Hurtin' Albertan

Westlock news

2011-02-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

I thought a few of you would get a charge out of this

one year - barefoot run - healing - E2-55-18W4

2010-03-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked one full year without touching so much as a drop of alcohol. The questions I'm always asked are 'is it hard to resist temptation' and 'what about peer pressure' and aren't as connected as they might appear. It's strange because I have only felt like having a beer maybe three times and the feeling always faded pretty fast. In situations where one might expect a little peer pressure, usually I just explain that I quit for complex reasons which mostly boil down to being because I thought I was wasting my time and people rapidly sympathize. Strangely the person whom I felt most connected to over this is a friend from the US military, who seemed to understand deeply, as he proceeded to share some great chewing tobacco and talk about his time in Iraq - it's own form of devotion that like quitting drinking, doesn't always make sense to people, and which I began to understand in my own right. Anyways, all in all, it's been a great year, thank you to all my friends who have encouraged me along the way, (or at least refrained from pressuring me!)
I had been feeling really sick and kinda down as well this whole week, with a heck of a flu that just flattened my energy - the sort of flu where even your hands feel weak. I had tried to throw in a few workouts to pick my body up but mostly they just got knocked me down again. And I think I am also going through a bit of the blues about not knowing what I am going to be doing in May - the dark side of the excitement that I feel about it as well, that comes from expectations (my own and others) and the costs of potentially pursuing certain opportunities. But Saturday afternoon, I started feeling good again! The boys and I tossed around the old pigskin and then I went on a run sans shoes. Something in my crazy Tao dirtbag side told me that I needed to do it, and feeling the earth under my feet again was absolutely fantastic! I was by the tennis courts next to Scona high school when I saw this puddle, bordered by snow on one side with a slushy bottom, and I thought to myself "this was meant to be" and ran right through it giggling like a school girl at the sensation of the slush and water (which wasn't as cold as I was anticipating). And I didn't need to drag any squelching sneakers along with me, my feet were dry in an instant. So from then on out I ran through a bunch of snow banks and puddles and generally had a total blast, laughing my head off and drawing a few funny looks from my neighbours.
This weekend I was lucky to have Megan staying with me when she was on a course in town, and I think that having her around played a big part in why I started to feel a lot better on Saturday. I let her have my room, and took the living room, so I also have her to thank for making my room smell less like old socks. She was starting to feel pretty under the weather so I thought I would make her some jambalaya and we made an evening out of watching about a dozen episodes of 30 Rock - a pretty good tv binge if I do say.
Today I had some thinking to do, so I headed out to near Chipman for a run, destination, the land where my Opa was born and raised. They farmed a half section out there, himself being one of six children, growing wheat and barley through the Depression, with a few cows and chickens around and a big vegetable garden. They didn't have running water or electricity (used a windmill to charge up the radio batteries now and then). Anyways, the run was very relaxing and definitely eased my head. Part of me quitting drinking was that after he died I thought that it was time for me to be more like him, grow up and help my family out more - though it took a while to figure out how the two worked together, I think that it makes sense now. The last day he ever talked he told me about the first time he ever had a drink, owing largely to the fact that for hardscrabble dirt farmers like his parents, alcohol was unaffordable and never made an appearance in their home. No wonder my Great-Grandparents lived to be 99 and 96.

I'm feeling rough I'm feeling raw I'm in the prime of my life

2010-02-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

'There was no music, just the faces of the mountains that gazed down on him with some funereal solemnitude, passive despite being covered by uncharacteristic July snow, they were not all-knowing but they were strange passive gods exhibiting the seafloor of vanished epochs, unafraid of their nakedness, their knowledge.'
This is a really short passage from what I have been working on a little here and there lately, and I like the sound of it, let me know what you think. I think one day it will be something of a book, but what's the point? It's all bullshit anyway you slice the cake, literature, science, law, anyone tells you different is selling something, so essentially I write for myself and maybe a few of my friends - note I am leaving this at a short excerpt. I can't even read most of what passes for literature these days, it's just painful, I can't wait for the rubbish to be forgotten over and above the efforts of these fools to canonize continuously. There's a few people I have time for, and for the most part I can see their limitations: Cormac McCarthy, W.P. Kinsella and Annie E. Proulx, that's it. I don't even want to weigh in on some of the other trends in literature (Da Vinci Code filth, Twilight, accepting novels that revolve around magical items of clothing). I'm still trying to get my head around how people are treating the Lord of the Rings trilogy as though it were some sort of high art and actually worth a read. I just wonder when people are going to wake up and realize, 'Margaret Atwood is a shit author.' Because she is. That goes double for Douglas Coupland and half for Yann Martel. There's nothing there, no honesty, no curiosity, no imagination. Just navel-gazing, a real world continues to seethe and foam while Atwood makes some dry joke and appears supremely owlishly intelligent about some environmental catastrophe that will never materialize, that she has never questioned and doesn't understand anyways - that's called running with the herd. Meanwhile in Nuevo Laredo a bunch of high school kids get their brains blown out over some coke deal. That's why I love Cormac McCarthy. He understands the fundamental savagery of human beings, and by drawing it out in such an extreme fashion lends a miraculous intensity to even the smallest of humane gestures. Our lives are a narrow interlude of softness in an incredibly brutal history, and we are so clueless as to cripple ourselves for that reason.
As for myself, I think that there needs to be something of a balance between the sort of Appolonian sides of my daily life, that is studying the law, which is really going well this semester, I am especially enjoying corporate tax and think I am really starting to figure out how to figure these things out and then take that creative next step, and the Dionysian which I have essentially cut out of my life owing to the fact that the strongest thing I drink is Dr. Peppers and I am rarely out late. So basically exercise and writing qualify as my Dionysian side these days.
Anyways, workouts have been going ok. Haven't been running lots, but have been doing good core work and a fair amount of kettlebell which is going awesome.
I'm back in Calgary and hung out with Graeme, Emily and Cousin Jon last night. Jon and I went and checked out some bands for a bit, mostly just chilling and talking. I'm really happy to see the true colours of the European coming out - anti-democratic and hypocritical. I hope that that whole superstate system collapses over this row surrounding Greece. Here is Germany pointing the finger at America for it's own problems, and while discussing global bank taxes and regulation aren't even willing to give Greece a hand up. So we know how the new world order of von Rompuy and the EU will work out, this is the sort of 'global cooperation' that clearly works so much better than the USA that it should be extended to encompass the entire globe?

Strange Night in Didsbury

2009-12-28T16:09:00.000-08:00

Went out to Didsbury Boxing Day to see some friends and listen to a sweet band. It felt good to get out on the open road, which was clear and dry. The band was playing a hotel in center of town, which gradually filled up pretty good, like an annual high school reunion complete with parents and underage kids. Watched pensively from along the brick wall much of the time, chatting lightly. Tried to project an image of boldness, helped along by my stache, which got me some handshakes and impressed a 17 year old relative (who at 6 something looked at least 20) no end. Good people. Tell some funny stories, hear some good ones about girls fighting, am slightly disturbed. Friend disappears, I find out later she is sick from drinking too much. Nights such as these, filled with friends and relatives and nostalgia that may not even belong to you, were made for running away from you. I've been there. Alcohol can help overcome reality, help reconnect to a past that was not yours, and could not be so idyllic as you dream it, but the illusion, however comforting, is hollow, temporary and ends with the bruising reality of vomit and cold air. I head home at 11:45, fairly tired from the holiday crunch. On the way home I see a shooting star that lasts for probably 3 seconds with a small intermittence, pointing down at Calgary. I am still pondering this omen and its potential significance.

Now that's what I call getting the heck outta Dodge...

