good though. I just need a solid rebuttal against science. Hmm...how can I argue with science? Science usually provides a pretty darn tight argument. Backed up by research, logic and physical evidence. Man, there must be something I can use against it? Oh, hey got it! People, don't worry FFTF is just fine, it's not bad at all. You just gotta believe in it in your heart, have faith that it will work. Ahh yeah, the good old 'faith' argument, thank you Catholic Church. Suck it science.
Alright, little running update. umm...running is hard, I'm not very good at it right now. I have been humbled by the heat, mileage and most brutally by my teammates. During my last marathon build up I averaged 140miles a week, and was able to roll pretty well. So I figured what the hell, more is better right? So I bumped up the volume. Well folks, I was pretty off with that decision. I bumped up to 160mpw and now I am useless, 160mile weeks have kicked my ass. So I'm going back down. You win this round 160mpw, but I'll be back when you don't have 30degrees and humid as shit to back ya up. It's not actually going that bad, and I'll be rolling here in no time.
Quick little aside here on food and nutrition. When you are training hard you gotta fuel properly. One of my favourite sources of fuel and nourishment in chocolate, milk chocolate to be exact. I friggen love chocolate. Apparently though it's not that good for you. So when I read an article that said dark chocolate can be a healthier alternative to milk chocolate I was pumped. I envisioned myself eating all the yummy chocolate I wanted, just as long as it was of the pretentious and expensive dark chocolate variety. Well folks, dark chocolate sucks balls. Basically to get dark chocolate you simply take all the best parts of milk chocolate; the sweetness, the creaminess and the melty awesomeness and get rid of em'. Now you're left with dark chocolate; bitter, brittle and dry. Dark chocolate? No way man, get that shit outta my face.
One last thing this week. Yesterday my childhood officially came to a close. Yeah, I went and saw the final Harry Potter movie. I really like the HP. I have read all the books and now I have seen all the movies in theatres. It has been a long journey with the HP and his crew of lovable sidekicks. I have watched the movies in theatres all over the globe and can remember all the fine people to which have accompanied me to these films. I have seen the movies with no fewer than 4 different beautiful lady friends and some pretty cool dudes, so yesterday it was pretty pathetic that I finished out my HP career alone there at the theatre. Yep I solo'd that sucker. I arrived late, tripped walking up the stairs then sat there slightly embarrassed to be 'that guy' at the movies. But man, that movie was great. It was probably for the best that I was alone. There was no one there to witness a 28yr old grown ass man crying during the sad parts (I literally shed a tear at one point) also no one had to witness me giving slight fist pumps and getting goose bumps at the awesome parts (suck on that Bellatrix LeStrange, you skank!). Oh man, Harry, what a guy. Good times with the HP.
Okay, see ya.

-rob-

Blog #40

2011-07-13T15:04:00.000-04:00

Do you believe in karma? I do, and I have an example of it effing me. So I was out on my long run on Sunday, I was going 2hr30 so I took a few powerbar gels with me. After I had my first gel I went to put the empty wrapper in my little running short pocket thing, those pockets are small as hell. So naturally the packet was unsecure in that little pocket and it fell out. Now, here is where I made my mistake. I saw it fall out and you know what I did? Yeah, I ignored it, just kept on running. I thought to myself that I really should go back and pick it up, but I didn't. Why? Because I am an asshole. Nature immediately recognized the fact that I was an asshole, and it decided to do something about it. Mother Earth promptly launched her assault. First thing she did was put this big ole' rock on the path, I immediately stepped on it and rolled my ankle. Not gonna lie, it hurt but I was able to carry on. Next thing she did was set this giant gross bug after me. I was running and I look down to see this demon creature just feasting on my leg blood. I let out a little yelp then I slapped that sucker and it exploded in a bloody mess. It was gross as hell, but I guess I won that battle because that little bastard was dead and I was still rolling on my run. Finally mother nature just said eff' it and cranked up the temperature to about 150degrees, at this point I essentially started melting and bonked hard the last 30min of my run. I got home and did my post long run weigh in (for science purposes) and I had lost 10lbs! Needless to say I was sufficiently drained of all my vital energies. Usually this wouldn't be to big of an issue, but the problem was that a mere 14hrs after I finished the long run I had my first official marathon workout with the boys. I tried like hell to re-fuel and re-charge, but it was futile. Mother Earth decided to finish me off by making it 300degrees at 8:00 Monday morning. By the time I finished the warm up I knew it was only a matter of time. So right around the 10th interval of the workout the body said eff it, started getting the chills, goosebumps and blurry vision. Bonk! Well played Mother Earth., well played indeed...you cold hearted bitch. (guess I didn't help my cause by trying to put in 40miles of work in 18hrs to finish up 150mile in 7days...)
So folks when you do find yourself exhausted and dehydrated on these hot summer days there is only one remedy, well there are actually several remedies, but my favourite remedy is a nice cold beer. Come on now, I'm not an alcoholic, we all know that summer is beer season and I really like a nice cold pint. It is delicious and sexy. As you know by now, I went to school at Colorado State in Fort Collins, Colorado. Fort Collins just happens to be the best beer town in the world...yeah the whole friggen world! What makes it so great? Well it is the cool, clean, crisp mountain water no doubt! Fort Collins has a whole bunch of breweries, but the best three are New Belgium, Fort Collin's Brewery and O'Dells. If you are ever in Fort Collins do this; get a bike. Ride it to Fort Collins Brewery. Sample their yummy beer. get back on bike. Ride down the street to O'Dell's. Sample their yummy beer. Get back on your bike. Ride down the road to New Belgium. Do their tour. Then sample their yummy beer. Once you have done that you will be drunk and you should probably stop riding your bike around because you may crash into the Poudre river. I have completed that mission many a time, and I have yet to be disappointed. I was planning on going out to the Fort for July, but unfortunately the logistics just didn't work out. I'm pretty bummed about that. So now instead of relaxing out in the Fort under the beautiful Colorado sun sipping on a Sunshine Wheat and hangin' with my boys, I will be in Guelph busting out 150mile weeks and just friggen givin er' hell, with Reider, GillyBoy, The Farmer, Cleave-O and Wild Bill. But ya know what? That's a pretty damn solid option as well. I love the Guelph, Let's get at it!
So back to beer. I was craving a New Belgium beer so hard the other day and I decided that I needed one asap, I also figured that all of Canada needed to taste the awesomeness that the mighty NewBelgium Brewery has to offer. I quickly decided that I was going to start importing it into Canada. I was going to become an importer. A beer importer to be exact, it was going to be awesome. This dream lasted all of 20min. I internetted the criteria to become an importer. Man, it is very, very hard, quite expensive and fairly tedious to become an importer. I thought with NAFTA this importing business would be a breeze. So Anyways, that's not gonna happen. I'm probably not going to be an importer any time soon. I just want a friggen sunshine wheat! gah! The man getting in the way, eff you the man. I keep getting screwed over by the Man, the Man and Mother Earth. It's been a rough week.

-rob-

Blog #39

2011-07-05T00:36:00.002-04:00

Last two weeks have been fun, little hectic but lots of fun none the less. Wanna hear about it? Do you, internet friends wanna know what this kid has been up to? If so, continue reading and enjoy. If not, why are you hereÉ...wait, what the hellÉ apparently I have switched something on my keyboard and the question mark button is now producing this thing; É, huh, it must have literally just happened. I don`t know how to switch it back. Crap. I`ll try to avoid questions from here on out. Moving on.

Two weeks ago was the Vancouver half marathon. I was pretty pumped to get to go to Vancouver, and I was not disappointed. Have you ever been to Vancouver(ahh! that didn`t last long) Holy moly guacamole that city is friggen rad! I have a raging hard on for Vancouver right now.Well, except for the Burrard st. Bridge, eff that bridge. The race was decent, I wanted to win but I didn`t, so that was annoying. But I gave it a solid go and my effort was pretty honest, so overall I`m satisfied. Probably the best part of the race though was the food at the finish line. They had the standard fair; apples, bananas, bagels and such. but they also had cookies. We`re not talking normal cookies either. I`m talking about giant, soft, delicious cookies. All sorts of different flavours and choices. These cookies were so friggen good man, and there was thousands of them! a whole tent dedicated to cookies! Within 10min of finishing I had eaten 1000calorie worth of delicious cookie awesomeness. I then proceeded to bonk terribly and get a horrible stomach ache on the cool down. Luckily Dylan knew a short cut and got us back to the finish area before I died in Stanley park. I regret nothing though, those cookies were rad. Big thanks to Clif and Alan from the Canadian Running Series, those guys are top notch and once again put on a fantastic show. Also congrats to Dylan W. dude has only lived in Vancouver for like 6months and he is already the ``hometown hero`` good job Dylan.
However, the coolest part of the weekend was seeing my good buddy Fil and getting to hang out with brother Mike. Brother Mike is great and I was very happy that I got to see him. We drank a bunch of beer and rocked out to a fantastic Chuck Ragan concert, it was a tonne of fun. Although after all them brews the flight home the next day was rough. It took immense amounts of focus and determination as to not throw up all over that plane. The flight home was very reminiscent of my flight home from Berlin after worlds in 09`. Man I got so drunk at the world`s banquet. Those Germans throw a hell of a party. Lots of free beer and European techno music. It was a magical evening, check it out...in picture form;

Free beer!

effing awesome German after party!

suffer all the way across the Atlantic. Notice I failed to change clothes.

So after Vancouver I came back to Guelph and made a shit load of crepes. For those of you who are unaware, I make a killer crepe. I blogged about my love of crepes way back in blog 3. This lady ordered 200large crepes. I ended up making many more than that, I was constantly eating crepes all last week. Banana, nutella and peanut butter on a crepe is amazing...I`m such a fat bastard.

After those few days of crepe bliss I rolled up north to a buddies cottage for the long weekend. Scotiabank build-up is starting this week. This past weekend was the last chance I had to party until after that race. Folks, I`m pretty satisfied with the way things went down. Rocked some pretty solid cottage partying this weekend. 50miles/50beers over 3days, nice. That`s the key though folks I still hit my running! That is very important to me, I have a motto that I believe in very deeply. It`s quite simple; you gotta ``earn the party``. Anytime I know that I am gonna party I make sure to get in some good workout before. Then you don`t feel bad about having a good time, because you earned it! Remember that kids, you gotta earn the party! but if you are under 19 (21 for our American friends) you should not be drinking, because that is illegal. Respect the law please.

So here we are, it is now time to get down to work. 15weeks to go. Things are gonna be getting serious out here in the Guelph. Reider and Gillis are fast as hell, it`s gonna be fun chasing em`around the roads and trails here in Guelph the next few months.

Okay, one last thing before I head out. I wanna say a quick thanks to all you amazing people out there. During my race in Vancouver I had three people yell at me in reference to the blog. I especially loved the ``FFTF`` I got at around 5km. Shout out to Will from the finish line, all the great people on the Twitter and you folks who leave all those nice comments on this here blog. I love this running community we have here and I am so lucky to be a part of it. Thanks guys.

Okay, sleep beckons me. My body is still pretty annoyed about all the crepes and beer.

-rob-

Blog #38

2011-06-20T22:29:00.001-04:00

So it was father's day was yesterday. I love my father, pops has sired 5boys, we all love him very much. Wanna know something funny about us 5boys? If you take the first letter from each of our names, you can make a funny/relevant word. Scott, Pete, Erik, Rob, Mike, haha, well played mom and dad,you guys are funny.

Headed out to Vancouver this weekend for the ScotiaBank Half Marathon. Pretty excited about it. I've always wanted to visit Vancouver, well maybe a little less excited now that it turns out that Vancouver is full of huge losers...okay sorry not going to get political here, but seriously Vancouver WTF? ahh...anyways, I've always heard about how nice it is out there on the west coast, should be a fun trip.

I'm pretty excited for this race. I have never run a half marathon and I think my fitness is coming around decently. This race is part of the Canada Running Series and those dudes always put on a top notch event. 1000km June had been abandoned in order to focus on sharpening up for this half. But for the record, as of June 15th I was hammering 1000km June, it was gonna be conquered for sure. But I guess the reason for doing all this hard training is so that I can race fast, so I might as well be somewhat fresh for this sucker. I don't really have a time goal, I just wanna beat some people and make it hurt.
Few random thoughts here; I think loofahs are pretty nifty. They may come across as kinda girly, but when ya get down to it and you're looking for one hell of a satisfying lather, loofahs are the way to go.
I don't like golf. I golfed last year and had a lot of fun, but that was only because I was drunk the whole time. I had fun drinking with my friends, but the actual act of golfing sucks. I don't like golf because I am terrible at it. I don't like sucking at things, but what makes it worse is the fact that old people and fat people are way better than me at golf. Any sport that you can be good at despite being old and fat is not a sport, it's a game. Golf is a game. I don't like the game of golf.
I got a ticket for riding my bike on the sidewalk. I was pulled over by a cop in an SUV, it was weak man. Any cop driving around in an SUV pulling over cyclists is a wiener. Seriously, you have this big ass, rough looking cop truck and ya pull over a dude on a bike? Cops in SUV's should be ramming shit, busting drug dealers and being general bad asses, busting cyclists is not bad ass at all.
In Guelph if you don't have a bell on your bike it is a $110 ticket. That is bullshit. Why is a bell so absolutely crucial that not having one is worth $110? What does a bell do? It rings. It makes a noise to alert people of your presence. Do you know what else can do that? A human voice. Our voice can act as a bell, a natural bell. It can be argued that the human voice is even more useful than a bell at alerting pedestrians of your whereabouts. A bell goes "ring" but I can be much more particular with my voice and say things such as; "excuse me", "on your left" or I could even just scream incoherently, exact same result as the bell; People gonna know you're coming. Guelph take your bell law and shove it, that's bush league man.
Good luck to the river crew out there at nationals this weekend, really looking forward to following the action. The 1500 and Steeple should be particularly awesome. Milne vs. Nate in the 1500 and Alex vs. Hughes in the steeple. Good stuff going down out there in the Calgary.
Yup, so that's why I havn't blogged in a little while, really had nothing to say. I'll get back at ya with a race report and such next week. Love ya internet.

-rob-

Blog #37

2011-06-08T23:51:00.004-04:00

Hey there you crazy sons of guns. Wanna blog? Okay, let's go!
I'm at work right now, I just moved around a bunch of heavy stuff and my shop is a mess, there is some sort of crazy experiment going on in here. I'm a bit overwhelmed, I'm gonna take a break. I often find myself overwhelmed and or confused here at the ole' 10-3. I'm the shop guy at an environmental consulting firm. I'm here to help in anyway I can- prep for field work, clean stuff, build stuff, keep the soda pop fridge stocked, basically I do the things that all the smart people are to smart to do, or get paid to much to do. Sounds pretty simple right? It is for the most part, I'm a champ at keeping the pop fridge stocked. These people are engineers though, and engineers are smart as hell. They are always asking me to do complicated things and to build these weird little contraptions. This is generally how it goes down; The smart person will come to my shop with some sort of sketch and tell me to build what is on the paper. They will use their fancy engineering talk and I will immediately become confused. I have a history degree, so sometimes I try to utilize this and ask "historically, how would this be done?" However, this trick has actually never worked, so I remain confused. I will act confident and pretend I know exactly what they are talking about. Then when they leave I call Danielle (smart engineer, wife of a runner, she's got my back) and I get her to come give me a more detailed explanation of what the hell I'm supposed to do. She will break in down in terms I can understand and usually I can figure it out from there. The people I work with are great though, they are amazingly understanding and supportive with the whole running thing. It is a sweet gig. Maybe I should get back to work, I'll finish this up later.
So summer is coming, we've had a few scorcher's here in Guelph already. The humidity up here is pretty gnarly. I was roasting out there on the track today, and my workout was actually kinda garbage. But hell, I don't mind to much. After that shit of a winter, I refuse to complain about the weather. I can't stand winter running. Winter running is hard man. You gotta bundle up in layer after layer of the warm stuff and then go slip and slid around the streets just to get your miles in. And in the winter it gets dark at 4:30 so you gotta wake up early to get your doubles in. Recently I've been rocking 12pm-7:30pm doubles, it's amazing. anyways, back to winter running sucking. Lets talk about frozen knobs, some of the worst pain I've ever experienced as a runner has come via the frozeness of my weiner after not keeping that little guy warm and snug. I swear to god, the feeling of a thawing dink after a long cold run can be excruciating. It has literally brought me to tears before, poor little guy. Yeah, so I don't mind sweating a little bit and getting a little sunburned. Bring on the sun!
I was just reading a thread on LetsRun about a high school kid getting DQ'd for swearing. It reminded me of the time I was at OFSAA regionals in high school. The scenario was that the top 4 qualified for the show. I run the race and finish 5th, just missed qualifying, I was pissed, so right as I crossed the line I let out a "muddereffer!" and I was promplty DQ'd. Turns out the guy who came 4th scratches from OFSAA and 5th place from regionals moves on, Sonofabitch! So kids out there, some advice for ya; swearing after a race is a fine way to let out emotion. Just make sure the officials are not around.
I have always kinda had a tendency to say stupid stuff when I shouldn't. In 8th grade I had to miss out on the class graduation trip because I was a dumb little smartass. We had this lady teacher who was lame and a the dude who was our math and gym teacher was a dick. I was getting in trouble one day for something stupid and I told the lady I thought she was a bitch, and I told the dude I thought he was a dick. They told me I couldn't go on the graduation trip because, and direct quote here; "I am sick of Rob Watson's attitude!" . It sucked, the class got to go to Toronto and do all sorts of fun stuff. I just stayed home and did some not so fun stuff. I probably just did a puzzle or something. So kids, another lesson from Rob. Don't be a smart ass, if you think your teacher is a dick keep your mouth shut. Wait until you graduate and they no longer have any authority over you. Then unleash your fury via blog or twitter, that's the way things work these days. Also if you are at bar and you think someone is a douche wait till they are gone before you make fun of them. Douches don't like being called douches and they will (maybe) punch you in the face. Also if you are reading this you are probably a runner and you can't fight, you'll get beat up by the douche. I've been punched by a douche, it sucks.
Remember blog #6 yeah that part at the end when I talked about getting thrown out of my friends birthday party for throwing pizza on his roof...when I was 6! Yeah well that buddy is getting married! in Korea! he's marrying a Korean lady! Just wanna say congrats to Spence, getting married and gonna have babies!..hmm, I don't like it when my friends get married, makes me feel old. I turn 28 in two weeks, that is not cool. I should probably look into getting married and having some babies soon myself.
Woah! just killed a wasp in my house. I sure hope there are no more wasps in my house, I still haven't found that chipmunk from blog #33. When I was a kid my dickhead friend hit a wasp nest with a baseball bat and ran away, he didn't tell me he was doing this and I got stung in the face by a wasp, it hurt like hell.
Okay then, I'm gonna go eat a orange Popsicle. Have a good one folks.

-rob-

Blog #36

2011-06-01T22:40:00.002-04:00

One time in high school a couple buddies and I decided that we wanted a chicken. We didn't really know where to get a chicken so we figured we would steal one. We drove out to the country and looked for a farm that had chickens running around. It was late at night and we had a hard time finding a chicken farm. We found a farm that had some cows, we decided that we would just mess with the cows instead. My friend Marc proceeded to try to climb the fence to get closer to the cows, he was immediately and violently electrocuted by the fence. He screamed and fell off the fence, the rest of us freaked out and ran away. Marc was left in a ditch, dazed and confused. It was very cowardly of us to run away from Marc, sorry Marc. Eventually we went and checked on him, he recovered and we drove home defeated. The city boys were thoroughly owned by that farmer and his Cows that night. We don't have electric fences in the city.
So hey everyone, I raced this past weekend! I ran a 10km road race in Ottawa, it was efffing hard. On paper it appears as though I had a very mediocre result, but based on where I am at with my training I was actually quite pleased. I just wanted to go out there and run hard,make it hurt and get that racing feeling back, mission accomplished. I have work to do but I have nothing but time. My May was pretty good training overall, I smashed my goal of 600miles for the month, the callous is hardening.
I have a very sexy training log. It's nice to look at, but it is quite worthless without any decent PB's to show for it though. Hopefully those will come soon. I'm racing again on June 26th, gonna hit up a half marathon in Vancouver. Hopefully I can rock that sucker.
This past week I had a buddy visiting from Colorado, he's actually from New Zealand but he goes to CSU. If anyone out there has a friend from a different country I would highly recommended you hang out with them a lot. Foreigners are so funny, They have awesome accents and are generally very nice. I hung out with Daniel for 10days straight and I still giggled every time he said something,
ex. at the grocery store
Kiwi: "eh mate. where are the trollies"
me: *giggle* "Trolly? oh you mean cart. Over there."
Kiwi: "Oi, bloody 'ell"
me: *giggle*
The only time his foreign ignorance got him in trouble was when we were in Ottawa and we came across a statue of Terry Fox. Daniel was not very impressed with Terry's accomplishments and he made a joke about Terry. Immediately there were 4 Canadian dudes ready to beat up our kiwi friend. Luckily for him he used his hilarious accent to ward us off and calm us down. Tip here for all you non-Canadians out there; The #1 way to guarantee an ass kicking in Canada is to talk bad about our main man Terry Fox. He is the greatest Canadian ever, do not mess with him!
Last night I had a dream about crocodiles. As far as I'm concerned crocodiles are now the scariest damn animals in the world. If my dream is accurate, those bastards are huge and will not hesitate to eat you and your friends, they are heartless bastards. Animals for the most part are awesome though. I really dig animals. I was a zoology major for one semester in University. But then I had to take all sorts of biology and math and other science classes. My brain hates math and science so unfortunately my dream of being a monkey trainer was dashed. Why do you need to know stupid calculus to get a zoology degree? I just wanted a job at the zoo so I could train the monkeys. Monkeys don't care if I can calculate shit. They just want bananas, I'm smart enough to know that. Take this guy for example;

That guy was probably trying to figure out how get that monkey off him by using some sorta useless equation learned in school. If that guy just threw the monkey a banana he would not have been thrown in the river. Monkeys love bananas, if you give em' bananas then you can teach them to do tricks. CSU should of had a zoology degree with a focus on monkey studies, you wouldn't have mess with all the math and science. It would be based solely on monkey related stuff. You'd have to take psychology classes and learn Pavlov's tricks and then you would learn sign language so you can teach the monkey to communicate. Finally you'd have to take a whole bunch of karate and kick boxing classes. Monkeys are strong and hell (as seen above), and just in case the monkey was having a bad day and wanted to fight you'd have to be ready to throw down, those things will literally rip your arms off.
Okay one last animal story. I came across a deer and its baby on the trail the other day. The baby was cute as heck, but the mom gave me a look that said "Stay the hell away from my baby or I will kick the crap outta you" I had to turn around and go down a different path. Animals are very protective parents. A guy on my University team almost got eaten by an angry mountain lion mother, luckily the kid mountain lion ran away before the mom ate my teammate. He was left unharmed...unharmed with poop in his shorts.
Okay, so congrats to the roommate for setting a new Canadian record in the 2000m last Saturday. Milne rocked a 5:01.57. Dude is quick!
Until next week interneters, love ya.

-rob-

Blog #35

2011-05-26T16:30:00.012-04:00

Hey so Blog #35 remixed for ya’ll, sorry for the confusion. Let’s get things started with tales from my trip to Louisville for Krazy-Fest.

As I literally just mentioned, I was down in Louisville this past weekend for Krazy-Fest, it was awesome. I got to see some amazing bands, hang out with some solid buddies and drink some cold brewskies. I even got in some good running. Shout out to Louisville's finest Matt Hughes for showing us around the trails (gonna get that NCAA steeple double!). The only bad thing about the whole weekend was Dayton Ohio and Hamvention. According to the little old lady at the Knights Inn, once a year people from all over the world gather in Dayton for a Ham radio convention... Did you get that people? Ham radio lovers from across the globe gather in Dayton!? to celebrate their love for Ham Radios!? What the hell? As a result of the influx of radio nerds to Dayton every hotel in that city doubles in price;

me: How much for a room?

Super8 guy: $90

me: haha, seriously?

Super8 guy: $90

me: umm....suck my balls super8.

We also got our car searched as we came home across the border at 3am. It was annoying, but I was quite haggard, very smelly and barley functioning. The border cop was probably warranted in his suspicion of me being a drug smuggler. My line of "I'm a runner I don't do drugs" failed to convince him otherwise. You see, we had to check outta the hotel at 11am on Sunday. Cody and I then put in our 80min run, afterwards we "showered" by pouring bottles of water over our heads. We then went to the concert and got more dirty and stinky. So when we got to the border looking like burnt out crack heads 8 guys came out and started tearing Dieter(my car) apart. It was hard to watch them so thoroughly violate my beloved car. They were checking the engine, door panels, tires, seats, everything was being searched. It was kinda funny when one of the dudes had to search through my bag of dirty, wet, rancid running clothes from the weekend. Some of those clothes had been fermenting in that bag for 3days. It must of kinda sucked for that guy. Those border guys took themselves way to seriously, what a bunch of dinks.

During Krazy Fest there was a band performing named "Frontiers", they are made up of some old school rockers who have been playing music for a long time. They have never had a big hit, and have not made a lot of money playing music. The singer talked about how he chose to play music for a living because it was his passion and it was what made him feel alive; "follow your heart, and the money will sort its self out". He loved the music, he the loved the people and he just loved the whole scene. as he spoke I got to thinking that indie rockers and semi-elite runners are kind of cut from the same cloth. We do what we do because we love it, we do what makes us happy. Except that indie rockers are much cooler, get a lot more chicks and probably have better parties.

So anyways, that brings us to now. I’m just sitting in a hotel in Ottawa watching the hockey. Why am I in Ottawa? Well I’m running a 10km road race here tomorrow as part of the Ottawa race weekend. This will be my first race since Houston. Usually I’d like to start my season with some sorta low key, off the grid race to test the legs. Not this year folks, I’m jumping head first into a shit storm of fast dudes. There are a whole whack load of fast guys in the 10km tomorrow night. So that must mean I’m fit as hell right? Umm...well ya see...umm...one good thing about training with the speed river crew is that you become pretty good and swallowing your pride and taking your beatings. Tomorrow night will be no different. There is a good chance I’ll be getting jarred pretty hard tomorrow night. But whatever, road races are awesome and I’m sure that it’ll be fun.

So I just got finished with dinner here at the hotel. It was quite good, pasta, veggies, potatoes, random Kenyan cuisine, you know typical pre-race stuff. They also had a desert table, it had all sorts of cookies and cakes and such it looked so good. I just wanted to eat a whole bunch of cake, but that would be a bad idea the night before a race, I’d probably poop my pants if I did that. It is annoying, why can't cake make you fast? That would be amazing. Unfortunately that's just not the way it works. Cake will make you fat, and fat people are generally slow. So instead of delicious yummy cake ya gotta watch your diet and eat all sorts of healthy crap. That’s the way science works. It's not fair, damn you science.

This is a reoccurring theme in running. Stuff that is awesome/enjoyable won't help, but stuff that is lame/uncomfortable will make ya faster. Check it.

Ice baths-lame. Hot tubs-awesome!

Core and weights-exhausting. Sitting around watching youtube videos-rad.

Morning runs-too tired for this junk. Sleeping in- hells ya.

Beet Juice-sucks balls. Chocolate milkshakes- bathe in that shit.

Sports massage- friggen hurt like hell. Other types of bodily rubbing- well, you know.

The list goes on and on. Man, runners are dumb.

Okay, I'll stop complaining now. I love this sport and I should not speak ill of it. Sorry running.

Okay well, I’m gonna get a massage. Usually I would not do this the night before a race. But I friggen need it bad. Don’t judge me. Love ya’ll.

-rob-

Blog #34

2011-05-18T22:57:00.001-04:00

Do you know what I realized this weekend? I realized that I am not very good at public speaking, not very good at all. I kinda suck at public speaking. I went down to the hometown and did a little talk for the LondonRunner track club. Great group that LondonRunner crew. I was asked to do a little talk and maybe help inspire some kids. Instead I just babbled incoherently and essentially called a bunch of high school kids pussies for not running enough. It was brutal, these kids were just looking at me like I was some friggen weirdo. I don't even think they knew who I was or why I was there.
I figure there are several reasons for my crappy public speaking. First off I do absolutely no prep, I am scared of this kinda stuff, so I just try not to think about. Then when it's go time I wing it and hope for the best. This is a terrible approach if you're looking to have a successful public speaking experience.
Mom: "so you ready for your talk"
Me: "yeah, I guess"
Mom: "so what are you gonna talk about"
Me: "running, it'll be fine. Can I have some ice cream?"
Another big problem I have is not taking my audience into account. I'm speaking to a bunch of high school kids here. Some of them are serious and some of them are actually quite good. But man, I wasn't even close to being on their level. I was just talking about a bunch gibberish about running lots of miles, and them being wimps for not working hard enough. Geez man, when I was in 10th grade I spent more time playing with my wiener than running. I'm a hypocrite. I should of just got up there and said; "hey guys, have fun with your running, respect you parents and don't smoke crack" That would have been perfect. That's what I'm doing next time.
Aside from that public speaking debacle things have been rolling smoothly. I am rocking the callous training right now. Just running a lot and working hard, building the callous so that when the real work starts I'll be ready for it. The only problem with callous training is that it makes you tired as balls. Man, before every workout I just gotta swallow the pride and give it a go. Reid and Gillis are also both very fit and very good, this makes the kicking of my ass even worse. I keep telling myself that I'm doing this for the greater good and I'm looking at the bigger picture and so forth and so on, but man oh man, This is rough. My ego, my poor ego is taking a beating. Maybe I'll go yell at more high school kids to make myself feel better.
Speaking of yelling at high school kids. I was out for my run last night, I'm just running down the path, minding my own business. I run past these four high school aged kids, aged 16ish I'm guessing. As I run by one of the kids calls me a "fag", his little punk friends then proceeded to laugh at this righteous insult. I'm a 27year old dude, and I should have just shook this off. But I didn't. I responded with a slightly more mature comeback (slightly) and thus the verbal battle was on. Each side took turns trading insults and threats and such (hey NewBalance, these kids think your running pants are "gay". There's some market research for ya) finally I just had to continue with my run so I carried on my way. About a minute later I looked at my watch and realized that it was time to turn around. But I couldn't, those young street toughs were back that way on the trail! what was I gonna do? I was screwed. I had to just keep heading out further from home until eventually I came across another route I could take to get home. Turned an 80min run into a 90min run, eff' those kids.
Quick note here, I'm racing a 10km road race next weekend in Ottawa. The race is quite stacked with international and national talent. I'm looking forward to lacing up the NB205's and giving things a go. I hope that I can go sub-30, that'd be a decent start.
Alright gonna talk quickly about fruit. I just grabbed an orange to snack on. I love oranges. They're great, so juicy and tasty. But oranges are risky because sometimes they are dry and sucky. It is very frustrating when you go through all the work of peeling an orange and it turns out to be a dud orange. I got a dud orange earlier today and I was very disappointed. I yelled at the orange and threw it in the garbage. I settled on an apple instead. Apples are quite good. I think that apples are better than oranges because they are easier to judge. The bruises are clearly visible and you know what you're getting from the get go. Apples are more dependable than oranges. Apples are safe.
So I'm going to Louisville Kentucky this weekend for Krazy-Fest. I'm going to try to behave because I am pacing a 5000m on Tuesday and racing that 10km on Sunday. But having said that, I also hope some silly shenanigans go down because then I'll have some stuff to blog about. That'd be sweet.
Bed time.
Have a good one internet.