2009-12-12T06:24:00.000-08:00

You heard it hear first pardners, after cowboyin up and writing 5 exams in 5 days I packed my clothes, including my sweet brown suspenders and hockey gear, cleaned the house some for the boys as they is still busy a-writin exams and left Edmonchuk in my dust - good riddance you government/union loving punks! My eyes was bleary from book-learnin, I had a headache and was running on just a bowl of oatmeal, and had taken a few body blows on that last Conflicts exam but I managed to make er down to Cal-grizzy in about four hours on those snowy, wind-blown roads (ain't that bad), to a heapin helping of my Mom's shepherds pie. Yum. My old man and I had us a good chat about the oil business and the stock market and what it means to be a climate sceptic (how people have forgotten that the arguable existence of 'expert consensus' means absolutely nothing to the scientific process is beyond me... I blame our lazy, conformist society and inability to question received knowledge) and how that works in to our heretic Dutch (home of the Anabaptists... temporarily) ancestry (wooden shoes, wooden head, wouldn't listen). I went to bed early, couldn't sleep, finally fell asleep, got up early, tried to lie in bed because it's Saturday and I don't need to get up, said heck no, got up and wrote this.
For everyone in Calgary I'm back and will be hooking up some runs and what not this week so heads up. For everyone in Edmonton I didn't say goodbye to, I ain't good at goodbyes so please accept these early tidings of Holiday Cheer!
Adieu

Two poems and an update

2009-11-29T12:01:00.000-08:00

Hello friends, in the spirit of putting it on the line, please see the poems below, one written by Catullus, the other written about a week ago by myself as a bit of an escape from exam prep mode. A big thanks to my friend Jamie Weikum for his encouragement and kind criticism. I'm back to exercising after two weeks off everything (except biking to school) and feeling great. Yesterday was 30 minutes super easy, really focusing on mechanics, followed by some a-skip/march, then some abs/lifting type stuff. Felt super! Listening to some great tunes now as well... I'm the last person on earth to get into MGMT but there you have it I know that this is a flashback to two years ago but whatever. Also, Tears for Fears 'Head Over Heels', what a cool track, this is everything melodramatic and cheesy and awesome about the 80's that I always thought Jason Lindsay was crazy for liking, and now love myself as punishment.

A young cutthroat shivered up the clear stream

I watched, squatting, then standing, shook the water from my hand

Brilliance of red slash on white throat

How will these waters, these mountains mark me?

Grass rustling dry on jeans

Galaxies of flies flit in the dusk

Great riverbank cedars

Cottonwoods speaking of mute Mississippi

A young bear shuffled up a tree

Forest cracking with branches broken by tremendous wrists

Suspended in silence of sinew

The blue sky and dissonant sway of tree

Face to face with my brother across the river

I turn, looking at his feet, repeat his name, back away

Drinking from my hat, the river, golden

Threaded its’ way through strewn boulders

I came back and you were here again

My world stopped, cars filling the ditches

Blizzard propelling me on reckless to you, to death

-Sean van der Lee

Angst

ennui & angst

Consume my days & weeks,

and you have nott written

or done anything to soothe my illness.

I am piqued.

So much for our friendship.

Ah! Cornificius,

a word from you would cure everything,

though more full of tears

than a line from Simonides.

Catullus, trans. Peter Whigham

Another day, another fifty cents

2009-11-18T16:01:00.000-08:00

This is an old saying my ol' pardner Greg Properzi espouses. It expresses his worldview perfectly, aged 25 with a wife, practicing law in a small town, gradually buying up a family farm, and looking variously to start up a butcher shop or greenhouse - nothing but hard work, intelligence and getting your hands dirty. Like Dangerfield: I can't get no respect. But at the end of the day, the fact is that I don't want any. I'd rather have a farm and grow my own food and be my own master and be forgotten.
I am taking a week off of exercise. After Stewart my calf was bugging me, but I tried to do a bunch of easy runs, concentrating on foot placement, with a large amount of form work, core, and calf strengthening. Things were going well, and I felt like the range of motion in my ankles was really opening up and that other aspects of form were coming right into line. I am kicking myself for not putting in a regimen of lower leg hops, bounding in all season (not to mention core work and a-march). But the calf was still bugging me in a low level way. I figured it's been bugging me for 10 weeks no matter what I do for it, why not take a week's rest, as I haven't really taken a prolonged break (over 2 days) since early February.
I'm not satisfied at all with how slow I ran this season (in fact it pisses me off pretty bad) but I am happy to say that it was awesome to be back working hard and training systematically, and that I learned a lot from the trials and tribulations along the way. A big thanks to all the people associated with DA BEARS, especially the coaches Georgette, Glen an Guy for coming out all the time and being there for me. Not to forget the physio guys etc, and DA BEARS themselves who accepted me like one of the pack from day one and are all badass dudes. Faster times to come. Gotta trim down my legs. It's funny but I trimmed down the arms/chest/stomach really fast but my legs are still way too bulky. It's gonna take swearing off olympic lifting, keeping with better diet and some solid miles (maybe on bike) to get rid of the excess. Well looking at starting up on Saturday and seeing how the body feels.
Have been taking the opportunity to ramp up the school work, but I'm also just getting excited about other things that are filling the temporary void left by some time off running. The other day I really felt like just doing some hard, heavy work, like framing. That led into some thoughts of making some money and buying a farm way out on the frontier, or buying some stock again.
Basically to make a long story short I figure I've spent enough time licking my wounds from the job market over the summer and feel like getting back in there for some more punishment. No-one else is gonna make it happen but me. It's strange, I think 'A River Runs Through It' was really to the point on the topic of help. The chances we have to actually help someone are sacred, that is to be able to help when someone needs it, with what they actually need. A lot of people have tried to help me get a job and in some ways I have been unfair to them by refusing them, not wishing to impose owing to my own stubborn notions of self-reliance - meanwhile I did nothing. I wasn't ready to be helped, and however kind, most of the offers couldn't have really helped anyways. But who knows. Now it's time for me to help myself, and maybe then I can accept some of those kind offers, from friends that are too good for me. One of the nice things about getting to work where I did this summer was that it finally lent me some certainty with regards to the idea of where to start my career, which I can't say I had before.
I would also like to note that I have been doing some writing of late. A little poem, a short prose piece. I'm not sure where any of this is going but for now it is satisfying some urge and releasing a little tension (hard with no exercise). Maybe I will post some of the stuff one of these days.
Thanks for reading
Keep the shiny side up amigos

Open Letter to DA BEARS

2009-11-10T16:40:00.000-08:00

Boys, Stache here.
I've seen a lot of runners and a lot of teams, and let me tell you that I love this group. Everyone else in my life is sick of me talking non stop about how much I am loving training again and how rad it is being a Bear, hanging out with the boys, and thrashing workouts - mostly the workouts thrashed me but I managed to get a few kicks in. I've never been part of a group as focused on running, and as deep with strong runners: the relationship is self-evident. The team we are sending to CIS is just a pile of studs, they are gonna turn some serious heads this weekend and that's a fact. I believe in this group, and every single man in it. Years from now you will look back at these days not only with fondness remembering all the great workouts and laughs, but with awe at what the people in the group have achieved. I am thinking back on my first group, with Jason Lindsay (soon to be joined by Christine Laverty) in Calgary Track West in September of 1997. The core of that group went on to do great things on the track, academic achievements of all sorts, and what are the beginnings of ambitious careers. We are all still in touch, and get together whenever possible, despite being variously strewn across the world, for runs or perhaps a pint of lager (or cranberry juice, depending on personal preference). When I go back to Calgary, the first place I check in is the track, the first people Icall are track people. The bonds you forge out there on the track and trails, are eternal.
Boys, thank you so much for letting me count myself among your sacred number this year.
I wish each and every one of you nothing but the absolute best.
And to paraphrase Pre, for those of you going to CIS: you hold in your hands a great gift that requires every ounce of effort to be blasted out of you on those 10km. My last CIS I was so thrashed at the end that I couldn't heat myself and was shivering cold even in every piece of clothing I brought to Point Pleasant. I was never happier with a race.
See you tomorrow
Yours
Sean van der Lee

Opa the Boxer

2009-11-01T16:52:00.000-08:00

So I am feeling a little under the weather post race here, so I took the opportunity to do a little overdue research and found this neat article about my Grandfather's days boxing at U of A in the forties in the Bruce Peel special collections archive. Enjoy.