-rob-

Blog #33

2011-05-11T13:13:00.000-04:00

Hey, sorry for the delay again. I just got a new phone and my god people, have you seen what these things are capable of these days? I have been to busy having my mind blown to write a blog. Apps for everything! Absofreakinglutely everything! Life is so easy now, how the hell did anyone get anything done before the internet existed? It would have been such a pain in the ass to write a paper before the internet. You'd spend 97% of the time just finding resources. I had to write this long ass paper in order to graduate from University, 30pages! and it had to be all primary sources. What are the chances that Colorado State University would have a letter written by a soldier to his wife about the great Indian Chief Techumseh from 1812 in their archives? Yeah, I'd be screwed! But do you know where I found that letter? you know who had that letter? The internet! Yeah, the MFing internet had that letter! The internet is amazing, I love you internet, I love you forever. Okay, I've managed to pull myself together, lets blog.
Hey remember this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uy2FxP3FuU&feature=related Remember how friggen awesome that was? Man, those Blue Jays teams back in the early 90's were so badass.
Remember this also? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z64K8kznYs&feature=related Yeah, that was sick. DB taking care of business. One of the highlights of my childhood.
Alright one last vid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5fg5HcTYYc I'll go on record and say that, that was the best hockey game ever played. Why did I show these videos? Well I want you to be all pumped up and in a good mood. Because the rest of this blog is gonna be a letdown.
I'll start with some running news; Got in a good week of training last week, pretty happy about that. Good volume and I damn near ran a sub-60sec 400. That is a big deal for me. Anytime I dip below 60 I feel like a speedster. I have these long ass legs but when I try to get them to go really fast they just get all floppy and useless. Speed is overrated anyways, eff you speed!
The weather here in Guelph has gotten pretty nice as of late. All the trails and paths are good to go. The trail system in Guelph is so sick. For my long run on Sunday I just took off from my house, 23miles people, and not even exaggerating here, 22 of em' on nice soft trails. Just went from trail to trail all over the city. It was great. Well played Guelph.
So now I have a confession to make. The real reason as to why I run. What drives this kid. The reason I get out the door and put in all these miles, the reason I blast the shit outta my core and the reason why I do all these other silly drills and such. It's all because of the South Secondary School graduating class of 2002. Hey SCI class of 02' you are a bunch of jerks, and I will prove you wrong! You see, at our graduation there was a series of random awards. Things like most likely to succeed, most likely to become awesome, most likely to be lame and stuff like that. There was also "most likely to be in the Olympics", I was the obvious choice, I had that sucker locked up! well I thought it was obvious. I was wrong, most likely to be in the Olympics; Tyler MFing McTavish. What the hell! I will admit that Tyler is a much better athlete than me, but the award clearly stated "Olympics", not overall athletic ability. Come on South! Tyler played basketball-He's like 5'8, not gonna happen. He was a football superstar, great, not even an Olympic sport! he was awesome at Hockey... Canadian Olympic hockey team, umm good luck there buddy. That laminated paper certificate should have been mine! I won a goshdarned OFSAA medal! Apparently my classmates didn't read TnfNorth and realize that an OFSAA medal is pretty much the same as the Olympics anyways. So yeah, that's what drives me. I am driven to succeed just so I can prove some people wrong, makes sense right?
Woah! What the hell? Oh man, a chipmunk just ran across the floor in the kitchen. There is a chipmunk in my house. Ahh crap, where'd it go? gah, my door is open. Did that little bastard go into my room? It is a mess in there, he could be anywhere. Crap. Well I'm going to go find that little bugger.
have a good one.

-rob-

Blog #32

2011-05-04T09:51:00.001-04:00

Alright here we go. It is time to flick the switch. We are officially going from "dicking around" to "doin' work". This past weekend has put the fire in the belly. Reid and Gillis were awesome at the sporting life 10km, hammering the field, and each other to take 1-2. Dylan dropped a very impressive 28:12 in Cali, and Simon probably did something sick on the trails out there in Portland. These guys are friggen studs, awesome runners, all of em'. And well shit folks, I gotta get to work so I can beat those bastards! Well actually, they're not bastards at all. I have enjoyed a beer or two with all these guys. Reid and Gilly are my mentors of sorts, I am lucky enough to train with these guys and they are always there to provide leadership, encouragement and guidance. Great guys, love em' both...gotta beat em'. I have been on a few national teams with Dylan and we have always gotten along great, Dylan is an awesome dude, gotten drunk together a few times...gotta beat him. I don't know Simon super well, but he has always been a runner that I have looked up to, hard as hell and fast as fudge. We shared a few beers after cross national a few years ago and he was a solid chap...gotta beat him. Then there all those BCMP boys and a couple other BC guys out there looking to rock it as well. Man! 24weeks is a lot of time, but geez louise I'm behind! So here we go, flip it- it's effing go time.
It is a very exciting time for Canadian marathoning. I'm gonna say it folks, making a prediction here if you don't mind. The Canadian marathon record will not survive past Oct 16, 2011. I'm not saying that I'm gonna break it. But someone will. Eric, Reid, Dylan and Simon are just to good and there is just to much on the line. I'm going to get down to business and work my balls off so that I'll be ready to roll through the streets of Toronto with those guys. Can't wait.
Well we have 24weeks to go, so maybe I shouldn't get to horny about the marathon yet. But I can't help it. I'm constantly thinking about it, I've already run that damn race 50times in my head. I'm gonna have to put my focus on other things until July. Oh July, the real work will begin in that glorious month. Okay, until then lets start work on operation media whore. Operation media whore is my attempt to become one of those runners that is not actually good but has tricked people into thinking that they're awesome. As a 2:16 marathoner I qualify as kinda good but nothing special. If I could just do some clever self marketing and throw in a bit of trickery I think I can get people to think that I am much better than I really am, and then they'll give me money and women will flock to me. First and foremost I will now refer to myself as Canada's #1 ranked marathoner. Sure Reid, Gillis and Dylan have all run faster than me in the past 6months, but according to 2011 rankings I'm #1, so there ya go, I'm #1...bitches. Also, I also have to make a point of letting people know that I am an "Olympic Hopeful" or "Aspiring Olympian" something along those lines. Anything with the word Olympic in it will do. It doesn't really matter if I actually have a shot or not. Most people won't bother to check that out, just by using the term "Olympian" they'll immediately assume that I'm awesome. Also I may have to do some sort of cheesy running related publicity stunts. Maybe some sort of treadmill record attempt or super long jog across Ontario or something. People love that shit. Dean Karnzanes has made a living of this kinda stuff, dude sucks balls running wise, but people think he is amazing. I hope that OPMW is a success because being a shitty runner who is good at taking advantage of the naiveness of the general public may be easier and more lucrative than being a kick ass runner who works their balls off for scraps. Okay, so I'm gonna go and get to work on that.
Have a great week everyone.

-rob-

Blog #31

2011-04-27T10:25:00.001-04:00

One night when I was in University I was out socializing with a couple buddies. It was winter and we were at the Surfside. We drank some brews and ate some pizza, it was a fun night. On the walk home buddy #1 decided to start throwing snowballs at cars. It was funny and we all joined in the activity. At one point buddy #1 picked up what he thought was a chunk of snow, it turned out to be a dead pigeon. He threw it at a car anyways. We were walking down by our campus when buddy #2 threw one last snowball, he hit a car and we rejoiced in a well placed toss. Unfortunately this particular driver did not find it funny. He slammed on his breaks. Randomly at this same time a cop was driving by. The driver flagged down the cop and sent him after us. We instinctively ran for it. We ran on to campus, buddy #2 and myself hid in some bushes. It was a pretty solid hiding spot. Buddy #1 just decided to lie down in a field. It was a terrible hiding spot. The police immediately shone a huge spotlight on him and used a megaphone to tell him to stay put until they could come over and arrest him. Little did the cops know that buddy #1 was a 4:01 miler. He verrrrry sloooowly rose to his feet, then he just took the eff off! Man, he ran so fast across that field! The whole time he was running away the cops were yelling at him to stop. He didn't. He made it across the field, across the road and into freedom. It was pretty awesome and hilarious.
So then there was just buddy #2 and myself left hiding in the bushes. There was now three cops circling the area looking for us. Buddy #2 looked me square in the eye and said "Rob, I'm going for it", before I could reply he just busted out of those bushes and started hammering across the field. The cops caught sight of him and starting yelling at him to stop. Well, buddy #2 is a 1:49 800m runner, he friggen dusted those cops, just made em' look silly. Buddy #2 used his gazelle like speed to earn his freedom. It was very inspiring. So there I was left all alone in the bush, scared, confused and drunk. At this point in my life I had never broken 2:00min in the 800m and I lacked confidence in my footspeed to try to out run the po-po. I decided to wait it out in the bushes. after a few tense minutes the cops kinda figured out the general area in which I was hiding. They started to move in on my position. One cop car came to a stop about 50ft from my hiding spot, then another came and stopped about 30ft away. I was starting to freak out, I didn't want to get arrested. What would happen to me? my coach would be so mad...my mom would be so mad, oh crap! would I get deported?! Then my phone rang, oh shit! I picked it up- it was buddy #1;
"Rob, where the hell are you?"
"Dude, I'm in a friggen bush!"
"Oh...umm...what are you gonna do?"
"umm...yeah, I'm gonna make a run for it"
"Okay"
"bye"
"bye"
I swear to god people, in my head this is one of the most dramatic and epic moments in my life. I just exploded the hell outta that bush and easily dropped a 24sec 200 on those cops asses. I could hear them yelling at me as I hauled tits across that field. *sprint, sprint sprint* I cleared that field. *giv'r, giv'r giv'r* then I crossed the road. Safe! Friggen eh! It was exhilarating. To this day I still laugh thinking about how confused those cops must have been having all these tall skinny dudes just flying out of random bushes at 2:30am...actually now that I think about it, they probably thought me and buddy #2 were boning in the bush or something...crap.
Hey! I want to give a shout out to a good friend of mine; Paul Michel. Paul just scored a sweet job at Flotrack. Paul's pretty little face is now gonna be all over the internet keeping us up to date with all things track and field. Oh yeah, Paul is also buddy #2 from that story I just told! Pretty neat eh? So thanks to Paul leBlog is now featured on Flotrack, but I can't help but think that my brother has something to do with it also. All part of his master plan to have more UNC coverage on Flotrack. UNC is a great school, I like UNC.
So yeah, the blog is now on the Flotrack, that is pretty awesome. Hopefully I can meet some new internet friends via this Flotrack connection. That is one of my favourite things about being in this sport, ya get to meet all sorts of good people and make new friends along the way. When we are at meets over in Europe we usually get roomed with other random athletes. Sometimes they are a fellow distance runner, and sometime they are not. Sometimes they speak English, and sometimes you have to communicate via hand signals and grunts. It is always entertaining and generally they are good people. I was racing in Barcelona one time and I got roomed with a 400m runner from Africa somewhere, I'll call him Rick (not gonna give his real name). All weekend Rick was on the phone with his wife, they were all kissy face and smoochie-smoochie and such, basically he was pretty lame with all this wifey-poo shenanigans. Fast forward 6weeks to the banquet after worlds in Berlin. I run into Rick, now here he is, Mr. Kissy-Kiss super husband, and he is trying so hard to wheel this hot German chick! He calls me over;
"Rob, hey Rob, tell this girl what a good guy I am"
"umm, okay, Rick is a good dude"
Rick turns to the Lady "See baby, I'm a good guy"
"Wait, Rick aren't you married?"
Rick gives me a mean look, and I walk away. I think my friendship with Rick ended at that moment. We didn't even get the chance to become facebook friends and then never communicate with each other again.
Little running update here I suppose. Had my first decent week of running in a while last week. I hit 124miles and got in a decent 20miler on Sunday. My long run was actually helped by the fact that I got a migraine mid run. I get migraines every so often and man do they suck balls. This bastard migraine starts to come on at about 7miles, it is so annoying. First my vision gets all blurry and I can barely see. Then my tongue and hands get all tingly and I turn dumb as hell. Essentially I'm running whilst having a minor stroke. The migraine is painful and stupid but luckily my legs are unaffected so I ended up kinda hammering the second half of the run just to get it over with. I needed to get done so I could lie down in a dark room as soon as possible. I went 62:30/57:10 for my 20miles, so from a running standpoint it was actually a pretty good run.
Hey, check out my profile on the NewBalance site: http://www.newbalance.com/performance/running/teamnb/rob-watson/
Great picture eh? Like I always say, I don't photograph well, I'm better in person.
Alright I suppose I should head off to work now. Have a great week everybody

-rob-

Blog #30

2011-04-21T18:53:00.000-04:00

Holy Moly, Blog #30. Good job me, I'm happy that I have made it this far in my blogging adventure. I ran out of good stories and ideas at round blog #12. Honestly, I've just been winging it since then. It has been quite fun and I have really enjoyed all the new internet friends that I have made via this Blog. So lets keep it rolling shall we?
Track season is starting and it is weird to not be partaking in the activities. No steeples, no 5000's, nothing that involves constant left turns or hurdling things. I actually wanted to run track but I got a little hurt at a bad time, so now track has been sacrificed in the name of building a huge base, the hugest of bases will be built by yours truly. The plan/goal is that come Oct 16th as I roll into that 20th mile there will be no wall out there that can slow me down. And if there is a wall waiting for me there at mile20 I'm gonna push Dylan into it and hurdle that sucker.
Hurdling, ahh yes speaking of hurdling, that is something I will not really miss about track season. No more hurdle work for this guy. I have steepled for many years now, and that damn hurdling is just something that I could never pick up on. Good thing I'm 6'3 and I can essentially just step over the barriers, because I am not a very good hurdler at all. You know who are good steeplers? French people! French steeplers are awesome, both the Quebecois and Old Country France steeples are such graceful hurlders. Look at Alex Genest hurdle, that guy is so efficient, he is like a damn hurdling poet.
Speaking of French steeplechasers and steeplechases, there was this one time I was in France for a steeple, southern France, the small town of Pezanas to be exact. Beautiful little place, very friendly people. So anyways, I was running this race and there was no clock on the track and all the splits were being read out loud in French. I was so lost, all I knew was that the leaders were heading out at 8:10pace, so I calculated my pace off of that idea. When I finished I thought I had run a huge PB and I was pumped! Turns out that the pace was never even close to 8:10 and I did not run a PB at all, the elation quickly dissipated. I actually ran pretty slowly, that was very confusing race. Then right at the finish I am met by these two intimidating French dudes, they started asking me questions and looking very official and such. I was certain I was being DQ'd for a particularly violent mid race elbow (European racing is rough!) once again I was very confused, turns out that I was being drug tested. Drug testing in France was weird, but I made a couple new friends in the process. My Ugandan buddy was pumped that we got all the Coca-Cola we wanted in the doping control room, and the Moroccan guy ended up throwing up everywhere (a Moroccan in doping control, no wonder he was nervous). After I peed in the cup there was a nice little community BBQ. I grabbed some chicken and rice and such went and sat down at a table to enjoy the feast. I was sitting at the table when this random French guy and his lady friend come and sat beside me. I kinda smile and nodded then carried on with my meal. This lady gets my attention and just gives me the lowdown in extremely broken English; "My, my cousine est a homo...are you?" I look over at the guy and he is just giving me the weirdest looking smile I've ever seen. I managed to respond (in equally broken French); "non, desole, je ne suis pas un Homo" The lady informs the cousin of my answer and they both get up and leave. At first I thought this was pretty funny. But then I got to thinking, the more I pondered the more annoyed I got. So here I am, I'm only in this city for one night and I clearly don't speak the language. This guy doesn't try to make small talk (obvious language barrier, but whatever), he doesn't try to make me feel comfortable at all, he just wants to know straight up, am I gay? I'm not, so he leaves. That's that, end of interaction. He wan't interested in my mind, didn't care about my feelings or emotions. This dude just wanted a piece of my body! What a pig. He just wanted one magical night of man love. Well sorry French man, I am not that kind of guy. I am a gentleman!
Anyways, wanted to say congrats to Reider,Gilly and Snider for the big wins this past weekend. Goodluck to the UNC squads at ACC's and good luck to Milne at the Kansas relays. Gonna go for a run here. Bye!

-rob-

Blog #29

2011-04-13T15:07:00.000-04:00

Hey yeah! Big win yesterday for Manchester United over Chelsea. I'm pretty pumped about that. What I'm not pumped about is people who give me a hard time for being a ManU fan. Some have said that liking Manchester United is like being a Yankees fan, and that I only like them because they are the best team. Well, For myself that is actually correct, but shut up. It all started when I was a little kid. I was 12 years old and I loved soccer, so naturally I needed a team to cheer for. I figured I would choose between an Italian or an English team because they were the only leagues that they regularly showed on TV. And since we all know that Italian soccer is brutal and they're a bunch of pussies I decided to pick an English squad. Manchester United was the best back then, so I started cheering for them. They were the shit back then and they are the shit now, so that's that, haterz gonna hate.
Other awesome news is that Chuck Ragan is going to be playing some shows in southwestern Ontario. June 12th in Hamilton. 13th in London and 14th in St. Catherines. Then he meets up with the rest of the guys for a Hot Water Music show in London on the 16th. I can't wait, holy balls it is going to be so awesome! I'll probably go to all 3 Chuck shows then just rock out so hard for the HWM show that I die. Anyone wanna go to some sweet rock shows? I looking your direction DST and Robbie J. Here is a sweet video of Chuck performing one of my favourite HWM songs. It is acouticized, but not in a pussy way, in a rocking way. Sometimes when songs get acouticized they loose their balls, Chuck doesn't roll like that he's just to hard to let that happen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EwXJDAHjjg
So now that we have the awesome stuff outta the way lets touch on some mediocre topics. Yes, running has been pretty uneventful. I'm in terrible shape and running is quite uncomfortable. But that will pass soon I'm sure. At least my achilles is feeling pretty darn good. I get all excited and pumped that I can actually run on a strong achilles, but then about 15min into the run my horrible lack of fitness kicks in and I just wanna lie down and take a nap. This sport is a sonofabitch. I love it though, the fire is burning hard and I just wanna get out on the trails and start doing some work. Patience, just gotta be patient.
The weather is getting nice also, that is pretty awesome. But do you know what is a negative about nice weather. Snakes, effing snakes scare the balls outta me. I blame my mom for this one. When I was a little kid every time a snake would come on TV or in a picture featured in the monthly issue of National Geographic my mom would just start freakin out like someone was trying to kill her. Thus I was trained via some sort of psychological way to associate snakes with being the absolutely worst thing in the world. Love ya mom, but ya messed with my head on that whole snake situation. I'm actually okay with the snakes that reside in Southern Ontario, I can deal with them now because the snakes that live in SW Ontario are big pussies, they can't hurt ya. The Snakes in Colorado are so much bigger and scarier! If there is one thing I don't like about Colorado it is the damn Rattlesnakes, mudder effer's are legit deadly. This one time I was out running with my buds on a single track trail when all of sudden there is just this sick *rattle* I look down just in time to see this pissed of snake lunging across the trail at us. Being the third guy in line the friggen thing literally lands at my feet, all rattly and fangy and just evil. I freaked the eff out and just started screaming and jumping and sprinting away. It sucked so bad people, so friggen bad.
Snakes are scary, running is hard and Chuck Ragan is badass. Got it?
Have a great week everyone, good luck to all who'll be racing the Montreal 1/2 or any other races this weekend. Bye.

-rob-

Blog #28

2011-04-05T12:23:00.001-04:00

I heard 'Pretty Fly for a White Guy' on the radio the other day. Is there a worse song in the history of mankind? This song sucks so much balls it is almost unfathomable. Sure, there are a whole lot of crappy songs out there. Pick any offering from the Backstreet Boys, Creed or Nickleback and they too could be in the running as the worst song in the world. But what makes PFFAWG rise to the top of the shit pile is the fact that the Offspring used to be quite rad. The Offspring was a legit awesome So-Cal punk band, they rocked hard. Ignition and Smash are two fantastic albums. What the hell Offspring? One day they just woke up and said "I want a Mansion" and proceeded to write PFFAWG, this horrible steaming pile of shit. It is expected that as bands progress in their careers that their sound will change and evolve. This was not the case with PFFAWG, the Offspring clearly just wanted to write a commercial hit to make some dough. There is absolutely nothing good about this song. It sucks, it just sucks. I wish I had a better grasp of the English language so that I could better articulate the horribleness of this song. It's kinda like how Brittany Spears used to be smoking hot, then she just let herself go. It's okay to be ugly, there are a lot of ugly people out there. But when you used to be hot as hell and then just give up on the hotness and get ugly, that is just not right and that makes the ugliness so much worse. Catch my drift? Okay, lets move on.
So I've decided to resurrect my twitter career. Round 2 of twitter is going much better than round 1. Twitter is actually kinda fun. I'm becoming somewhat of a social networking whore, but I'm okay with that.
What else do we have going on. Want a little running update? Well here it is. I've decided not to do the half champs in Montreal. I'm not 100% healthy and I'm only 50% fit. I don't think it would be a smart idea to even try it. Kinda lame, but there are much more important things to worry about and focus on. Reider will go in there and represent the river quite well I'm sure, he's pretty good. The good news is that I am back to running everyday. Gotta give a shout out to Brenda Scott-Thomas here, she has done a great job in helping me progress through this annoying little set back. Brenda is a top notch physio. Thanks Brenda!
Some more shout outs; Congrats to Gilly Boy for defending his Harry Spring Run-Off title, he pretty much dominated everyone else in that park.
Shout out to the young lads of UNC doing solid work on the track. Those guys are lighting it up so far this season. Issac rocked a 3:42 this past weekend in Florida! Nice job coach Pete. Keep those kids rolling. The more the idiots in LetsRun bash, the better you know you are. Seriously is there a bigger bunch dummies in the world than the peanut gallery on the Letsrun message board? Sure there are some good topics and some very informative posters, but eventually some dumbass will come and ruin it. There are just some small, bitter folks out there who will try to undermine everything. Galen Rupp just rocks a 60min half...yeah but he wore a weird looking mask, so therefore he sucks. Seriously!? People on LetsRun were actually coming up with bad shit to say about Solinsky after he ran 26:59, are you friggen kidding me! gah!
Oh man, I gotta go. Bye!

-rob-

Blog #27

2011-03-29T10:19:00.004-04:00

Good news, I am now back and running. I even got to do a workout yesterday! 1x (3km/2min/1km). Bad news, three weeks of non-running and extensive biking are essentially the same as three weeks non-running and no biking; once the running starts again one finds themselves sucking. Outta shape, but happy to be running, lets get this season going! But seriously, that little workout was hard as hell. I ran the 3km as hard as I could, hit the wall at 2km and rigged it on in. I kinda recovered then managed to barley survive the 1km. It was funny. One of those workouts that you wanna dropout of, but if you dropout then the next one will suck just as bad. You have to suffer through some pretty bad work before you get fit enough to start suffering through quality work. The suffering stays the same, but the speed and distance you cover whilst suffering improves. Eff it, I know the fitness is in there somewhere, hopefully I can find a little bit for the 17th. Get at it!
Alright, alright one last time I swear. Look to the right. Yeah, there's the mighty NB, the delicious PB and now they are joined by the king of compression; CEP. Folks, if there is one thing I don't argue with it's science, and science tells me that CEP make the best damn compression sock on the market. If you are not rocking CEP socks then your basically just wearing long socks. I helped out at the CEP booth at the Around The Bay expo, and I think it's safe to say compression socks are a sensation that is sweeping the nation. Do it.

Anyone here remember Blog #2? Yeah, way back when this blog was just a little guy. Anyways, back in Blog #2 I talked about my attempts to grow blueberries. The blueberry farming ended up being a huge failure. I had ordered these berry plants from a TV infomercial, this was a big mistake. Ever since doing this I have been receiving the stupidest crap in the mail. So much junk mail for the lamest crap, It sucks. Well it did suck. Now it is awesome. I have started to get money in the mail. Just straight up cash money homie. And it is the most beautiful money out there. Yeah, somehow I have been enrolled in this $2bill collection club. Every month I get an American $2bill in the mail. Each bill follows the theme of American national parks. They even sent me a sweet binder and some beautiful pictures to help display said bills. I am quite proud of my $2bill collection. I am also pumped that I know what I'll be leaving my grandkids in my will. One of those kids is going to be pumped when I die and they get a sweet $2bill collection. It'll probably be worth several dollars by then.

Oh man, I have to tell you a funny/awesome story. This story is kinda adult themed, so any kids out there reading this you gotta leave. Sorry. Okay, so I was in the cardio room at the UofG athletic center. I was doing a nice little session on the bike, just hammering away on that damn bike. So then this girl comes over and starts doing core on the mats that are located just in front of the bikes. She's doing her planks and sit-ups and such. I'm not really paying to much attention. She rolls over onto her hands and knees and starts doing leg lifts and such. I just briefly glance over. Now this girls shorts must have been to big, or old, or something like that. Because when I glanced over BAM! VAGINA! Every time she did a leg lift there it was, her lady parts all up in cardio room. It was actually kinda weird, I couldn't help but laugh. But yeah, 3x10sets of vag flashing made my bike session a little more bearable. Kinda makes up for all the old man wang that is constantly all over the change room.
Okay, internet friends have a great week.

-rob-

Blog #26

2011-03-22T23:40:00.002-04:00

I have to make a public apology here. My parents have made their way to this blog and I may have said some things that have offended them. So here we go. Dad; I love you, fade from the front is awesome and I should never have doubted it. You rock. Mom; I love you too, Robin is not a bad name at all, I actually like it. you rock just as hard as Dad. Now to make it up to you guys, I'm going to give you something you've always wanted. I'm going to get out there and make mom and dad a grandkid. Ladies of the internet beware, my parents want a grandkid and being the #1son I'm going to make this happen! Babies, babies, babies, oh yeah, here we go!
Anyways, so being injured is lame as hell, this stupid Achilles is really being a bastard. I hate it. But I did get to go on a sweet bike ride today with the new roommate. Scull is a triathlete and he was going for an easy ride, I hopped on the Rocket and gave it a go. The Rocket is my old ass road bike that I bought for $50 last year. It has two working gears, a wobbly tire and no brakes. But I made it 46km in 89min, and only almost crashed twice. Then I hit up the weight room and threw around some serious metal. That there is some successful cross training folks.(If anyone out there in the internet has any leads on a better bike for sale hit me up.) So I figure if I can get back to running here in a week or so then I'll still give the 13.1 in Montreal a crack. That reminds me, friggen Reider and Wykes hammered that sucker in NYC, well done boys!
I went to London this weekend to drink some beer and listen to old tunes with some buddies. The mission was pretty awesome. My buddy Todd has the best record collection in the land, we rocked some awesome stuff, but our go to is always Hot Water Music. Holyballs people, I love HWM. They are that band that when I listen to em' all sorts of cool memories and emotions from back in the day come rolling in, sends the shivers down the spine. As a young lad my favourite thing to do was to hit up punk and hardcore shows with my buddies, high school was all about going to shows and having fun. Damn, I'm rambling here, sorry. So I got a HWM tattoo on my arm, that's what I was getting at.
I like tattoos, I wish I had a lot more. I got my first tattoo when I was 19. I was a freshman at WVU and they gave me some money to buy text books or something, I decided to get a tattoo instead. It was awesome. Then the next semester WVU gave me more money, so I got another tattoo. I got a couple more but then took a break for 7years. I could never figure out what to get, and I lack the creativity to just make something up. Some people give me a hard time about having some tattoos, those people are dumb. First off, tattoos are very unoriginal these days, everyone has them, who cares? Then they say they're going to be all saggy and blotchy when I get old. Once again, who cares? When I'm an old man everything else is going to be saggy and blotchy as well, it's not like I'm going to be trying to pick up chicks with my hot body. Tattoos are fun, and they are a lot cooler than those two stupid brands I have given myself.
hmm...hey everyone out there who reads this blog. Thanks for coming by, I appreciate all the views and such. You guys are rad. I love you internet friends. Okay, core-o-clock then bed, nightynight.

-rob-

Blog #25

2011-03-15T19:44:00.001-04:00

Kirkpatty! Yes! Way to knock up AnnMarie! Congrats to Kirkpatty and AnnMarie, your seed will live on. That baby is going to be awesome! I can't wait until 2030 when I get that kid drunk and tell it stories about its parents.
Folks, this running is a sonofabitch. It is a sport of highs and lows, and well I'm currently in a low. This low has manifested itself as a stabbing pain in my achilles, lame. I havn't run in over a week, it sucks. Injuries are part of this sport, gotta roll with the punches. Good news though, I think I may be on my way to becoming a professional cyclist. I have been kicking the shit outta exercise bike#4 for the past few days. I just get on that sucker and do work. The exercise bike is awesome, you can hammer on that sucker everyday. I go in and rock for an hour or two in the morning, I get all grunty and sweaty and gross. By the time I'm done I feel pretty crappy and have a nice little pool of sweat around the bike. But miraculously 5-6hours later I can do it all again. It is sweet, the bike doesn't beat your body up nearly as much as running. Cycling is rad. I'm going to save up $2000 and get a low-end road bike. Seriously, those things are effing expensive!
There is something I have discovered to be the secret to efficient cross training. It's all in the outfit. When you walk into that cardio room in half tights and an old tank top you look like a damn fool, you know it, and everyone in there knows it. you just gotta look dumb. There is only one way to redeem yourself and make yourself look cool, and that is to hammer the shit outta some cardio. Put up some huge numbers on that bikes computer screen. I'm talkin' 110rpms on level 14 for 90min, oh hell yeah. Those ladies reading their cosmos and putting in their 15min don't know what hit them. Just sweating and grunting all up in their space, making them wet (from flying sweat). That is the way it's done...Good god, I'm clearly going insane from lack of running. geez, cross training sucks.
So the Harry Rosen has been cut from the schedule, I'm still hopeful for the Canadian Half Champs in Montreal. I may not be as fit as I want, but I'm sure I'll be fine(ish)
So a while back Emily Gillis hooked me up with Molly B's Gluten-Free Buckwheat Crepe flour blend. This is a crepe mix, I love crepes, I consider myself to be kinda a crepe connoisseur. Anyways, this weekend I decide to whip up some of these crepes. I grab the package to check out the protocol and such. I glance over the ingredients in this "buckwheat crepe flour blend", what are the ingredients? Well, we have buckwheat flour and sorghum flour. That's it. That is all that is in this package. Two types of hippy flour mixed together. WTF? how is this a "crepe blend"? is this not just a bag of flour? To make these into actual crepes you have to provide all the other main ingredients and mix them together yourself. Seriously, they are just selling overpriced flour in a bag and calling it crepe mix. It's like calling a can of chickpeas "hummus mix". Pretty stupid. And then there is the whole idiocy of making gluten-free crepes to begin with. It's dumb and unnatural, just like when people want a vegan crepe, what the hell people? Some foods are just not meant to be de-glutenized or veganized and crepes are one of those foods. To make a decent crepe you need two things, you need the gluten from the wheat and you need the eggs. Otherwise they won't be thin, they won't be elastic and they won't be delicious. Friggen stupid fake hippy crepes, get that shit outta my face.

Blog #24

2011-03-07T01:01:00.001-05:00

Yeah! the Green Mile is on. oh man wait, this movie is actually sad as hell. Holy crap, I feel as though I may cry, yet at the same time that one guard is such an asshole that I just feel mad. This movie is causing me to experience to many emotions, I'm going to have a breakdown, I can't watch it anymore, I'm changing the channel. Nice, Star Wars, this is better. Okay I'm centered, lets get this blog going.
Actually not to much going on this week so this will be a short little blog. Alright, once again if you don't mind please glance to your right. Yep, the mighty New Balance is still rocking over there. You will also notice the PowerBar logo. Just wanna take the opportunity to say thanks to the folks at PB for all the support and such that they give to us here at the River, fine folks over there. Quick recipe for ya'll. Grab a blender and add the following; one scoop chocolate PowerBar protein powder, some ice, some yogurt, spoon in some peanut butter, frozen banana and maybe a little milk. Blend that sucker up. It's pretty much amazing. (This recipe is also approved by Dr. Stellingwerff to be an ideal recovery beverage.)
It has been officially announced that Reider, Gilly-boy and Myself will be racing the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, I believe that Oct 16th is shaping up to be a historic day for Canadian marathoning. If we get a few more fast Canucks out there then holy balls folks, it is going to be a battle, yeah a mudderfunking battle is brewing up! We have a long time until October, that is probably a good thing because oh me oh my folks, I just finished my first "real" week of training since the marathon and good god I have some work to do. It can be quite humbling out there on the roads with the boys sometimes. I don't like getting hammered on workouts, but shit man, what can I do? Milne is just doing work, that guy is fast. Reider and Gilly are handing it to me pretty good also. I gotta get fit. The first thing I have to do is loose these man-boobs that I have grown. These boobs are heavy and not nearly as sexy as girl-boobs. Okay, step one to regaining fitness, de-boob. The Harry Rosen Spring Run-Off is 4weeks from today. I figure I can get fit enough to get out there and give it a go. It will be fun to race again, I love racing, it is so much better than training.
So any other runners out there read about or watch Yuki Kawauchi at the Tokyo Marathon? Does anyone else feel like a huge pussy after reading about and or watching this guy in action? I sure do, that guy is hard as hell. Unbelievable! Yuki Kawauchi is my new favourite runner, Steve Jones 2011. Kinda shows just how mental this sport is. That guy has learned how to suffer like a damn pro, it is very inspirational. I want to be able to suffer like that.
So besides some sweet road race action coming up this spring I am also looking forward to this: http://www.krazy-fest.com/ This festival is going to be effing' amazing. I am finally going to get to see Chamberlain and By The Grace of God. Hot Water Music is playing as well. I pretty much have a boner just thinking about how much fun this is going to be. Running may be my wife, but music is my sexy little mistress. I think going to a good punk show with some buds may be one of the best things ever. I often run with an mp3 player. People say that real runners shouldn't do that. I say that those people are stupid and they should shut up. umm...I'm going to bed.