Pre race JAMS

2009-10-30T13:00:00.001-07:00

I've raced a lot of years, and through a process of relentless exploration, trial and error I think that I have isolated the absolute raddest tracks to listen to get hyped up and focused to the nines before the big races. Here goes:
Motley Crue - Kickstart my Heart - sick video too, fast cars and skydiving, what more do you need?
Wu Tang Clan - Triumph, Da Mystery of Chess Boxin' - makes you mean plain and simple
Vangelis/Parry - Jerusalem - uplifting hymn from Chariots of Fire, words penned by William Blake (I'm trying to keep this the last thing I hear to keep the phrases in the mind)
Turbonegro - The Age of Pamparius
Tom Waits - Goin Out West
Animotion - Obsession - sweet trashy eighties for an Aerobics class on coke
ODB - Baby I got your money (a little lightness, for early on)
GNR - Paradise City (for early on in the hype up to get head in a sublime, June smelling place)
Silverchair - Anthem for the Year 2000
ACDC - Who made who (lately, though almost anything from these crazy dudes fits the bill)
Black Strobe - I'm a Man - don't be afraid to strut boyee
Scatman John - Scatman

You can thank me later.
Please come on out and cheer on DA BEARS and the Pandas this Saturday, October 31 starting at 12 noon at Hawrelak Park - we need your rowdy screaming from the sidelines!

Redefining 'hard' Kenyan world's training camp

2009-10-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

When I was in grade 10 I ordered a book from Track and Field News called Train Hard Win Easy: the Kenyan Way, by Toby Tanser. This book became my Bible. Somehow I lost it, and now that it is out of print and sells for outrageous sums online, it is only thanks to some straightforward searching by Jamie Weikum that I am able to read it again. It is clearly the coolest book ever written, detailing everything about the life of great Kenyan runners, from what they eat, to what their names mean, and includes detailed training plans and workouts. I have excerpted a section here for your perusal, paraphrasing where useful, of the classic training camp of one month before World Cross Country Championships. In the period that this camp was used, the Kenyan men were undefeated as a team at those championships, and the training is a big reason why. These guys average upwards of 240 km/week following this schedule, much of them very fast, as the coach at the time (1985-1995) encouraged competitive long runs close to race effort, even on what were supposed to be 'easy' outings.
The camp takes place way up in the Rift Valley 2000m+, with the runners living in a very humble college dorm, close to a track and buckets of nice red clay roads.
A typical day:
6 AM - morning run - most men 10km, but maybe all the way up to 22k starting very slow and ending at a steady rip. Followed by exercises, stretching, breakfast and bed.
10 AM - main session - one of the following:
8-10x800m, in 2 minutes, rest 1:1
Hill workout 25x200m, stride recovery, steep hill
20x400m in 56-64, 400 jog recovery
Short intervals w 15km at 3:30/km warmup
2x5000m at 15:00 pace, 2-3 minutes recovery jog
12 PM - lunch, rest
4 PM - 12-16km steady running (usually escalating pace to very fast for last half)
6 PM - dinner
8:30 PM - lights out

I do my best to do my damnedest...

2009-10-16T19:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I put in a really good workout, 16x200m with rolling hills, pretty slick and muddy right in the middle, 200m jog rest, which we did mostly pretty fast. I came in with something to prove to myself, having had to pull back on the throttle on Wednseday's workout (6x1000m) as my calf had been bugging me after the race Saturday, watched some of 'Endurance' with Geb to ground myself in all the good things in life (family, running, rain but not storms, good crops), listened to a bunch of Motley Crue, watched Bekele run in Edingburgh 2008 WXC and was in the zone. The first four I hammering, and feeling really strong, finishing them up the last hill and into the flat to the line. It started to catch up to me, just as the workout should, and by 10 I was thinking it might be a good idea to stop at 12 (as we had a choice of doing 12 to 16). But when I got to 12 I just said to heck with it, geared up and pounded the last four in. It was a really great workout, by the later ones wasn't quite in control of the breathing by the end of the rest, but was really just eating up the effort, hungry for the hurting. The stride was feeling strong all over. All the boys and girls ran really nice too I might add. Thanks girls for cheering for me.
Back to last Saturday, and the race at North Capitol Hill Park (I refuse to call it Canmore Park). I am there in the U of A gear, and the first person I say hello to tells me her husband is going to give me hell for betraying the Dinos. So be it. He walks over to me shaking his head and proceeds to give me the gears, which is the start of some pretty good ribbing from the old Dinos crew. The race was slow for me (slow time), but it was necessary to scrape off some of the rust from 2005, I needed the race and it felt awesome just to get back out and running hard when the gun goes, over hill and over dale. This is old school English working class running, racing into shape right here, a throwback to that dying breed and it's glorious echo, the generation of Coe, Ovett and Cram. It may not be pretty. It may not be fast. But grind is the motto and that's all I have right now (when my calf isn't acting up), distractions to a minimum, job/school, with workouts being the focus of life, not much of entertainment beyond reading Pigeon-Fanciers Quarterly before bed, and none of the dissipative hobbies of today that rob one of focus, such as binge drinking, television, and shopping, the things that are sapping British and North American culture of its' strength, and blurring the distinction between man and woman. Well the beta males can have that Bed Bath and Beyond throw rug rubbish, they can have the cheap comradeship that comes with a pint in a pub and a hockey game, I just want a few strong laps and the blessing of God on race day (not to mention with every workout) and the brotherhood of those who bleed with me! The Bears ran pretty awesome, I am really impressed by how fast and deep our crew is rolling. These kids are mean. It's going to be a great battle at Stewart Cup and a great show at CIS for Can West this year. A few friends and my family came out to cheer which is always great when you are suffering pretty hard. My calf kinda bugged me, and I had to pull back on the pace a bit at around 5k, but it loosened up and I could open up about a mile later, though it was really sore after the race and has kinda had me second guessing how hard I'd been doing my workouts (maybe should have been listening to the calf and stopping a little early) and even whether I should have dropped out. But I felt it was important to get through this race and get it under the belt, even if it wasn't pretty, it had to be done, and done as hard as the body would allow on the day. I felt like I had more in the tank at the end which is always disappointing in one sense as you want to give it your all, but on the other hand indicates that if there is no calf issue, things ought to roll out a little smoother. I think that with more quality workouts and an easier workout the Wednesday before the race, we can make it happen. Took the next two days off, I felt like it was time to leave it alone for a bit, as it is getting a lot of traffic with all the running, exercises I'm doing to strengthen the area, the foam roller, ice/heat the whole nine. However, I feel like the next gear is close. Man I want to go fast again!!! Fast fast fast! I'm coming out of the race with a better feel for race pace and an even bigger chip on my shoulder, so I'm very thankful, to everyone who came to cheer, to the Bears, my old Dino friends, my wonderful family, and the Creator for everything. The undeniable highlight of that whole situation was that my good ol buddy A-Game Austin Horn came out to watch and cheer. Man was I ever happy to see him, it had been about a year and a half and we pretty much communicate by blogging nowadays. I'm thinking I better move to Vic to see that dude more. So we had a few big hugs and some pretty good stories, such as when he almost blew his top at a showoff driver who clipped him for kicks and to impress his idiot buddies, as he let me rip around in his jaguar out to Casa de Haws for a superb antelope roast, punctuated as always with hilarious stories from the Haws family at large such as "I was hunting elk, and it was getting dark when I smelled this bear..." long story short, Dr Haws shot the bear, field-dressed it and tricked his mother in law into thinking it was a pork roast - she thought it was the best pork roast she'd ever had - they told the poor lady several months later.
Also got in a nice Thanksgiving dinner with a large crew of family and friends, including the newest van der Lee, Zach and Lindsey's 5 week old Nolan, who is a really cute little kid who already has the same hairstyle as his dad. We always have a pretty good laugh at these things, and wound up at the Drum and Monkey, all stuffed to the gills with ham, turkey and all the fixings. Plenty of sleep too So she was a pretty good holiday. I'm looking forward to more racing and training, and I'm just working hard and hoping that things go well from here out.
Thanks for reading amigos. Keep the shiny side up.

Hill session!Thanksgiving plans that just get better and better

2009-10-07T20:53:00.000-07:00

Today we warmed up and headed over to the hill. I was feeling pretty tired and hungry this morning from putting in some nice sessions through the week, Sunday 90 minutes with the boys, some pretty darn fast, Monday AM: bike 25 PM: 2x12 minutes hard tempo with 5 minutes rest, still feeling the cold, and my general lack of fitness I am way behind the boys here, but I was stoked because that was the workout that I knew my body needed, and I busted hard in it, Tuesday AM: 40 medium with a good ab/weights session PM: 45 medium with abs/weights again, just because. So I contented myself with riding the bike to school and back, nice and easy, and coming in ready to rip on the hills. The hill is a true beauty, on the gravel path from Saskatchewan Drive down to Hawrelak, 400 odd metres from the stairs to the top, with a few different grades and a prolonged, winding steep stretch at the end. After two I was worried about finishing, my legs were hurting pretty good and I really powered out in the last 50 metres. But just kept on giving er with the boys, focusing on relaxing the rhythm, working on keeping nice hill form, feeling smooth into the tough bits, not labouring. At 5 I noticed as I worked down the stairs at the end of our rest, that my legs were shaking, the classic 'Edworthy twitch', the only physiological explanation for which is that your legs are so hyped to be running hills , that they just can't sit still. The middle of the workout was really strong, kinda powered out a bit at the top of number 7, and number 8, having greased up the old engine and poured on the throttle for all she's worth up the steep stretch, I was powering out a bit when Javin said 'let's go' beside me and I found the extra bit of focus and drive to finish it off with style, though the look on my face when the workout was over wasn't a pretty picture. I feel that this was my best workout of the year so far, I'm starting to feel some elements of form coming together, and didn't get totally blasted by the fast kids. I was happy with how much I hurt too, man I forgot how much I missed the vida pura that is kicking your own butt with a crew of rad dudes.
Anyways, heading back to Calgary tomorrow, stopping off for a bite in Red Deer, meeting Benny for lunch on Friday, heading over to Zoomer's bar call and getting ready to race on Saturday. It's been a while since I've truly raced cross, and I'm happy to be back at her. Realistically it may not be pretty but it has to be done before Stewart and I'm excited to break myself in again and see how things work out when the gun goes. Basically the old 'give'r' strategy. A-Game is going to be kicking around - it's been almost two years since we have caught up - I have a feeling that a late night story sesh and a Sunday mountain run may be obligatory - only the more so if some of DA BEARS crash with me. Also there is apparently a poor poor antelope that couldn't outrun one of the ol' wiley sniper MH's bullets, that is getting trussed up to the nines and roasted. I'm jumping up and down like an eight year old kid the night before Christmas up here! And I didn't even mention that me and the intrepid Law Show Man Dance choreographers are setting up a visionary routine tomorrow that will change the lives of those in the audience (for the better... I guess)? Have a Happy Thanksgiving all, and thanks for reading!

Recoverying, and my absurd ten year Kona Ironman plan

2009-09-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

My life has been consumed lately with getting over this little calf problem. Doing workouts a notch or two below where the effort should be, keeping an eye on the calf for signs of tightness, running slow. I've been through enough cross seasons to know the first workout of the year is slow as molasses, and it's a little disheartening to be far from where I thought I'd be but I'm moving forward (knock on wood) and happier to be doing slow running than no running. I'm settling into a pretty good routine with workouts and school, so far it is quite wonderful really. I head out right around seven on the mountain bike, and pedal nice and easy to the gym where I hit the recumbent bike for a little workout followed by a nice long stretch and the exercises I have for my gluteus minimus - part of the source of my soleus problem. I am reluctant to press too hard on the pedals, and like the gym to ride as I can do some reading. In the evening I have been either going to the workout (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) or doing my own run, without the boys so I can take extra time to stretch when I'm warmed up. Sometimes I put in a little light weights to tone the arms up. I have also been doing contrast showers as a sort of hot/cold/icing substitute. I am at a point where, in light of my increasing age and this little problem I am thinking that it may be time to substitute one or two runs a week for time on the bike or in the pool. I am planning on getting into tri at some point, hence the ten year plan of the title. My friend Darcy Bell at Speed Theory was kind enough helping me out getting some goggles and tri shorts and this summer I did more or less a weekly swim out in the Lake - Sunday evening - absolute bliss, or narrowly dodging Saturday morning thunderstorms (GB). So starting slow on the plan. I figure on getting into crits as soon as I get a real paycheque and a bike, and seeing myself on the line of an Olympic tri sometime in 2011. Why not? So started with one swim and one ride a week - which I haven't really done for a month. But I figure that, as I gradually learn to swim and ride a road bike properly, as well as do transitions, I can accomplish both into the gradual loss of speed that comes past one's physical peak (I'm turning 26 next week) and grow into the maturity of the aerobic system. Anyways, I like thinking about different types of races and training in the back of my head, so at the very least it's a topic of thought, and conversation with my amigos.
I am really enjoying hanging out with the Bears (and Pandas), it is a really strong team environment, full of great kids, who are really focussed on kicking butt out on the trails this season. I am kinda the old mustachioed dude on the block, it is hilarious, a bunch of them were subjected to some of my favourite impaired stories from SLS files past. The coaches and physio people have been great for helping me out with this injury and getting back into quality workouts, I am in their debt, as well as MC for taking here work home and helping me iron this thing out.
Keep the shiny side up

Cross country time!

2009-09-09T18:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I am a little hobbled over here ladies and gentleman, I was running a kind of mock race today with the Bears and kinda felt my calf tighten up. If I was smart I would have stopped right then but I put in another half a k until it really grabbed and that was my last step, I hobbled off in shame, and started stretching, not the calf but other areas just to keep them loose. Everyone was pretty supportive, so thanks go out especially to Georgette, Murtada, Jamie and Harry, for providing me with some perspective, because I am pretty down, but I am just done icing it and eating a steak to send some protein down there, moving on. It's obvious to me that I got a little too excited last week when I bumped er up to almost 80 miles a week, and am paying the price. I need to let the fitness come to the surface a little slower.
But damn it cousin if I don't like running hard miles.
So looks like the leaves are getting yellow and I'm going to be hitting the pool to try and maintain some fitness. It is a little discouraging, and while one could see it as being a bad omen I'm just looking beyond it and saying, if this wasn't hard, it wouldn't be worth doing. I'd be playing rugby with the boys and drinking beers. And I'll be the first one to tell you that I miss playing rugby and I miss those son of a guns but not as much as I missed track. The big day for me really is Stewart Cup, October 30. That's a long ways away, no sense getting my panties in a bunch over a tweaked calf. Now I'm trying to convince myself but by gum it ain't. From a general fitness point of view I split through in around 7 minutes for 2k and am unsure if I would have slowed down any further, but that is where I expected to be so that shows that I was fairly in touch with my fitness level. If I can get over this road bump I think I am within striking distance of some decent running with some more miles and some quality work. But enough about me. How are you cats doing?
Well I ain't talked about what I've been reading in a while. Read some more Rumpole. Reading On the Road again. Also the Tucker Max book. Pretty weak really. Just saw the informers. There are two or three worthwhile scenes but in sum I was disappointed. The trailer is way more entertaining.