-rob-

Blog #23

2011-02-27T17:50:00.001-05:00

Back in the Guelph! It snowed here last night. God I hate winter so much! (not you Chris). Sorry, lets keep things positive here. If you shift your gaze slightly to the right you'll see a mighty NB adorning the blog. I want to give a shout out to the fine folks at New Balance, ya'll make a hell of a shoe there team. I was hesitant put the NB on the blog due to the occasional not so family friendly content on leBlog. But they seem to be cool with it, so bam! there it is. Also, I just want to add, if you run in New Balance you are smart, and you'll run fast. If you don't, well then you are kinda dumb. You may still be fast in other shoes, but you just won't look as cool whilst doing so. Sorry folks that's just the way is, it's science.
In other news, my little road trip was the tits. Fort Collins was pretty much awesome, but what would you expect from the best city in America? It was good to see some old buddies and I even made three new friends when I was there. Wanna meet my new friends? okay, well Rufe and AnnMarie are from the Kirkpatty tribe, they are the bees knees,hi guys. Then there is this one guy named Colin. Colin came to my aid and became my drinking buddy when Dave hit the beer wall and had to go to bed early. It's kinda weird with Colin because he is dating a lady I used to date. But it's okay, he's younger than me and was much better at bocce ball, I can't be upset that she upgraded, it happens folks...it happens...*sigh*
Anyways, so yeah Fort Collins is rad, that was expected. Know what wasn't expected? I'll tell ya what wasn't expected, Milwaukee. Yeah, Milwaukee was completely unexpected. Well, I knew that it was there, it's not like I was driving and stumbled upon this random city by accident. No, Milwaukee was unexpected because it just so happens to be effing awesome! Man, this city was quite fun. My buddy Matt, and his lovely wife Lauren live in the Mil. I spent a few days taking in the sights and sounds of this lovely little place. Feb 23rd is Fred Usinger day in Milwaukee, and it is officially my new favourite holiday. We started off the celebrations with a brewery tour at the Lakefront brewery. $7 gets ya 6beers and a pint glass to take home. We rocked that brewery hard! We then went downtown for some free brauts and beers to celebrate Milwaukee's sausage king. Matt and I were accompanied by some friendly locals that we met on the brew tour, the people in Milwaukee are just so friendly! We ate some delicious brauts and drank exquisite beer, all the while listening to authentic polka music (vocals provided by the keyboardist from the Violent Femmes!?) and playing hammerschlagen. What is hammerschlagen? It is a drinking game in which competitors take turns hitting a nail into a stump. Yeah, pretty simple, yet with the right amount of beer amazingly fun as well (to much beer and it becomes amazingly hard). Matt and I continued here for a little while until we finished up the night with some frozen custard and a trip to see the bronze fonz. Perfect Milwaukee day, ya'll should hit up the Mil someday, tell em' Rob sent you.

Hammerschlagen! Bronze Fonz, ehhh! Found a random mask.

So lets talk a little about running now. I had a lot of alone time during my drives on that trip to reflect and think about running. I came to a couple conclusions. I have decided that I really love this sport, but I also decided that I have to get faster! I'm giving myself a certain amount of time to achieve some certain goals. But I'm not worried, I've got a great coach and a great training group, I figure it'll workout. I have also come up with some new theories and ideas towards training that I think I'm going to have to test out in hopes of getting faster. I'm excited to get back to work on the roads and trails. I certainly have a lot of work to do before I'm ready to race again. I've grown a little beer belly and my fitness is certainly lacking. But hell it's late Feb and I have plenty of time until the Rosen on April 2nd, lets get at it! Okay everyone have a great week.

-rob-

Blog #22

2011-02-16T14:54:00.001-05:00

So post #21 was pretty damn lame, pretty damn lame indeed. Sorry about that. It was essentially a glorified tweet. I will try to make up for #21's lamness by making #22 awesome(ish). Okay #22 lets kick it.

I was hoping that over the course of my 2400km drive from Guelph to Fort Collins something hilarious and/or awesome would happen. Unfortunately neither anything hilarious nor awesome really happened. I saw a bunny rabbit get annihilated by a car, that was sad. And I drove the wrong way on a one way street in Gary Indiana, almost causing numerous accidents, that was scary. I did go somewhat insane somewhere in Nebraska at 4:30 in the morning, after 17hrs of driving, this song came on the radio. I was convinced that it was the best song ever and I started kinda dancing, then all the lights seemed to go blurry and floaty and I almost crashed. I promptly pulled over and took a nap in my car. After an hour I got really cold, so I hammered my 6th coffee of the trip and finished up the last 6hrs in a zombie like state. But I made it to the Foco and by that evening life was good again.

That is a picture of me at my favourite bar, The Surfside 7. We made a beeramid and ate delicious pizza, but the best part about the surfside is their jukebox. That juke box is quite friggen awesome, for $1 I got some Propaghandi, Chuck Ragan and Gaslight Anthem. The Surfside makes me happy, Some things never change.

This is me at the Surfside back in 06', notice the beeramid and I'm assuming the Jukebox was blasting some Face to Face, Hot Water Music and Screeching Weasel. I think after I post this I'll go back there and construct another beeramid.
   So here I am in beautiful Colorado, I am staying with my bud Kirkpatty. Since the last time I was here Kirkpatty got married and bought a house and acquired a puppy. He's a real person now, good job kirkpatty, I love you. Wanna say hi to Ann Marie, thanks for the pancakes and pasta. That Ann Marie is a fine lady. Good stuff. My Buddy Dave-O also lives here, Dave is a hippy, he just bought a Prius. I love Dave also. We're going to brew some nutella flavoured beer this weekend. Gonna be delicious!
   So since I don't have any good stories from my drive out here, so I'll tell ya'll about another trip I went on. This is a trip I went on back in the summer of 04'. I was spending the summer in Fort Collins. I was jobless and not really running much, essentially I was bored as hell. I was dating a lady from South Dakota at the time, so I figured that I'd go visit her. I didn't have a car so I decided to simply borrow her roomates bike and make the trek up to see her. It was a girls mountain bike. I'm 6'3 and the bike was for a 5'8 female. It was a horrible idea. I threw a bunch of crap into a duffle bag and hit the road. The lady I was dating was kinda confused by my plan. But it was fairly straight forward. Ride my bike in the general direction of South Dakota for 350miles and eventually I'd make it to see her. It took all of about 10miles to figure out that this trip was going to be hard and that I had a pretty good chance of dying en-route. But I had my head set on the plan so I would be damned if I backed out. I was riding down the side of the interstate (quite illegal) up towards Wyoming, cars were flying by at 80mph and the wind was brutal, I was averaging maybe10mph at this point. 30mins in I just started sticking out my thumb at passing cars as they blew by me. It only took about 5min until some old hippy picked me up. It was awesome. Hippy drove me about 20miles to Cheyenne Wyoming before he had to head west to Salt Lake City, he gave me $20 and wished me luck. Unfortunately I left my bike helmet in his car, my chances of dying increased just a little more with that little mistake.
   I kept plugging away and rode the bike for about 60miles, it wasn't so bad, I was in the middle of nowhere Wyoming but things were fine and it was kinda pretty out there. But then I rolled around this corner and the wind hit me like a sonofabitch. There was this huge downhill and I could barley even go at all, it sucked. I figured I'd just start hitchhiking again because biking was useless, but like I said before, I was in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. There were no cars to be seen. I was in a bit of a predicament, every so often a car would roll by, but these folks were certainly not interested in picking up some dirty tattooed Canadian. I just kept waiting...and waiting. Finally after god knows how long some straight up legit cowboy picked me up in his truck. He was on his way to his buddies ranch to help birth some baby cow, he was pumped about this and proceeded to fill me in on all the ins and outs of ranching. I don't remember much about what he said, but I do remember that those little bastards are worth $600 a pop as soon as their bell hits the ground(?) Cowboy Jim took me all the way to Lusk, Wyoming. I was about halfway and in good spirits. Little did I know that Lusk is pretty much the stupidest place in the world and Wyoming is evil. I hopped on my bike and made it about 2miles outta town before this freakass, biblical (old testament) like storm just rolls in and attempts to murder me. First the wind tries to blow me into oncoming traffic, I loose the bike as any attempts of biking at this point are futile. Then it drops about 30degrees and I start to freeze my balls off. I'm here on the side of the highway wrapped in a blanket with socks on my hands fighting off hypothermia when finally this storm just starts firing bullets of hail at me at 50mph. Man, it sucked so bad. I did some quick math in my head and figured I had 5min to live before Wyoming killed me. I was getting seriously worried when finally from the heavens this elderly couple stopped and rescued me. These were a couple of the nicest people I had ever met. I curled up in a ball on their backseat under as many jackets and blankets that I could get my hands on, these people even managed to get me some hot chocolate. I was delirious for a little while, then I came to my senses. These folks were awesome but they had it in their heads that I really liked to ride my bike, at one point they dropped me off at a trail head so I could get in a few more miles, I wanted to tell them to shove it but instead suffered for a few more miles on the bike as they drove beside in the car and took a bunch of pictures of me. Thinking back on it now, it was actually kinda weird. These folk drove me all the way into South Dakota where my lady friend met me and took me to her house. It ended up being a pretty sweet trip. Her little brother took me to shoot guns and I had some decent runs in the black hills. That trip was more eventful than a solo drive through the midwest indeed.
Okay, so hope everone is having a good week. Bye!

-rob-

Blog #21

2011-02-10T16:44:00.001-05:00

Road trip! Hey ya'll sorry for delay in posting, this last week has been lame as hell, in a little bit of a funk here. And do you know what I gotta do to get outta my funk? I gotta go to my happy place. Where is my happy place? Surfside 7 in Fort Collins, CO. I need a Sunshine Wheat and a piece of pizza from that place asap! Okay then, gonna gas up Dieter and hit the road tomorrow morning. Hopefully some wild and zany stuff goes down so I can get back at ya with a sweet blog next week. Good idea DST!
Toodles.

-rob-

Blog #20

2011-02-01T12:41:00.001-05:00

Come on guys, I wasn't even close to hitting my goals in that race, I was over 4min slower than I hoped to be. Just let me feel bad for myself. Let me wallow in self pity and self loathing. Can you let me do that? no? why not? Oh yeah because ya'll are just to amazing to let me go down that road. I should have known that this was the way it was going to be. In the weeks leading up to the race so many people took the time to wish me luck and offer encouragement. And then after I struggled those last 6miles and was feeling pretty down, reading all the messages from you guys has really lifted my spirits. I was sitting in doping control and I recieved a phone call from my best friend in Korea, just talking to him after going through that I almost started to cry. It is weird, I always get very emotional after a hard race. Running hard reduces me to the emotional state of a 16yr old girl watching the Notebook.
One of the things I was most dissapointed in was the feeling that I let people down with my performance, I was hoping for so much more and I know a lot of people were hoping for more also. But nope, you people won't have it. Apparently I'm not allowed to feel bad for myself because all you folks are just to damn positive. It is hard to feel bad when I have so much love and positivity flowing my direction. DST was the first to illustrate that fact, I saw him after the race and tried to apologize. He would have none of that nonsense. I mean He and Moults had travelled across the friggen continent just to be there, and I didn't exactly light it up. But afterwards they just kept emphasizing the positves and by the end of lunch I was ready to get on the line and try it again. Don't get me started on my Family, my family is so supportive it is just stupid. Damn, I'm a lucky bastard. Pete and Kristen were so amazing when I was down there in NC, and Moms, Pops the Brothers and the Aunts and Uncles are just weird in the amount of encouragement and support they send my way.
Okay, I'll stop this sappy love fest here soon. Thanks to the whole UNC XC squad what a great group of kids they have there. They made me feel so welcome while I was down there, and thanks to Coach Vanhoy for the ride to the airport. One last shout out to the rest of the River crew thanks guys, can't wait to get back to Guelph and hang out (especially that one lady). Oh yeah, and Trent, The fueling protocol was great, you're the man!
So yeah that is that, for you out there who don't know what the hell I'm talking about you are probably very confused right now. Basically this is the story. I ran my first marathon on Sunday in Houston. Man Houston is a great city, those folks are so nice. Well everyone except for that one cab driver I had, that guy was a dink (what kind of cab driver has to stop and ask for directions?...twice!!) anyways, back to the race. From the very beginning I didn't feel great, I wasn't feeling terrible or anything but from early on it just wasn't feeling as easy as it should have. I breifly considered backing off a bit, but instead I decided to keep pushing in hopes of my legs coming around and feeling better. So I just kept plugging along down the streets. There was a little rain falling and the course was kinda wet but overall the weather was okay. I was on pace through the half and up to 18miles, but around 19-20 things just started to crack a bit and then the 5:20's and 5:30's started to come. Those last 6miles, oh god those last 6miles people. They were most certainly the most uncomfortable 6miles of my life. I'm not even gonna talk about those last 6miles. So yeah, I shuffled on in to finish in 2:16:17, (splits= 65:28/70:49, ouch). After the race all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep, but no, those bastards chose me for doping control. Come on folks, did you not just see that last 6miles? If I was doping I would be asking for my money back for sure. Gah.
So that was my race. In good news, I came 4th, I'm proud of that. I think that even though it didn't work out on Sunday I can take a lot out of that race. I learned a lot and got the 1st marathon in the legs. Sure the marathon kicked my ass. That race was kinda like the last fight from Rocky 3, The Houston Marathon was Rocky and I was Clubber Lang. For the first 2/3 of the race I gave that sucker all I had, I was kicking the shit outta it. But then I started to crack and when I did that race unleashed all it's fury on me, it knocked me out and left me stumbling across the line (http://finishcam.com/TX/Houston-Marathon-2011/WatchVideo.aspx?Id=BfQWbzCjahlHKxeWHvZgJyDXE7Z5V1k8&CameraNum=1) I gotta stop doing that! Well played marathon, well played. Marathon-1 Rob-0.
I will admit it though, I think I love the marathon. I loved the training and everything that went on along the way. I love just being able to go out there and give it all you have for 2+ hours. It is an awesome event, can't wait to do another one. In the words of a nice man named Jim; "To have a rainbow there has to be a little bit of rain"

-rob-

Blog #19

2011-01-24T16:09:00.000-05:00

I'm going to be honest here, when I first started my training for this marathon I gave myself about a 70% chance of actually getting to the line. My plan was pretty simple, train my balls off and hope for the best. I figured there was a 25% chance of injury and 5% chance of me coming to my senses and realizing that the whole idea of training for, and racing a marathon is just plain silly. Folks, I have just spent the last 16weeks working myself stupid. Outside running I have been about about as productive as a limbless dwarf. And why? What is the reward for this work? The reward is a 26.2mile jaunt through the streets of Houston where I will get to absolutely thrash myself in hopes of making it to the finish line 3 or 4steps before I fall down and die. Running is dumb. But holy hell people, I can't wait to get out there and roll!
6 days out the taper is in full effect. The legs are coming around nicely and things are good to go. Hey, wait a minute. Shout out to the Speed River crew who went down to NYC for the NewBalance games! Milne is the man! yeah! So what were we talking about? Oh yeah, Houston. Well, I was saying that it's going to be a fun time. I have a solid support crew coming down to the lone star state as well. DST and Moults are headed down as representatives from the river. I can't wait to see those guys, I love the River. And my moms and pops will continue to be the most supportive parents in the world as they make the trek also. moms and pops are also bringing aunt Jill. Aunt Jill is a badass, she was on the 84' olympic team for the Heptathalon, she's dandy. Hopefully after the race we can all go out and eat some mexican food and drink some brews. You know what the good thing about beer is? You can drink it in celebration, or to get over disappointment. Beer always has a place. For example, when I turned 19yrs old I was pumped that I had survived that long, and to celebrate that fact I drank bunch of beer. On the other hand, in 2009 at the world championships in Berlin I got throttled in the prelims. I went and found my moms and pops, I was quite annoyed. Upon looking at me the pops could only say "lets get you a beer." So that's what we did, we went outside and sat on the grass and drank a bunch of beer, and life was good again.
Well sorry for the short post, I really have nothing much more to say. I'll talk to ya'll next week, hopefully I have good things to report.

-rob-

Blog #18

2011-01-14T13:38:00.000-05:00

Oh god, getting caught up in a nuclear war would suck balls. I just watched a movie about it, I'm pretty much an expert on nuclear bombs and such now. So take my word on this folks. Nuclear bombs are bad news! Nothing good comes outta nuclear war. I'm not so worried about America going off and starting a nuclear war, it's not Obama's style. The Russians are hard as hell, but they're not idiots and I don't think they're going to start shit anyways (no reason why I feel this way, I just like the cut of their jib). Same goes for most other countries with the bomb. Not even worried about China, they have to much going for them to mess it up by destroying the world. It's those sketchy countries I'm worried about, yeah I'm looking at you Pakistan and North Korea, please don't start nuking stuff just to get some attention for your lame ass country. Thankfully Mozambique doesn't have the bomb, because you know those are some crazy SOB's and we'd all be screwed if they had the "bomb". Stupid Nuclear bombs are ruining my day, I hate nuclear bombs.
Know what I do like? Documentary movies. They are like reading, but in movie form. I have learned quite a bit via documentary films in the past week. For example, if you happen to be a dolphin, stay the hell away from Japan! Japanese fisherman do not find dolphins cute or playful at all. They hate them, oh man they hate them and they kill the shit outta them on a regular basis. Also, according to no less than three films, Monsanto is the most evil corporation in the world, patenting seeds? What a bunch of dicks. I have learned that Donkey Kong is a hard video game, and one of the best players out there is an uberdouche. I watched a film on Mark Twain,it was very interesting and informative. Ironic that it took a movie to let me know what an amazing writer that man was.
So yeah, I'm still just chilling with brother Pete and sister Kristin down here in North Carolina. Hey everyone, we have a bit of a situation here. Kristin ate some crappy food or something and got all throw-uppy last night. That lady was not happy, quite ill indeed. We need her to recover, we need her to get well. If sister Kristin dies then we are screwed. Here's the scenario. First Kristin goes, then shortly thereafter Pete will be dead. The combination of sorrow and the fact that he can't take care of himself will result in Pete being dead within a week. Then I'll have to take care of their dogs, man those dogs are ridiculous, I'll probably kill myself if it gets to that. So sister Kristin get well.
Other than the sick sister things are going quite well down here. One last tough workout tomorrow and semi-long run on Sunday then it is taper time. I'm going to admit it, I really don't like the taper. I feel lazy and useless during the taper. The thing is I really like running, sometimes when I'm bored I'll just go for run. It is fun to me. But during taper time I can't do that. I have to focus on being fresh and ready to go come Jan 30th down Texas way. DST knows this, I'll probably get an e-mail a day telling me to chill out and relax. I imagine that I can be annoying to coach sometimes;
Coach: "Hey Rob, so here's the race plan, we have to be smart here, be patient...ect..."
Me: "Okay coach, sounds good"
*gun goes off*
Me "AHHH, FADE FROM THE FRONT!!!"
Coach: *shakes head in disgust*
Dave, I promise to be good in Houston. I will stick to the plan!
So you remember Blog 13? Wanna see a funny take on this? This is courtesy of EST (Erica Scott-Thomas)

So bottom left, that's me at the end of nationals. Look how she really captured the despair in my face as my legs turn to rubber. I have no idea what that smiley face is doing there, there was nothing to smile about in that situation. And then bottom right, that's me again. That's me writing blog #13. Ha, what an awesome picture. Good job EST.

Out!

-rob-

Blog #17

2011-01-05T13:38:00.000-05:00

Sonofabitch, I have been trying to write a new post for three days now. But each time I start I just end up writing an bunch of really stupid crap. Folks, I have some writers block going on. My brain is fried from this training I'm currently doing. Run-eat-sleep-eat-run-eat-sleep, repeat. That's it, this is what my life has become and it is all I have energy for these days. And as a result the blog is being neglected. So if you find this post to be crappy, blame coach DST, he's running the show and slowly turning me brain dead. Sorry to throw you under the bus here coach, but I refuse to take responsibility for my own actions. And if I end up sucking at Houston I will once again blame everything on you, it's just the way my generation works, it's easier that way. But luckily for DST he is one hell of a coach and he has me fired up and ready to go, so this won't be an issue.
Speed River/UofGuelph training camp was a great success, we gassed up some vans, loaded them up with a plethora of ectomorphs (and Pat) and rolled down to Chapel Hill. The drive was annoying at times, I find that Americans don't drive fast enough. This is okay, but if you are going to drive slowly get the hell out of the passing lane. And come on now, if you are driving a sweet sports car with a big ole' engine in it, you should probably not be getting rolled by an 11passanger cargo van on the interstate. And don't get me started on the random ass stop lights on the friggen highway in West Virginia! Gah. so we made it safely despite all that and the GPS (once again, not my fault) trying to get us murdered by taking us down the most random of country roads in West Virginia. anyways, It was a nice week of training here in Chapel Hill. We had a solid crew of athletes as well as some sweet support crew action with BST doing a little physio work and Dr. Stellingwerff keeping us up to date on all sorts of interesting science type stuff. But now my friends are gone and I'm here with brother Pete and sister Kristin and their dogs. I like staying with brother Pete, he looks like me, an older, fatter, shorter version of me, so I get a boost of confidence every time I see him. The American family takes good care of me, this will be a good month.
So this is the beginning of 2011, This will be a good year. 2010 was an okay year. The track season of 2010 was lame as hell, but fall road racing and xc was pretty good, overall an okay year. Yes people, I have gotten to the point where I determine the quality of the year based on how fast I ran in said year.
Alright, now for a non-running related story from the vault. This is a story about me being dumb and hurting myself. One day in 6th grade I was home from school for lunch. I was kinda just hanging out. Moms and pops were at work and it was just me and brother Scott. So I'm in the kitchen and I start fooling around with this big serrated knife we had (so now you know how I am going to get hurt) anyways, I am pretending I'm like a ninja or something playing with this knife, and I start to attack a cereal box. I am trying to slice the flaps off the box, but I keep swinging and missing. So in a moment of just pure idiotness I decided to grab the flap and take a big ole' swing at it to cut it off the box. Well shit, I once again completely miss the flap, but I stuck that knife a good inch into my thumb. From the tip all down the nail and then some, straight through. God, I saw it happen in slow motion. I kinda sat there for a second stunned, then blood just started to flow like a mothersucker. Luckily I shredded some nerves because I never felt a thing, because this looked painful. I called my mom...who is a nurse! and told here I had just mangled myself, kinda, well actually I said I had done it slicing a bagel, so she figured it wasn't to serious. She told me to suck it up and go to school, so I did. I had managed to wrap the wound and make it back to class. Unfortunately once back at school I bumped my thumb on something and began once again bleeding profusely, all over my desk. My teacher came over to see what was up. Anyways, eventually I made it to the hospital and got fixed. That whole ordeal sucked. Cutting your finger in half is lame.

-rob-

Blog #16

2010-12-26T19:52:00.001-05:00

Hope everyone has had a good time celebrating their holiday of choice. Okay, now that we have that out of the way go here; http://mixtapecollektive.blogspot.com/2010/12/marathon-mix.html This is a new music oriented blog by some hip youngsters here in Guelph, I did a guest blog, it's mediocre at best. After you are done there come back here, I'm not done with you yet.
So I am a big wuss and I hate winter, that is a well known fact. Unfortunately for me my parents live in a city that has been bent over by winter this year, London Ont. Oh god, I went home to celebrate the holidays with the family, and that whole damn city is under like 4feet of ice and snow. Not cool at all. Luckily I was on a down week and only had to a few runs there. My evening run on the 24th was the stupidest run of the year, partly because London sucks for running and partly because I am a gluttonous bastard. My moms extended family came over and with them they brought a plethora of delicious food. I went ahead and ate pretty much everything I could get my hands on. I knew full well that I had to run after dinner but I just kept stuffing my face. I tried to give myself time to digest but that was just not happening. I finally dragged my fat ass out the door at 10:00pm for an easy 45min. I made it 17min before I proceeded to throw up everywhere, over and over again. I couldn't help but laugh, I knew it was going to happen. and it sucked, but it was my own fault so eff it. The rest of the run was a little better.
I ran a race today in Hamilton, it was the Boxing Day 10miler. It went quite well. I utilized FFTF today and luckily the fade was manageable and I ran 48:39 for a course record. That course was kind of a pisser though. Couple big ole' climbs over the second half of the course. Moulton rode his bike around and offered some solid support, that Moulton character is top notch. Moms and Pops and brother Mike also came and watched. Dad was pleased to see his FFTF plan was used effectively. My mom yelled "go Robin" and I secretly cursed her. It was cool that brother Mike came out to support, he lives in BC and was in town for the christmas activities. Thanks Mike. I have this one brother, Erik, he's a bastard. When I made world's back in 09' my parents wanted to take him to Berlin with them to watch. Little asshole decided not to come so he could stay home and smoke pot with his buddies, what a dink.
So I'm off to North Carolina here in a few days for camp with some of the river crew. I can't wait it is going to be fun. Then I am going to stay down in Chapel Hill with brother Pete until Houston. Pete is the UNC coach, he is quite a good coach. I love watching him coach and interact with the kids, he is very serious about his work, but deep down he is just a hipster doofus.
Well this was a very family orientated post, but I have left out brother Scott. I should probably say something about brother Scott. I love brother Scott, he is a year older than me and was such an asshole dickhead as a teenager that I could never do anything as bad as what Scott had done, so I never got in trouble, thanks Scott. Honestly I love my family, they are the greatest group of folk in the world. I should probably get a tattoo to let the world know of this fact. I'm gonna go get on that. out!

-rob-

edit* Shout out to sister in law? (don't know if that is the correct term) Kristen, looking forward to having her take care of me down there in NC. She is Feisty, but she likes me most the time so I should be safe.

Blog #15

2010-12-17T16:47:00.000-05:00

Sorry, it's been a while folks. Things have been hectic, well not really hectic, more like I've been lazy. Yeah that's a better way to put it, I'm just kinda lazy. It's just that I'm really putting a lot of time and focus into recovery these days. Naps, lying around and general lounging are the name of the game. Things running wise have been going quite awesomely. I had a pretty solid workout today that I am quite excited about. But the recovery for this one is going to be a lot of work. Lots of naps and movie watching coming up in the next couple of days.
So speaking of my workout. Well, here I am, just a quaint little runner doing a little tempo @ 8:30 on a Friday morning, it's snowing and it's cold. But I have my roommate (and runner, quite fast runner) jumping in to keep me company on my warm-up. Then I have the main man (DST) leading the support crew in the Tundra. The support crew consists of two Olympians, The main man and a pretty lady. These folks were there to help me with bottles and general support over the course of a long and hard workout. It was pretty special that these guys would just show up to hang out and watch me run up and down a road (that's what I did, up one side and back down the other, it was the only place with decent footing). That kind of sums up the scene here in Guelph. We support each other anyway we can. There is a comraderie and friendship within our group that is pretty rare (and awesome) at this level. When it's time to race the gloves come off. But during training we all do whatever we can to help each other run faster. I love my Guelph/Speed River team here, they are the tits. I was going to continue this little rant with a jab at AC, but that would be unnecessary, so I'll just stop.
So that's running for this week. Want to see an awesome picture that my buddy Matt (Blog #10) sent me?

Yeah, that's me as a sophomore in University, and yeah I'm rocking a samurai sword, oh, and yeah I did just kill a couch, inner tube and window blinds (and yeah, I'm hammered). But that's not horrible. Usually in the States drunk folks play with guns and end up accidently shooting their friends/selves. I was just messing around, I swear. I also have some really stupid sideburns in this picture. the sideburns have nothing to do with me being drunk, that is more about me just having begun to grow facial hair, and I figured I'd show that off to the world. Kinda like when I was 15 and I only wore sleeveless shirts and insisted on "raising the roof" as often as possible, or when I was 13 and I wore my jeans really low around my hips.
hmm...anything else? yeah one last thing. Remember a few blogs ago when I got all up in my dads face? Well Mom, it's your turn. Okay, this happens to me all the time, and it makes perfect sense, hell one of my best friends did it today. What is this they do? They refer to me as Robert, okay. But Rob is not short for Robert, it's short for Robin. Mom! What the Hell! Why the hell did I get a girl's name? I mean, I was your 4th friggen man kid. you should have been well versed with a wide variety of potential boys names... And I get Robin? sonofabitch, I hated my name when I was younger. I would cringe when attendance was being read in class, just waiting for the inevitable stares and snickers when my name was called and I had to fess up to be the kid with the girl's name. One time I was registered to run a race and the race folk put me in the girls division, I lost my shit on that one. Gah, why do I not get mad at my dad here also? I just assume he had little to do with the naming process here. He was probably at home taking care of the other three kids and my mom snuck that name on the birth certificate. My mom is cagey like that. I've come to terms with it now, but I don't think I'll ever be comfortable being referred to as Robin, it's just not natural. I'm giving my boy kid an awesomely manly name, like Bruce. That's a solid man name.

-rob-

Blog #14

2010-12-07T14:40:00.002-05:00

Hey there friends, Blog #14 lets get going. wait! really? number 14 already? Wow, it seems like only yesterday I was just starting this little blog of mine. Back in the good ole' days when I could blog about blueberries and other such non-sense. But now here we are on #14 and I have to blog about real stuff, important stuff as to keep my audience happy. I mean come on, there is a dude in Russia that reads my blog, Russia! awesome! hey there comrade!
So in the theme of my serious, young adult of a blog lets touch on some important matters. Firstly, running. Yes running is serious and if you think otherwise...well you probably have an argument there. I guess in the grand scheme of things it isn't that serious. But I take it seriously as do many other people out there. Alright, let's carry on. I have recovered well from nat's XC and have gotten right back into the marathon grind. I'm loving this training. I just get to go out and run a shitload. It's quite fun. Had a solid session of milers today to, it's good to know I have some speed in these legs of mine.
Hey Wykes! congrats on busting that huge run at Cal International. In case you were wondering what that was all about, Dylan Wykes hit a 2:12.39 to go along with an impressive win out in Sacramento last weekend. It's good to see Dylan run so well, we've been on a couple national teams together and always seem to find ourselves pushing each other in races. He is also to thank for me not dying after the XC nats after party in 07, man, that was a rough night. I had 4-5 to many Jager Bombs and passed out mid-pee in the bathroom. I was promptly kicked out of the bar and Dylan made sure I got safely. If not for him I probably would have passed out in a snow bank and died. So him (along with 4-5 other people) kept me from dying that night. Thanks Dylan, you're top notch. Also big ups on the sweet celebration scream. There seems to be a theme developing amongst Canadian marathoners after they rock an epic race, they must celebrate with an equally epic scream.

So much cooler than any race finish I've ever had.

umm...okay, now that we're done with the serious stuff I wanna talk to ya'll about something. In Blog#12 I posted a couple youtube videos of sad movie deaths and asked you to vote on which was sadder. Well this was a complete failure. This game did not catch on at all. This makes me sad, sad for two reasons. Firstly I wanted to have a little interaction here, I had a whole series of random movie death scenes that we could vote on. Sad death was just the beginning of a series. I had awesomest death, badassest death, funniest death and even sexiest death that we could have voted on. Apparently this was a bad idea, I understand. The other reason that the failure of the movie death game upsets me is because it was good filler. You see, I'm running out of material here folks. My life is not very exciting and I'm running out of stuff to talk about. Looks like I'm going to have to go on a bender and do some stupid stuff so I can keep this blog rolling. Alright, gonna get on that. Out!