Eldoret state of mind

2009-09-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

I just put in my biggest week of training in a few years and I'm pretty stoked about things. I'm not going to blow that dusty old horn about that because I don't want to jinx myself. But I'm remembering that nice level of fatigue that sets in when you run 20k per day. You don't really want to walk around on a nice day and take a look at houses. You mostly want to train, and sit. The miles were quality pace but no intense workouts (ie. 8x1k hard) so how I handle that, not to mention real racing again (ie not up mountains etc.) will remain to be seen.
I'm really proud of my friend Austin Horn for his great showing at National Triathlon. For those who don't know, the kid had a true breakthrough race, the type you might be lucky to have once or twice in a career, which vaulted him right onto the heels of Canada's Olympians like Whitfield and Tichelaar. He's savouring the flavour I'm sure, which is so sweet after those years of hard work, and more than his share of disappointments along the way.
I'm going to weigh in here on a topic that's getting a lot of press in the track community: Bekele. Sure we all know he has the medals, he has the world records and no-one has ever dominated cross country like him. So why is it that he remains so obscure? Aside of course from the lack of media coverage of long distance running, etc. Truly he is a unique runner, talented and savagely competitive, and all but unbeatable. His handfall of defeats have all been massive in their own right, such as his miscalculation and collapse in the heat of Mombasa, to the absolute ecstasy of the 200000 Kenyans in attendance (and the whole nation), or his classic blunder against El Guerrouj in Athens which can be summed up by saying he ran El Guerrouj's race and lost, instead of running Bekele's and blasting the pace in an effort to sap Guerrouj's speed, which is greater than Bekele's (while immense in it's own right, he has never run 3:26.00 and that's that). I think Bekele's legacy suffers from two fundamental problems, only one which he can control. The first is the lack of a true rival, such as the Haile Gebresalassie/Paul Tergat rivalry that resulted in some of the finest races in history (see the Sidney Olympics 10000m final). Bekele has had rivals, but they have either come and gone (Eliud Kipchoge, I want to see you back in that old form) or been unable to consistently threaten (Zersenay Tadesse, though he is in the mix). The second, and connected problem is the lack of his imposition of a vision on the record books. In the mid to late 1990's the Geb-Tergat, and Geb-Daniel Komen rivalry rewrote the 5/10 record books, redefining the possibilities for those distances. With no rivals, and few men willing and able to help Bekele hold the pace required to keep pushing the records down, Bekele has broken the records without redefining them. They are tough records. And when he first broke them, there was talk that he would be the one to go under 26 minutes, or at least get closer. Bolt on the other hand utterly redefined sprinting. Bekele just shows us what Geb might have done, or Tergat for that matter. Those records don't spark the imagination like they did five years ago when they were set. That's why I'm happy to hear that Bekele, partly in response to talk of his relative obscurity, has discussed taking a swing at the 3000m World Record set by Daniel Komen. Watch the record, he totally surprises everyone and waxes the old record with a time that no-one has been close to since, though the best in the world, Guerrouj, Geb, Bekele and others have given it pretty good runs. In my opinion, since Bolt beat up Michael Johnson's 200m record it is the toughest world record on the books. Step one to fleshing out the medals, the championships and the world records might be putting another big one on the books with some major flair and dynamic running. I wish him the best of luck.

Usain Bolt, the greatest athlete in the world, bar none.

2009-08-19T11:30:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday, I had the honour of watching Usain Bolt prove to the world the uniqueness of his talent and character, joking around then stepping into the blocks for the most fantastic feat of athleticism I have ever witnessed. For perspective, a quick look at the world record progression will show that the amount he brok the world record by (0.11s) is unprecedented in the era of truly modern athletics (not to slight great athletes such as Charles Paddock, but rather the imprecision of timing to the nearest tenth, as was the practice the last time the world record changed so drastically). And he has more in the tank, being only 22, and probably more suited to a longer distance such as the 200 or 400m.
Bolt's significance lies in the fact that he cannot be ignored in the manner that other fine sprinters such as Maurice Greene, or Donovan Bailey, both left hopelessly in Bolt's dust. His feats draw the attention of the casual sports lover and the rapturous ecstasy of the track and field junkie. The attention is forcing people to recalibrate the value of the athletes they admire and worship. To my way of thinking, in absolute terms, Tiger Woods cannot hold a candle to Bolt, nor can Federer or Michael Phelps. These men may be undisputably great, and historic champions in their own right, but they never frighten with the immensity of their talent, as Bolt did at 40m in the Beijing 100m final, leaving us all speculating about the previously unthinkable feats that were within his reach, such as 100m sub 9.5, 200 sub 19.00, 400 sub 43 (why not 42?). Bolt isn't collecting championships against the rich few relatively speaking throughout the world who can afford to commit energy to golf, or hockey, or swimming, or downhill skiing, but against all comers, rich and poor from every corner of the globe, and making people realize the fundamental purity of athletics in the process. If you want to race him you can, and even if you are a tremendous talent, such as Tyson Gay, you can train your whole life, run a perfect race, smash your own American world record and still get absolutely buried.
Recently Hines Ward was saying that he would like to see Bolt in the NFL, see if he could run a pattern, catch a pass, take a hit. Why would he when thousands of other men can do these things (just look through the highlight reels of NFL and college football for examples), but none can match his talent in a competition that isn't cluttered with extraneous elements, that obscure, rather than promote true athleticism? I don't mean to say that football players aren't fine athletes in their own right, and that there isn't something to catching a ball but it just all seems so small when you see Bolt smash out of the blocks, with his long stride and his knees so electrically high.
Watch Bolt. It is unlikely you will ever see a faster man, even should you live to be one hundred.
And go down and catch a track meet some time to watch those forged by the same purities.

Lakit

2009-08-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I clocked out of the old office and headed for the mountains, past the 1860's ghost town of Fisherville, and up and up and up to the start of the Lakit Lookout Trail. I took a moment to soak in the silence and the smell of the end of the road, looking way down at Wildhorse Creek a tiny ribbon of white down in the valley below, and the Mount Fisher complex opposite, shrouded in cloud. Then I started hammering. The trail starts at about 1800 m and ends at about 2400 m and though it is only 2k or so it took me about 20 minutes to run up it though I was sucking wind pretty good, especially at the start, feeling that blood iron electricity feeling of altitude. It was pretty sweet to chill out above the trees, in a light rain and shut er down to enjoy the mountains. It goes without saying that I wasn't satisfied with that so did a few laps of the top stretch of the run to max out my altitude exposure and put in some good work. It was pretty sweet, pounding on a decently steep trail, with a few gnarled trees about three feet high up in the alpine, way up on top of the world, putting in some really good work. I wish it was a longer trail, and I'm going to see what the trail up Fisher looks (till it gets scrambly). When I got back to the bottom I made it a round hour with a few other little repeats and headed down the hill. Now that I know the territory I think I might start at the beginning of the Lakit road on my bike, and ride it until a few ks before the trail starts then start running, that would make it a really long hard climb, or maybe run the whole thing (that would take a while). I felt like it was a pretty good day, having put in a half hour weight workout at lunch. It's chilly and rainy out here and though it doesn't smell like cross country season yet (yellow poplar leaves crunching underfoot) I am so psyched that I can smell that train a comin on the wind! Kinda had a soft week last week what with all the driving I had done and I kinda dinged up my ankle in a ski wipe, but now that is behind me, I've been getting up early and putting in the time, pushing some weight (I push weight like weight I don't know what Ice Cube was talking about) and getting in some cool miles up on the top of a mountain. Sadly I missed my mountain bike ride but am feeling the focus and looking at the quality miles, so I'll maybe get the bike out on my own and hit some hills in high gear and just bomb those climbs.
Some of my amigos are heading out West this weekend. See you soon, and drive safe.
And all you other dudes and dudettes drop your boy a line.
Man I'm looking forward to seeing all my Law School amigos in a few weeks. Pieces.