-rob-

Blog #13

2010-11-28T23:36:00.001-05:00

Hey Dad, You're a jerk! Yeah, I just called my dad a jerk. Why did I call my dad a jerk? Well it all goes back to when I was in 11th grade. You see, that was the year I started to take running somewhat seriously, don't get me wrong, I was pretty slow, but I started to actually like the sport. I would jog a few days a week and do the odd workout. So one day before a cross country race my dad asked what my race plan was, I had no clue what my race plan was, what 11th grader has a race plan? So I was kinda just like "I dunno, do my best I guess" and pops says "what place do want to come?" I didn't know what place I wanted to come, but using some basic rational I figured the lower the better, so I says to pop "I dunno, top 10...I guess?(shoulder shrug)" Quick note here, this was just a dinky little high school XC meet but there was no way I was going to be top 10. So then my dad gives me some advice, a race plan if you will, a race plan that I have used in pretty much every race I have run since that day, here's what my dad said to me; "Well, if you want to finish that high, you should just go out hard and fade from the front." I was pretty naive back then so I figured that was as good a race plan as any. At this particular race I utilized my dads revolutionary new race plan and finished about 15th, but 15th was awesome for me back then. So I figured, "yeah that fade from the front strategy is great!" I can't tell you how many times I've been in a race and heard my dad yelling from off to the side somewhere "faaade frooom the froont!" God, what pain and suffering those 4 little word have caused me over the years, fade from the front, damn you dad! you fade from the front ya big dummy, that is a terrible idea!
So that brings us to the present. Yesterday was the Canadian XC champs here is Guelph, and once again I unleash ole' faithful, yeah, good ole' fade from the front, nothing beats the fade from the front. Conservative and smart running? get that shit outta my face, I do one thing and one thing only. I get to the front...and I fade.
I must admit, I executed FFTF quite well, I mean I got to the front all right and I friggen hammered. Honestly though, I am in quite good shape and even DST gave me the green light to just get after it. I figured that by the time the fade portion of the fade from the front race plan came into effect I would have the thing won. Yeah, so ever hear of this guy Cameron Levins? Man, he would not go away! I was trying to drop him so hard. 3km @ 8:39? nope, 5km @ 14:27? no dice, 8km @ 23:20 how's that for ya Levins? oh hell no! Yesterday the fade portion of FFTF was replaced by "hit a giant wall and barley finish the damn race staggering like a drunken hobo as this Levins fellow puts 20secs on you in the last km." Screw you dad.
So I came 2nd at XC nats, I'm pretty annoyed by that. But Cam ran a great race and he really deserved it. The Speed River boys did work, Reider was 3rd, which is pretty good considering he had 5weeks of training after his marathon and then an extensive 3week taper. Derek Snider also ran great finishing 9th. We won the team title, as did the senior women. This was the last year that Guelph will be hosting the event, it has been a great run as DST and Moults along with the rest of the Guelph running community have done an amazing job. Good job doods, congrats.
So that was a nice down week, time to get back to work with a steady diet of 150mile weeks and solid tempo. I swear to god, if at any point during my marathon I hear my dad mention anything about fading from the front I'm gonna punch him in the face.

-rob-

apparently I got really drunk between 8k and the finish

Blog #12

2010-11-23T14:42:00.001-05:00

umm hi, just want to go on record and say I completely agree with Lucas here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZErvASwdlU
Okay, I suppose it's time for a new blog. I have been slacking here recently, sorry about that. I've basically been a useless human being for the past couple weeks. Why? Because I've been running a shit tonne and have essentially become a zombie, well except I don't feast on human brains for sustenance. Speaking of zombies, that new show "The Walking Dead" is awesome. I like TV, I watch a lot of TV. I watch TV and run a lot, man I am a lame wad.
Know what isn't lame? The Guelph XC teams, they beat the crap outta the rest of the CIS and won some more national championships. It's just what they do. Back to lame things, more particularly me being lame. So at the CIS after party I got kicked out of the bar, literally kicked out! I had done a 24mile workout the day before and a 23mile long run the morning of the show, so basically after 3beers I couldn't see straight nor could I walk properly. So there I am at the bar and I'm being obnoxious (I think, kind of fuzzy memory but generally this is when I get annoying) and I ended up getting in a fight with some random kid (sorry random kid, I was probably being a douche), sometime during the altercation I got tackled by a guy whilst I wildly flailed my limbs trying to hit someone...anyone. Big props here to Patty Pat for putting my assailant into a headlock and fighting for me, well until he realized that he had attacked a bouncer, Patty Pat immediately released the bouncer and ran away as to not be kicked out with me. The bouncer then put me in a headlock and started to drag me out of the bar. I then did something I am truly not proud of, but find kinda funny at the same time. In an attempt to escape I punched the bouncer square in the balls, man I got him good . So I sack this guy but then fail to escape. He holds me up against a wall and is about to kick the living shit out of me. I realize here that I'm effed' and plead for mercy. Being an understanding francophone with a kind heart the bouncer takes it easy on me and instead just walks me to the door. As he opens the door to throw me out I had a few choice words for him, and he proceeds to give me a solid kick right in the ass to clear me from the bar. Man I am getting to old for these shenanigans.
This weekend is Canadian XC nationals. It is our last year holding it here in Guelph so hopefully the River can take home the team title (4 in a row) and one of our boys can take the win. Kip Kangogo will be here (see blog #8) hopefully I can beat him, man I want to beat him pretty bad. But anyway, should be a great time and I promise to behave at the after party.
Okay, lets have a little vote here. From these two truly heartbreaking scenes, what movie death is more sad;
a) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt9jij8W398&feature=related
or b) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPpoQSqrY9w&feature=related
I personally find B to be more sad because it hits pretty close to home. It reminds me of my childhood, this is how my brother Marvin was killed.

-rob-

Blog #11

2010-11-10T13:44:00.004-05:00

Blog #11, sock it to em'! To start things off today I'm going to give a couple shout outs. Here they are. Hey Guelph XC! yeah rob? Good luck at the CIS champs this weekend, punish some fools up there in French Canada, the land of Poutine and hockey goalies. Special shout out to that one chick on the team, get on it! Alright that went well, another shout out. Hey UNC XC! yeah rob? Good luck at regionals this weekend, crush some people, crush em good. Especially those punks from state, yeah, run your footrace slightly faster than those bastards run their footraces.
Yeah, big cross country weekend, love it. I'm such a running nerd it's unbelievable. Anyone watch the NYC marathon? Yeah, it totally didn't live up to the hype. moving on.
One last bit of running talk. I'm going to touch a little on my own running here if you don't mind. I had a really good week of training, it was great. Alright, that's it on the running front.
So the last couple blogs have basically been me talking about getting drunk and hurting myself, while this has been a reoccurring theme in my life, it is certainly not what I am all about. I am going to touch on my softer, gentler, sober side. For example, this one time I bought a lady friend flowers, and with the flowers I attached a charming little card with a personalized message. It was quite sweet if I do say so myself. And there was another time when I did something similar, just it was chocolate instead of flowers, and it was a different lady, anyways, I pretty much have a heart of gold. So there ya have it, I'm not just a drunken fool I also have a heart, a big one, and it is quite efficient. My heart probably works twice as well as the average heart, yes, my heart rocks. I love you heart.
Let's talk for real now. I'm going to write about a subject I take very seriously, Women in Politics. Do you remember that week when Canada had a female Prime Minister? Yes folks, you may have forgotten but it did happen. It was way back in 1993, and it was a great step forward for Women in Canadian Politics. This ladies name; Kim Campbell, Sure she wasn't really elected by the people or anything, she was selected by her party after Mulroney decided to retire (Who retires in the middle of their term as Prime Minister? seriously bud, suck it up for a year or two). Also not a big deal that she didn't even have the opportunity to live at 24 Sussex like every other PM had since 1951. We can also overlook the fact that Campbell never sat in Parliament as Prime Minister as her term was filled by the summer break and the election, an election in which her party was crushed and she failed to even win her own riding. This doesn't take away from the fact that Kim C. ran this ship here for a brief stint...and she bought a bunch of sweet anti-submarine defense helicopters to protect us all while she was at it! We should put her on money or something.
Quick story about me getting hurt as a youth, don't worry no drinking this time, Just a little nudity. I have no idea how or why this happened, but it did and it sucked...bad. Anyways when I was like 3 or 4 years old I had just gotten out of my aunts swimming pool and inbetween changing out of my wet swim trunks and my dry other clothes I was distracted by something. What you may ask? It was a pogo stick. I threw away my clothes and ran over to the pogo stick and proceeded to try to pogo on that sucker. I was naked, and it was probably a weird sight to see. So there I was pogoing away in all my naked glory when probably the worst thing ever happened to poor little Rob. As I was jumping on the pogo stick the spring ended up compressing on my little dink. It was pretty terrible and to this day I fear pogo sticks. ouch.

Blog #10

2010-11-02T22:21:00.001-04:00

Hey, I'm watching Top Gun as I write this. I better be quick, because if I'm still writing when Goose dies I'm going to get all sad and depressed, and thus this blog will suffer. That is one of the saddest movie deaths of all time. Give me a minute, I'm going to think of another tragic movie death...okay yeah, this one is a real heart breaker. Remember when Artax (the horse) dies is the Swamps of Sadness in the Never Ending Story? Holy balls that sucks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y688upqmRXo

Well I hope ya'll are not to sad now, let's get some positivity going here. Do you know what is positive? Running. I'm going to get into the weekly running update now. Last week was a much needed down week, and it was nice. I had some hard ass workouts, but my easy days were nice and chill, I really needed that. I finished off the week with a little race in my hometown of London Ont. It was a 10km in Springbank park, it went quite well and I won. I was quite happy. I also got to see my Grandma, she is a hell of a lady so that was pretty awesome.
13 weeks till the marathon and things are going well thus far. My only concern is that I will probably lose my job during this process. My morning runs are much longer than before, but I don't want to get up earlier, that's simply not an option. So I keep going in later and later each day. I'm also leaving earlier than usual because I want to sneak in a nap before practice. Then there is the whole leaving for 5 weeks to escape the hellish winter we have up here in the great white north. Damn, that was a good job, I really liked it. Oh well.
Okay, so we have covered running and sad movie deaths, what else should we talk about? Let's talk about...oh shit...Goose just died...oh god...man this is sad...Maverick is so sad...this is terrible...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7HHpEt3K50&feature=related

Okay, focus! Yeah, lets talk about scars. I have lots of scars, and in most cases they are the result of me being incredibly stupid. For example, I'm going to tell you about how I got this scar on my right eye. Like a few of my other stories there is alcohol involved. I'm sorry, I'm not a drunk, it's just that sometimes interesting things happen when people get drunk. Why? Well drunk people are generally idiots, and idiots often make stupid decisions, and stupid decisions sometimes result in hilarity and/or injury. So anyways my freshman year of university I went to West Virginia University. I was really slow and crappy my freshman year so I didn't get to go on a track trip to Tennessee, my very good friend and companion Matt P. also was not on said trip. We decided we were going to be manly and drink beer and watch hockey while everyone was gone. We went to the beer store and picked up a couple mini-kegs, Wolfsteiner to be exact. Matt and I decided to race and see who could finish their mini-keg the fastest. I was dumb when I was younger, I mean the entire plan for the night was to basically just drink as much beer as possible as we sat there watching hockey. No going out after, no ladies to hangout with, just beer and hockey, actually wait, I wasn't dumb I was awesome. So we sat there just hammering our mini-kegs as the game was going on. Sometime in the early third period I finished my keg, boom. I crushed him.
me: "Hey Matt!"
matt: "what?"
me: "I'm done, I win mothersucker!"
matt: "no way, let me see."
I casually toss my keg to Matt
matt: "What the hell man, I'm only half done!"
me: "haha, suck on that"
Matt then proceeds to chuck the empty keg right at me. My reactions are painfully slow and I fail to raise my hands to protect myself. Keg smashes me in the face and I am knocked out of my chair.
me: "ahh man, what the...? oh man, I'm bleeding!"
The keg has opened a gnarly gash over my right eye.
matt: "oh shit, man are you okay? sorry!"
Matt runs over to my assistance. I then return the favor by sitting up and punching him square in the balls. He drops.
matt: "ahhh man, ughhhshhsh"
me: "ahhh, my face, ughhh"
At that exact moment Matt's girlfriend happens to come into the house to find Matt and myself lying on the floor each in our own little world of hurt. I'm covered in blood and Matt has a nice bloody fist print on the balls area of his jeans. It was a weird night and now I have a scar on my face.
Alright bye everyone!

-rob-

Blog #9

2010-10-26T18:53:00.002-04:00

Pitter patter let's get at er'. Blog #9 in full effect.
Started official marathon training last week. Geez, what I am I getting myself into? I've only completed one stinking week and already it hurts to walk and my whole body is sore. I'm to much of a puss for this craziness. I did get a massage to try to ease the pain though. To all the non-running folks out there, massages are not as cool as you'd think. A sports massage generally hurts like hell, and there is no happy ending. One rule I have about massages is that, no matter how tight or sore my calves are I will not let the RMT know. Getting a calf massage sucks so much balls it's not even funny. Once again, to non-running folk, go to the gym, do 100 calf raises, get em' nice and tight then go and get them massaged. You'll want to friggen die...or kill the RMT, either way, you will want the action of having your calves massaged to stop, immediately. Anyways, Marcel did a good job of working me over, and now I feel better. This marathon experiment is going to be interesting and I'm actually very excited about it. I have a great coach and a fast dudes to run with and learn from.
So Yesterday I did a quiz on facebook to see which US city I belonged in. I got Denver, that is awesome. Why? because Denver is only 1hr away from the city I really belong in, Fort Collins Co. No offense to Guelph, I love Guelph and I plan on being in Guelph for several years. The guys in Guelph are great and the girls in Guelph are pretty. But, if there was one city that I would live in over Guelph it would be Foco. Man, I used the word Guelph a whole lot in those last few sentences, and I apologize for that, because Guelph is a rather unattractive word, and a poor choice of city name.
Back to the Fort. Why do I love Fort Collins so much? Well for starters there are about 10 breweries in town, and if you have a good bike and a solid plan you can hit them all up in one afternoon no problem. Also is is home to my alma mater, the prestigious Colorado State University. CSU is so demanding and academically challenging that it takes some people 5 years to get a degree in something as simple as History. I mean, you could get a history degree from Harvard in four years no problem.
Fort Collins is at the foot hills of the rockies and is basically as beautiful as a me with my shirt off. I miss that place and I miss the fine people who reside there. Shout out to Dave-O and Kirkpatty!
Fort Collins is also the place where one of the most fun/dumbest drinking games ever was invented. Actually it doesn't have to be a drinking game, but you'd probably have to be drunk to think it was a good idea. Egg Boxing, so simple and so entertaining. Get two pairs of boxing gloves, two eggs and two idiots. Get idiots to put gloves on their hands and eggs in mouths. Start punching your friend in the face. First guy to have their egg broken loses, has to drink and also may get salmonella. Hell, you don't even need gloves if you're really dumb (sorry Dave).
So there ya have it internetters, to recap. Massages are painful, Guelph is good, Fort Collins is good, I look great with my shirt off and I used to punch my friends in the face.

Blog #8

2010-10-19T00:25:00.000-04:00

Hey, Blog #8, Shall we get this sucker going? yeah, lets go!
Start with the standard running update. Last week was the Canadian road 10km Championships. The race was held in the Toronto Zoo. A race in the zoo! who'd of thunk it? Do you wanna know why racing in zoos are hard? Well apparently there are no straight paths in zoos, you are constantly going around a corner of some sort, or up some nerdy little hill. That course was quite the pisser, quite the pisser indeed! And then there are the animals, the animals are awesome, but kinda distracting. We ran past the wolves and they were really cool, and interesting, and I wanted to learn more about them, I wanted to stop and read the informative plaque outside of their cage area. But I couldn't... because I was in the middle of a freaking race! Lame. The course actually wasn't that bad, I just made it a lot harder than it had to be by racing like an idiot.
I may have mentioned my inability to race like a normal person before. And I proved that once again this weekend. We came through 2km in 6:00 and I felt okay, not great, but not bad either. But I decided that we should be going faster than that. So I started to push and ran the next 3km in 8:43, hit the 5km in 14:43. That pace was more satisfactory to my brain. But at 6km my body was done. Little Kip Kangogo just scooted on by me and won easily. I managed to suffer greatly for the next 4km and barley hold on for 2nd. Just ahead of Dylan Wykes. Trying to keep Dylan from passing me in those final 4km was terrible. I just wanted him to go away. That was so much harder than it had to be. I'm dumb. But the good news was that Kip is a Kenyan so I won the Canadian Championship. It is weird to win a national title despite not winning the race, oh well. I'll take it! Overall it was very fun, Alan Brookes really puts on excellent events.
So the guy who won the race was Kip Kangogo, Kip went to school at TCU. TCU in the mountain west conference, fierce rivals to the mighty Colorado State Rams. So essentially Kip has been beating up on me in this running game for several years. I gotta beat that guy some day! He was the guy who beat me in one of my favorite races of all time. Keep reading to find out more...
2006 Mountain West Championships, Albuquerque New Mexico. I had won the 5000m the day before and was running the 3000m. The race was going well and eventually it was just Kip and myself up front. Kip was racing for TCU, but all the dudes from BYU were on the side of the track just going crazy for him. The whole BYU mens team was chanting "kip,kip,kip" every time we went by, it pissed me off. So with 400m to go we come around to these chanting BYU folk and I swing wide and give em' all the finger. I could hear the gasps, I think a BYU chick fainted even. Then I just take off like a mad man... Kip calmly covers the move and destroys me on the last lap. But that's not the point. What made that race awesome was the shit I caused by flipping off BYU. There was quite the uproar, some officials were trying to get me disqualified, some came over and shook my hand. CSU had 4 coaches there and 3 of them gave me hell, but one (I won't say who) told me "Those bastards deserved it" That was awesome, I never felt closer to coach Carter. I had to go apologize to the whole team, it was awkward. I have a weird relationship with BYU, I mean, I can't stand that school. But they are some of the nicest damn people in the world. The guys and coaches on that team were top notch. But they always just beat the crap out of us, so I hated them.
So this Saturday had me feeling sentimental, getting my ass handed to me by Kip Kangogo, just like old times.
Well That is a lot of running talk what else is going on? I've decided to run a marathon, that should be fun. Wait, that's also running related. As much as I try to deny it I am a big running nerd.
Okay, one little non running thing. If there was one thing in the world I wish I could do it would be to be able to play the guitar,or drums, or any damn instrument. But I can't, I've tried and I suck. I suck at music. In 7th and 8th grade I played the clarinet for music class. They gave all the crappy kids clarinets because the school had like 50 of them. They only had three saxophones so you actually had to be decent to get chosen for the sax. anyways, I played the clarinet. I swear I tried hard, but I couldn't read the music properly and I would make that sucker squeek and make horrible, god awful noises. One day we had a music test. We just had to play a simple little tune, when it came to be my turn I proceeded to suck. I was squeeking and sucking so bad that I laughed a little. The teacher thought I was sucking on purpose and got really pissed. He grabbed my head and started shaking me and berating me. He was just shaking my little 8th grade head and telling me what and asshole I was for sucking at the clarinet. It was a not cool at all. So I just wanted to take the opportunity to tell that teacher that he was a dick...but I can't remember his name, so he's off the hook. But there was another teacher who was a jerk also. Mr. Edwards, you're a dick... but for reasons other than those in the above story.