'Funny People' Review, notable workouts

2009-08-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

I believe that the producers of 'Funny People' gave it that title in an effort to convince themselves, and by extension audiences, that there were indeed funny people in it. I'll give Jonah Hill his moments, but Seth Rogen should watch some old 'Freaks and Geeks' episodes to understand what he has lost in taking the Apatow schtick to it's logical conclusion. As for Adam Sandler, it was kind of sad watching him fail at standup, at comedic acting, and at bringing any energy on the swings he took at the sugary lobs of dramatic acting the directors tossed at him. Painful. My favourite part of the movie was when lightning struck the theatre, jamming the projector and burning the film. It took them a while to get the film spliced so I took the hint Zeus had hurled down in his displeasure with this garbage and left the theatre. Luckily it was Tuesday and cost 10 bucks with popcorn and pop.
Last Thursday I did a nice workout on the track, 4k of fast on the straights, easy on the curves, and I was feeling pretty fast and efficient. Then threw in some 30's for pure speed work, and a 200 full out. It was kinda slow but to be expected. Finished with some hard circuit. Was pretty sore the next day from having the range of motion that long again, moreso than the pure speed. It was rad because there were a few different lightning storms coming in and circling me but the track was spared so all through the workout there was a cool backdrop of flashing lights and steady rumbling. The Saturday before that I took Jeffrey Wildeman for a workout, as he is looking to be fit for hockey but has a hurt elbow. So we went to the stairs and I gave him a taste of the pain that is track. He worked like an absolute trooper, and showed the sort of mettle that very fine athletes are made of, with constant tempering in the forge of time and pain. It reminded me of when Glen and Pat Gould used to take me on runs, and how special that made me feel, so to pass that on to another generation, and maybe get one interested in the purest sport, is a great honour.
Take care campers!

Alberta Tour Recap

2009-08-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

This Long Weekend I decided to gas up the old truck and rip out to Alberta and visit a few folks whom I haven't seen in a while. Drove countercurrent past all the Calgarians heading out to Windy and was a little sad I couldn't stay there, given the incredible weekend I had before, relaxing with my neighbours and having a major love-in over a few dinners at the Goulds, which resulted in such a blissful feeling that I was flying high for the better part of the week, reminiscing about good times at the cabin
Started in Gull Lake with the St. Cyr's, catching up with these cool folks and doing a little skiing besides. It is a real nice skiing lake, not many boats and pretty flat, though a little wind blew up as we were out there early in the morning. Always takes a ski to get used to having a new ski on, and the second ski in the sesh was starting to come together a bit better I think. Wished my old friend Marky good luck in his married life, as sadly I can't make it out to Ontario to the wedding, owing to scarcities of time and money. It was pretty rad to see the whole crew, and how their huge renovation project is coming along (nice, real clean woodsy look). Left into the eye of a massive storm, casting around for gas, and heard on the radio about the collapse at Big Valley Jamboree. Tried to call my sister to gloat because I am so great in my own mind, having convinced her not to go, but her phone was off. And I had the wrong number. Serves me right.
Drove up to Linaria to hang out with my amigo Greg and his wife Krystan (amiga?) Of course we catch up over a nice run at dark. Next day, rain having ruined our plans of making hay all night (?) we try and play tennis but are again shut down by the rain. So we decide it is probably best to adjourn to Long Island Lake for some more ski action. I had a feeling these guys were the real deal, and they delivered that Lake is a ridiculous ski lake, owing to it's topography it holds calm stretches even in winds that would make most other lakes unskiable. Add in that his brother- and father-in-law had a new Mastercraft ski boat that drove like a dream and you have some serious skiing, and that ain't just whistling dixie. Greg and Junior, plus Juniors Dad Todd show me how they do up there and I think I hold my own on my rips. Starting to feel stronger on my weak side. Took a really tough wipe, my neck is getting better though. Sat in the hot tub and told dirty jokes before heading back to Linaria and onto the road again.
This is where my journey gets a little weird. I take a ridiculous zigzag route SSW, heading for Burnt Timber Creek and a campsite just off the forestry trunk road. Of course I could go the easy way, that I've driven before, through Water Valley but that's not what this sort of thing is all about. So I find a road that winds through the foothills past the Shell gas plant and a few campsites, and wind up at Red Deer River. Realizing, at about 11 o'clock, that I had overdriven, I finally got my bearings and found the campsite, with some ado, including mistaking some random camper for Hamish I manage to find Hawsie and Johnny and immediately threaten them, until they figure out I am me and therefore unfit to threaten anyone. So we have some laughs and stay up super late. Next day I drove to the Lake, and my rightful position out on the dock and chatting with the Goulds. And the Wildeman's were kind enough to take me for a ski. Then I went to work. Already looking forward to this weekend, though I don't know what I'm doing, just because, even though work is going rad.
Well for everyone whose bed I slept on, or who fed me this weekend, or gave me a pull, thank you, your hospitality was most appreciated. You know that you gotta come visit me one of these days and I will find a way to repay you in kind.
yours
me

it was allmighty Western

2009-07-23T17:00:00.000-07:00

Just in case any of you was worrying about me on account of I ain't written to ya in a spell, well don't I'm still running rowdy out here (keep on saying your prayers, running up mountains and eating yer spinach kids and maybe you can grow up to be orn'ry lonesome and mean too just like yours truly). Last night my workout was 27 minutes up this old decommissioned logging road, past the start of the Alki Creek trail, pretty hard grind and real fun, 20 minutes down, then 13 out and back on the St. Mary Lake Road just to polish me off. A real good effort, though I need more work with the quality efforts, and feel a little off balance running (kinda) fast. Need lots more speedwork and weights. She was sure hot when I started, 34 C or so, but cooled down when I got way up above the creek, and by the time I got down she was plumb tolerable. Been doing good runs at lunch, works pretty good, can get to some awesome trail systems real fast out here in Kimberley. Missed the group ride. Had a good thunderstorm today, it was about time after all that heat, though coulda used some more rain.
Been working on that landlocking sport. It is kinda lame, especially compared to the sort of rush you get slalom skiing, and the level of exertion. However with that said, chasing down the boat and surfing on the wave with no rope is kinda cool, and as it's the only thing one can do on Windermere given how choppy it is all the time it's kinda one of those make lemons out of lemonade situations. I am working on doing some 360's and stuff that could be sorta cool. Thanks to the Gould's for all the boat gas. It's coming round.
Also all you reprobates who are in Alberta keep your heads up as I'm coming over that way for August Long. My schedule is as follows:
Friday night and Saturday: Gull Lake for Mark St. Cyr's wedding shower. Gonna be great to see that kid and the whole collection of their family and friends bless them all.
Saturday night and Sunday: Maybe meet up with GP and see how those crops are doing, or hang at Gull or Red Deer.
Sunday night and Monday: Add to and clean up the wreckage of the Wrightsonian Institute's annual visit to Burnt Timber. They shouldn't let Johnny and Hawsie the powerful mutant that he is out with so little supervision and so many firearms.
Anyways, hope all is good with y'all and I'll see you down the road.

Canada Day on the fly and swimming Buffet style

2009-07-09T16:21:00.000-07:00

Canada day I kinda slept in and got up at about 9:30. There wasn't a cloud in the sky as I watered Susan's cedars and flowers out front and you could tell she was gonna be hot - the birds were real quiet. I was lucky enough to be staying in one of the ladies from the Kimberley offices' house. She was on vacation in Montana and asked if I'd like to stay there and look after her plants - as if that was a chore, so I said yes because not only did I miss my garden but it was such a kind offer and a real nice house to boot, with a good cool basement and satellite tv so I could watch Freaks and Geeks before bed. Anyways so I rolled out of there around ten and drove up past St Mary Lake , turning North towards the Alpine park. At this one bridge across White Creek I got out and put my rod together in a little clearing. The water this far up looked clear enough to fish but I think it was running too fast for any real pools to form and I didn't find any fish. I had a real fun time climbing over logs and bushwhacking from spot to spot though, it was pretty wild as the creek was hard to cross and full of logjams that flooded the forest from place to place, sometimes for quite a distance. So didn't really get the ol fly on the water much. Turned around to fish St Mary River a little ways above the lake. Again the water was pretty high. So that's my way of telling you yep I got skunked. It's all in the great rhythm of things and I know those little cuts and rainbows are waiting for me yet. Boy it sure is a pretty river though, it was pretty fun to wade and I wound up doing a little swimming where she got deep, which is pretty fun in itself, trying to swim in the current with your rod and camera in one hand out of the water. By the way my camera got a little wet and isn't talking to me any more, so no photos but she was just perfect out there. There are some tremendous trees along that river, cottonwoods that have to be 30 feet around and 150 or more high, and cedars rounder but not quite as tall, with ancient, deeply crevassed bark. I got the fly in the water a little more but no action, didn't so much as see a fish strike, or even the shadow of one in a pool. To reiterate the water is probably too high with the later runoff, I'll take a look see in a week or so and maybe hit er up again because the water looks so darned nice it just makes you giddy to get your fly on water. So I stumbled in dead tired, skipped my run and passed out at about 10.
On Saturday Graeme and I went to swim across the lake. Graeme was a champ and made it, probably she was about 4k as our route was a little crooked owing to our choice of reference point. On the way, the friendly ol RCMP stopped us to make sure we had our tow rope and bailing bucket which we didn't, and wrote down my name and stuff, I guess to send me a warning or something. Well, I was swimming back with Graeme rowing when I thought I heard a little thunder. I asked Graeme is he heard it, and he said no so I figured it was just a boat engine firing up. Then I heard it again and jumped in the boat and we hightailed it for the nearest shore, where we just beat the storm, complete with some rowdy hail, under some trees. Then on our way out to restart, another storm came and we just barely made it to Akiskinook where a nice lady drove us home so I could get my truck and run grab the boat.
Till next time

getting Skookum!