-Rob-

Blog #7

2010-10-06T14:56:00.000-04:00

Hey, blog #7 here we go, right in the kisser! So, no running news or updates for this week. Well, actually maybe just a little one, Hilary and Taylor are running at the commonwealth games 1500's in the coming days. Good luck to them, beat up on those bastards from the rest of the commonwealth, especially Mozambique. I mean, come on Mozambique, you don't even have a constitutional link to the British Empire, you were a Portuguese colony for crying out loud! Mozambique, get out of here...Oh wait...what the hell? Mozambique has a gun on their flag? seriously? a gun? on their flag? what kind of gun? an AK-47!!?? with a Bayonet! Holy crap! Okay Mozambique I take it back, I take it all back, you can be in the commonwealth, please don't hurt me. Damn, Mozambique is hard.
Well, now that we have that all sorted out what else is up. Hey! my friend Crink is getting married this weekend, and that scares me. My friends are all getting married and starting real lives. We're getting old, getting old and I don't like it. I have noticed a lot changing as I'm starting to get up there in age. Tell tale signs that I'm getting old,old and lame. For example, I recently bought a new bike, and do you know what else I bought along with the bike? A Helmet, yeah I bought a friggen bike helmet. I am certain that there is nothing more nerdy looking in the world than a dude rocking a bike helmet. Every time I catch a glimpse of myself in my helmet 13yr old Rob laughs at me and calls me a name. There was no way in hell young, cool Rob would wear a bike helmet. But now that I'm old and lame I wear my helmet. I don't wanna fall off the rocket (my bike) and crack my head, that would really hurt, and it could turn me dumb(er).
You know how else I can tell I'm getting old? The fact that as soon as I consume my 6th beer you can officially cancel all my plans for the next day, because I am not leaving the house. I used to be able to drink a lot of beer and then do it again, day after day after day. In University I could party pretty hardy. Don't even get me started on some of my Vegas trips, But alas, those were the good old days. Now after 6beers I get a wicked hangover and spend the day moaning and feeling sorry for myself on my couch. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe this is not because I am getting old, this is more due to my lameness. Because I know lots of old guys who can throw down. Yep, this is just a personal thing. My party ability has been depleted because I am turning into a huge loser.
Hmm...Now I'm depressed because I am an old and lame. Good news though, we have a hard 5xMile workout today and I am going to absolutely drill the shit out of those young kids on the Guelph team, that'll make me feel better.

-rob-

Blog #6

2010-09-27T13:15:00.000-04:00

Hey, this is going to be primarily about running today. So I apologize to all you non-running folks out there, this post is probably going to be highly uninteresting to you. But I encourage you to keep reading, because at the very least it will likely kill a few minutes of time, and that's probably what you are looking to accomplish by reading this blog in the first place. I'll even throw in a non-running related story at the end.
Okay so yesterday was the Toronto Scotia Bank Marathon, and it was an amazing day. Reid and Gilly absolutely killed it! I was acting as a pacer for my buddy Reid, on a scale of 1-10. 1 being Gillis' rabbit and 10 being...umm...10 being a really good rabbit, I think I scored a 6ish. I was able to hold a decent pace while trying to keep our other pacer, Simon from dropping us. I think he wanted Reid to run 2:09, Simon really believed in Reid's ability apparently. Dylan Wykes also helped quite a bit. Anyways, I felt great through 15km holding 3:04-3:05kms pretty well, then by 18km it started to hurt. We came through the half at 65:03. At this point Simon vanished, he was sorely missed. Not only was he Reid's rabbit, but I was planning on tucking in on him also because I was hurting pretty good at this point. So he was gone and about 30sec later Reid asked if I was okay, I could only grunt... and it was a negative grunt. I started to flail and run like an idiot, Reid pulled away as my hamstrings tightened into little balls of fire. I kept jogging for about 30secs, grunted a sad little grunt and started walking, my pacing job was complete. I only made it 21.9km, I was supposed to do 25. I was pretty pissed that I had to stop, but it was physically impossible to keep going at that pace. Next time I'll be more prepared. Now Reider was going to be all alone...for 20km! Our group went from 4 guys down to one in the span of 2minutes. But luckily Reid has huge balls and the determination of a sonofabitch, he hammered home to a 2:11:23, hitting the Olympic A standard! friggen eh! it was so cool to see him pull that off. Then Gilly comes scooting on in only a few seconds later in 2:12:08, almost a 2min PB. Huge day for the boys. Yesterday was so inspiring and uplifting, to see these guys absolutely smash it like that after all the shit that they've been through was awesome. My love for this sport has been re-ignited after that twitterish crapper of a track season.
Big ups to the whole Guelph crew, there was quite an impressive posse of cyclists out there supporting the boys. It is very cool to have such a high quality event so close to home. Alan Brookes has done a great job putting on a world class event in Toronto.
My legs are dead today, I was woken up twice last night via violent cramping in my hammies and calves. I can only imagine how Reid and Gillis feel. But At least they have shiny new PB's to comfort them. Okay, so that was my Sunday.
Now here's a little tale about young Rob, my best bud Eric turned 27 a few weeks ago. At his 6th or 7th birthday party we had pizza. I threw a piece of Pizza on his roof for fun. His dad got mad at me because that piece of pizza on the roof was going to attract raccoons. I promptly threw another piece on the roof just because I was a dick. Mr. Spence then kicked me out of the birthday party, I had to walk home with no goodie bag. I only added this story because I thought it was quite funny.
Have a great week world wide webbers.

-rob-

Blog #5

2010-09-14T18:44:00.000-04:00

Alright, I suppose it's time to get on it with another blog. I have been waiting for some sort of inspiration or something cool to talk about. But that hasn't happened, so what you will be getting here is a fairly generic and somewhat uninteresting blog. I am determined to keep this blog going, even if the quality drastically drops off and no one reads it, I will not have another twitter like failure!
Lets get things started with a running update. Two weeks ago I ran a whole bunch of miles and got in some really good quality tempo work, it was fun. Then last week not so much mileage and some fast stuff and a 5km road race. My body is confused, it doesn't know what the hell is going on. But that is okay, just letting the body know who is in charge.
Gonna talk a little about my race. I asked to get elite status from the race director, she shot me down. I don't have a huge ego or anything but I figured that for a 5km road race in Toronto I could maybe get a little respect. No dice. The race had a special area for the "elites" to line up, right there at the front. All the fast people were assigned bibs with numbers between 1-20, I was 279. I was a little annoyed, and I decided that I just wanted to smash some people and make the race director feel silly. I snuck up to the front of the starting area with the fast folks, then I basically sprinted off the line when the gun went off. Now I am not the most conservative racer, I kinda like to get after it. But sometimes man, sometimes these Kenyans cross the line from aggressive to just plain stupid. I was hammering pretty good for the first 800m when these two little guys just go flying by! I mean they were in a dead sprint. It was funny, I knew I was going to win at that point. I did. It was a pretty good event overall, the Yorkville Run 5k is okay in my books.
There is something else here I wanna talk about. I've thought about this a little bit in my day, maybe someone out there in the world wide web knows the answer. This thought originated when I was in France. I was in Paris at some little hotel watching french TV. The movie Biker Boyz came on. This movie probably sucked really bad in english, but it was kinda awesome in french. The people doing the french voice overs were so crappy at their jobs it made it entertaining, the French Ice Cube was so street it was scary. That combined with some sweet motorcycle action made Biker Boyz mildly entertaining . Anyways, the question I had was; do they have one voice over guy who does all the work for a certain english speaking actor? Does the guy trying to do ghetto french for Ice Cube in biker boyz do all the french voice over work for ice cube? I'm just curious if there is voice over actors out there whose whole careers are dependent on the success of their english speaking counterpart? Like when Mel Gibson turned into a crazy racist nut job was the french Mel Gibson voice over guy just like "oh, merde!" Yeah so, I've just wondered about that a little bit during my days.
Okay, got 11miles to get after, bye!

Check out the sweet pic, that's me being all smug after the race.

Blog #4

2010-08-31T18:46:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone! With this post my blogging experiment will officially become more successful than that stupid twittering escapade. Pretty neat right? So what do we have to talk about this week? Well, currently my legs are very sore. Why? Because I am running quite a lot. Why? because I'm trying to get in shape quickly. Why? Because I'm going to help pace my buddies run a smoking fast mararthon. How fast you ask? I will not divulge that information. But trust me it's going to be pretty cool.
I quite like running lots of miles, I would much rather go for a 2hr run than do a quick little track session. The track is for fast people, I'm not fast. The road is for grinders, I'm more of a grinder. So therefore I'm going to test my chops on the roads for a while. I need a break from the steeplechase. The steeplechase has been very, very good to me. It has taken me through university and allowed me to travel the world. But this year the steeplechase was a real sonofabitch and we just didn't get along, so we've decided to part ways.
Okay, so that is a little insight to the running side of things.
I wanna talk about something else now. This involves beer kegs. I've noticed that in Canada everytime a keg of beer is finished it is proudly hoisted in the air and passed around amoungst the conquering drinkers much like the Stanley Cup. Every. Single. time. It is a joyus occasion for sure, and we've earned that celebration, but are Canucks the only folk who do the Stanley Cup pass around?
I have done the Stanley Cup celebration in the States a few time, and people don't really get the Stanley Cup reference, they think I'm going to throw the keg at them like Donkey Kong or something. At the CSU Track and Field winter formal I tried to do the Stanley Cup keg celebration, but unfortunetley for me the keg was not empty. The beer had meerly just frozen at the bottom of the keg. As I swung the keg up over my head, I quickly realized that it was not in fact empty. I failed to stop the momentum of the keg once it reached its apex, the keg just kept going, I was helpless to stop it. The keg came crashing down onto some poor bastards table. The table was destroyed and I was embarassed. Maybe that's why Americans thought I was going to try to Donkey Kong them? hmm...
Well off for run #2 of the day, got a ball buster of a workout tomorrow, balls will indeed be busted.

-Rob-

Blog #3

2010-08-18T19:17:00.000-04:00

Hey there friends. I'm going to start with a little story. This story is exotic because it takes place in France. This story is also sexy because it involves a prostitute. Well, actually the prostitute is not really an integral part of the story, she's kinda just there as the main events are occuring. and prostitues are not very sexy either. Anyways...
Back in 2008 when I was much younger and a little bit cooler I made my first trip across the pond. I headed over to France, Montpellier to be exact. Montpellier is a beautiful city, but I was staying in the dirtiest hotel I had ever seen. When I went for a run my room was broken into and my camera was stolen ,and the lady in the room next to mine was a prostitute. Well, she was either a prostitute or just a big ho-bag because random french guys kept coming over for "dates", but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was at least making a buck or two for all this activity. My room had a little bed and a sink, that's all. I shared a bathroom with other folks on the floor, including the Prostitute and her friends, it sucked.
I was out strolling the streets of Montpellier feeling a little down, mourning my stolen camera, lost passport and lost innocence thanks to the prostitue and her vigorous shenanigans. I also hadn't talked to anyone in 2days because I can speak french about as well as I can twitter (horribly). So, I'm out being all emo on my walk when I hear some english speaking folk! I got so excited I ran over and introduced myself to these fellow anglophones. My new friends were two students from Ottawa, not only were they english speakers, they were Canadians, it was pretty special.
I can no longer remember these ladies names because our promises to become facebook friends were never fulfilled, but these girls introduced me to one of the most amazing and pure and radical things in this crazy little world of ours. With these girls I experienced my first crepe! And since then my life has never been the same. A Nutella and Banana Crepe is probably the best thing ever invented, I lack the vocabulary to express how I feel about them, so just take my word for it. I effing love those things.
Now 2years later I want this story to come full circle. I want to introduce a generation of young Guelphians to this treat I hold so close to my heart. Therefore I am opening my own Crepe stand at the Guelph Farmers Market. If you're in Guelph this or next saturday come on by my stand and grab a crepe, they're gonna be yummy. and even if I mess up, a poorly made crepe is still better than an awesome anything else.
Okay gotta go for a 12miler, out!

-rob-

Blog #2

2010-08-10T22:24:00.000-04:00

Hey there boys and girls. Kozi said my blog was lacking, I agree with him. But I figured it was time for blog #2. I don't want to lose my loyal audience. Alright what kind of exciting things have been going on. umm, lets see here. Yeah, okay so my bike was broken, and then I got it fixed! awesome! What else...I went grocery shopping and bought a huge thing of blueberries, man blueberries are so good. Lets talk a little about blueberries. A couple months ago I saw an infomercial for these amazing blueberry plants. I mean this commercial was great, these damn blue berry plants were exploading with blueberries, I was promised a non-stop blueberry party all season long. These plants basically grew themselves, I just had to sit back and reap the benefits. I ordered three plants and anxiously waited for them to arrive. So the day comes and the plants arrive, they came as baby plants, just little guys. I was expecting a big ole plant already bursting with delicious blueberries. So I was a little annoyed, but it was okay I just put em' in a pot in my backyard. When the plants first arrived there was one that was kind of sickly, it was the runt of the family...it promptly died. Then I went to Europe for 3weeks. I came home expecting my plants to be all grown up and producing mad blueberries. I was wrong, they were dead. Needless to say my blueberry plant experiment was about as sucessful as my twittering. Yeah, an effing disaster.
In other news, I'm back to training which is good. Gotta get fit and fast again. Track 2010 was also like my twittering and blueberry experiment-horribly dissapointing. Going to put that season behind me and move on, looking forward to trying some new things.
Going to watch the food network now. Bye.

-rob-

Blog #1

2010-08-02T22:54:00.000-04:00

Hey there internet masses, I'm bored. When I'm bored I like to read my friends blogs. I've read all my friends blogs and I'm still bored. So I'm going to start my own blog, and here it is!
Blog #1 is going to be about...umm...geez, blogging is kinda hard. I lack the witty and original thoughts that will really get this blog rolling. I fear this blog will end up like my failed attempt at twittering. now that was bad, my twittering was an effing disaster! Nobody read my tweets, it was humiliating. Billions of people on the internet and nobody read either of my tweets.
Anyways, maybe I should introduce myself. My Name is Rob. I really like to run, sometimes I run quite fast (2009) sometimes I'm not so fast (2010). I also really like music, mostly mid/late 90's punk and hardcore. Okay then, I've decided I'm going to blog about Music and Running. Now if you will, I'm going to collect my thoughts and blog #2 is going to blow your effing mind!
Blog #1, over and out!