2009-07-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

Amigos, let me catch you up on what is good out here in the Kootenays. Well, a couple Tuesdays ago I broke out the ol mountain bike for the first time in a dogs age. The workout was 30 on the bike, hour run, 20 bike back (downhillish), and it was pretty awesome, did er in the Cranbrook Community Forest. The next day went out to the Kimberley ride, where I went for three hours around the mountain that the resort is on. Well, my technical skills are pretty weak, not to mention how bad I am at gearing but all in all it was a real blast and I had trouble getting to sleep on account of I was so excited. There were some nice big climbs and all the people who were out were real friendly. That Friday I did a nice ride with the Kimberley lawyer Steve and got some work in on my descending and some lighter technical elements than needed on the first section of new trail around the mountain (where I basically had hiked and fell a lot). By last Thursday I was starting to really find the need for speed and getting more aggressive both down and up the hills - I gunned for a real tough grind called Bear Hill and attacked it hard - will hit er even harder with the tour as inspiration. So the technical stuff is coming along and I am trying to ride steeper stuff and less steep stuff faster - in addition to hammering every uphill as is my bent in life. After the Friday ride drove out to Mabel Lake for some quality time with the cousins whose food I ate and boat gas I used up dragging my butt around the Lake. Bless em all, they have such kind souls, and boy howdy did we ever listen to some good records, especially that ol Santana stuff - real good for a day where she's about 32 and you skied hard all afternoon, then went on a nice hot run (pretty slow owing to a bunch of good hard turns and a few tough wipeouts). Anyways I got a little more to update so see you soon I gotta run!

Living the Shaheen life

2009-06-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

Apparently when Shaheen goes back to Kenya for hard training he lives in a simple dorm room, basically with just a bed and a desk, so that he has no distractions and can concentrate on training. Essentially that is my life right now, though I am on an easy week as I strung together 6 weeks of good hard training, with no real variation in the miles(60-70), and am feeling really bagged after that and the race this weekend in Canmore. Ya she was pretty nasty with the 200m of ascent and descent per lap, but man was it ever fun, especially the mountain bike part on the bottom of the course. Plus a real good field showed up, and it was kinda neat to run with some top notch cross country skiers like Ivan Babikov. Our sports would probably benefit from closer integration, and I have made a solemn resolution to include cross country skiing in my ideal but scarcely realized cross training portfolio - which you may recall from previous blogs already includes tai chi, yoga, cycling, swimming, and bocce. The only cross training I fit in so far this week was an intensive solo bowling session at Juniper Lanes on Toonie Tuesday where I bowled three games of five pin in what must have been 15 minutes. On a more serious note I am managing to fit in about one cross training session every two weeks, but this number will be going up as soon as I get my bike back, now that I know some of the local ride nights. Have scouted out some good lakes for some lake swims too - St. Mary's Lake? There's something sublime about swimming out in a big lake, when it's real calm and quiet and you are all alone. Anyone here who prefers a lane pool maybe oughta be reading a different blog because, brother, you ain't in the right frame of mind.
After the race I had a real good warm down with Lanny Mann. I'm thankful to him for grabbing me, as he was (is) my hero from when I was a little Track West grom, and it was real cool to catch up on what was new in his life and hear some mountain running stories.
Coming up on the 20th is my three month anniversary of no drinking. But, you're saying, aren't you always the guy who pressured the teetotalers into having a beer whenever they were out with you, and those who were having six into making a night of it? I admit it, I was always an annoyance in that manner, and I'm sorry to anyone who I leaned on (I'm thinking here of Austin Horn and Emily Krauss!) And why did you quit anyways? I got lots of reasons, from the top I found that even one beer was hurting my sleep, making me depressed, and cutting out from the amount of work I was doing the next day. So I said to heck with the whole thing, and have been feeling good and getting in good sleeps and workouts ever since. Not even one drink? That's right, when you got a streak like that you gotta keep er going, I ain't even looking back, just having a blast. For those of you who don't know and assumed I fell off a cliff or something, I'm just down here in Cranbrook working for a good crew. The firm I'm working for at present is Steidl Kambeitz, it was recently bought by Rockies Law Corporation. They are some pretty cool customers and so far it has been great getting to know them and all the East Kootenays legal scene.
Keep the shiny side up
your dirtbag

The Preacher of Chain Lakes - Nipika - Fernie - Cranbrook - Gnarly run - New Sprouts

2009-05-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I had an interview for a summer job down in Fernie. I was driving down South of Chain Lakes, looking at all that nice pasture and thinking of the West rolling down in one broad swale all the way through Montana Wyoming to Texas and even in some bastardized sense down to crazy Mexico. The radio reception was soft and all most stations play is rubbish anyways so I was listening to a preacher who seemed to reach out across all that dry country right into my ears. He talked about the things we do which we regret, and how it's all in god's plan, and how he knows what's best for us though we might be unable to see that. We're busy praying for relief and he is doing the best thing for us by letting us suffer. Sometimes we realize that later, sometimes not I guess, but I liked the preacher I think there was some deep karmic honesty to what he said, however unbearable such experiences can be, and how difficult that understanding is while living in the moment.
Today I ran my first 10k in about 2.5 years since the horror of National Cross Country Championships 2006 in Vancouver, which followed shortly the extreme pleasure/pain of Halifax CIS. The race was at a gnarly little place called Nipika just outside Kootenay National Park, where they made a bunch of off the grid cabins and have miles of awesome trails. The course was spectacular, mostly winding single track, with some super steep climbs and drops that were just too fun for words. I would have added a huge mud hole and some big logs to jump or climb over, but that's just me really the course was perfect, it finished with two huge, steep hills, one of which I almost felt like using my hands on. I was following the winner, dropped the other guys pretty quick but lost the leader in the trees, and he gapped me a lot faster than I thought. The time was super slow (51:30 rough) and the effort a little mixed owing to my limited knowledge of my fitness and the course. I feel like the training I've done so far has been going to the right places. Big thanks to the race organizers, fantastic event!
Back to job interview in Fernie - it went great, just like my dad told me, 'the guy is probably gonna be the nicest guy you've ever met', I am going to be working for the Rockies Law Corporation this summer in Fernie, Cranbrook and Kimberley as their summer student. So I drove from there on to the Lake, on the first nice day of the summer, cranking Steppenwolf and eyeing up the waters I passed, making big plans for those unsuspecting fish, and even planning on ripping down to Montana/Idaho/Wyoming for some weekend fly-fishing trips. Got in and did some work on my casting because I think I am leaving some distance and accuracy out and I want to be sharp for this summer. Also got my old man to start teaching me how to tie them, something I should have done long ago not least to separate myself even further from the lowly species of bait/spin fisherman.
Monday hopped back down to Cranbrook to meet the lawyers there, again, a real cool crew, a good scene, I'll keep you posted, I'm praying everything goes awesome! Of course, not too rushed on the way back, did a nice run and stopped off at Lussier Hot Springs to get on the level. As this old valley dude who is there every day says: 'if you can drive by without stoppin you ain't in the right frame of mind'.
Wednesday I went on a ridiculous run above the Columbia Wetlands. There were some great hills, it was hot and the terrain was classic. Right above the wetlands there I would love to have a cottage, there is a meadow strewn with old bleached, lichened cow bones with big pines and cottonwoods and tremuloides all over. I'm going homesteading! Yessir I'm just gonna ramble along out there with my black lab Chrissy as my trusty mule and companion and we'll see how things go! On the way back I found this neat chunk of rusty old rail. It weighed about 20 pounds so I figured it'd be a shame to not run back with it up this massive steep hill and keep it for a souvenir. Boy howdy my shoulders got a workout from trying to hold that thing running, switching hands every once in a while, sweat burning the eyes, I wanted to quit and leave the damned worthless chunk of steel but it became about more than that, it became about not quitting cause it's the easy thing to do as I've done that too often. So I got that darned thing back to the truck and was happy to be able to drop it off and say see ya sir.
And here I am after all that back in Calgary. I thought I'd have some articling interviews to go to here but no-one's buying what I'm selling. I think that, having heard what the preacher had to say, that is probably for the best and really that it is somewhat of a reflection of my own reticence to network and do other such things. I looked in the garden and there are a few carrots sprouting already, the soil was dry so I got to watering em and here I am.
Bless you all and thanks for reading

Death of a moustache - gearing up - getting gnarly - planting garden

2009-05-21T20:40:00.000-07:00

After nine and a half months, I finally shaved my upper lip. The possibility of Koizumi buying me a live buffalo to slaughter for a massive post-alumni game party is therefore dead... unless he is feeling charitable. I have now shaved it twice in since March 2008. I am most certainly now classified as a little boy and feel that whatever gravitas and general bad assness the stache lent me once is now gone... but not irretrievably. I'm not giving any reasons, I did what I did and that's done... but depending on where I wind up working it may be back sooner than you would like.
Updated race schedule - please feel free to suggest other races, and thanks for previous input (Canmore Challenge!)
May 30 - Nipika 10km trail - should be pretty gnar course in Kootenay National Park
June 7 - People's Steeple 1500m - I'm giddy as a schoolboy over this one!
June 13 - Canmore Challenge 12 km trail - I'm told there are some rad hills here
Went down to Speed Theory today where I'd like to give my friend Darcy Bell another thanks for helping fit me out with some tri-shorts and goggles that fit. That way not only can I swim in something other than my ridiculous board shorts but I can ride my bike without near-flashing everyone in my running shorts as was the case on my last ride, on the last day of week 2 with Doug Van Helden. That was a great ride and hitting the bike is definitely on the agenda for this summer, as well as a bunch of swimming - just cause. I'm not training for a tri but last year out at the lake got into some fun swims (in boxers). On a nice rainy day I swam for an hour straight out in the lake and it was luscious. I love swimming through a big relatively deep, untroubled body of water, with no boats, no noise, no chlorine and no turning around all the time. As for training things are going awesome. My first track workout 2.5 weeks ago was necessary but very slow. Today I dide much better and felt like I was actually running. The workout was two sets of four by 300m, with walk back recovery and five minutes set. I averaged 48 low. So not flying but quality work especially for right now. Then went and did hurdle agility, which was a blast, thanks to Jason and Christine for having me out there. I find my springs are really softened by not doing that sort of thing so I'll take all I can get. Felt like puking on and off for rather a while but was not totally demolished and held together well through the whole thing and managed to finish her off with strength instead of totally self-destructing. Also planted my garden May 13, potatoes, carrots, rosemary, and leaf lettuce. Still underground so no worries about frost. Anyways, I'll be in and out of Calgary the next little while so keep in touch.

Training Week 1

2009-05-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm on the road to getting back in shape boys and girls! I took a few days to mellow out after Evidence, and then tried to inject some intensity into the routine. My plan, hatched at the office hammering out articling applications, was to warm up and head over to Christ Church hill for 3 sets of 5 hills, hard. After one I was flattened. I tried to jog it off and bumped into Cummie and Foster. I almost puked my guts out talking to them. So that session ended with 20 minutes easy. The next day I tried some fartlek/tempo stuff. Yikes I am out of shape, I said. All those fat coach pace miles during the school year, felt like what I then realized they were - maintenance of fat coach pace, useful only as a base to a base. With that in mind I showed up at the track last Monday ready to hurt. I put in the week of breaking myself in and then stepped up to the track, the unforgiving track, always the same length, ruthlessly uniform. That morning I had put in 30 minutes easy and a quick little lift. Anyways, warmed up with a cannon loop, catching up with the lads and then got the workout from Jason: 3 sets of 4 by 400 with 90 seconds rest and 8 minutes set break, 1500 date pace. First one I led, pretty fast opener. Second a little off the pace. Third and fourth, falling apart, poor form in the last two hundred metres, no strength. I feel like puking and am dry heaving right at the end of set break. Do it again. My first one ok, second, third sloppy, last pathetic. Need to get through the workout, to prove that there's no quit, that I am still mean (though slow). Part wants to quit, feel so impotent, so slow. Last set, first two, a little more moderate, toss on the spikes for the last two, keeps me from falling entirely apart, though as I told Jason, my attempt with 200 to go in the workout to get up and blast it in lasted about oh 8 metres! Good workout to get through mentally. Cool down. Always good to see the dudes again.
Tuesday AM: 35 easy. Lord I'm a hurting unit. PM: 30 tempo (medium hard) 20 between cool down and warm up.
Wednesday AM: 35 easy. Now I'm really hurting, run into my neighbour at the park travelling two miles an hour hurtin top to botttom. her daughter informs me she is Dora (the explorer) and her twin sister is Boots. This is news to me.
Thursday AM: 35 easy medium. PM: 50 with some nice hills at the lake
Friday: Pretty weird workout, 25 minutes, 2k tempo at a schoolyard, followed with 5X100 full out, then more running, and 5 repeats of a sandhill, very deep sand, slow and slippy.
Saturday: 75 minutes easy medium. Work in some nasty hills as per usual, and am really feeling the week now.
Sunday: Rest. Total for week 450 minutes. Pretty happy with it in sum, a lot of mean mean hurting out there.
Right now I am embarking on week 2 and feeling pretty hurting. We spent all Sunday prospecting for gold and then ripped back to Calgary to help the girls out with some credit card problem in europe, so it wasn't a very good rest day, more like a pure travel day (8 hrs driving, some random hiking and stuff). Finishing some applications and going back out in a few days.
Kisses

Summer Racing

2009-05-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

Well friends and neighbours here is a list of the provisional races I will be doing this summer:
May 23 - Five Peaks Sibbald ?
May 30 - Nipika Trail Run ?
June 7 - People's Steeple, New Balance Twilight #3, Glenmore track - come watch!
So not much of a season so far. Those trail races are expensive Send me a race and if I think it is worth a darn I might come run it - gonna be based out in Windermere. I'm especially looking for some real hard grinding races (Leg 5 k-100 anyone?), as part of my buildup to my last collegiate cross country season, and first as a Golden Bear (if they'll have me). No marathons (maybe next year), but maybe a half. I'm following the old approach of racing oneself into shape, looking to the upcoming cross country season and knowing I will need a few hammerfest races on which to blow up just to get the mindset right. to clarify, every season I need at least one race where I go out way too fast and crash, just to be balanced and to find that threshold with the adrenalin pumping proper like only the sound of the gun (and the bell) can do. So let me know.
As for my fitness this week I have worked in some actual quality (gasp!) for the first time since November. I almost puked my guts out doing hills at Christ Church, and was thoroughly humbled. Similarly some fartlek/tempo type stuff told me I was pretty out of shape the day after. But for week 1 things are A-OK. Nothing wrong with a little hurting, in fact I deserve lots and lots! And have even more in store for myself in the next couple of weeks. Anyways, if you are planting right now, good luck, and for the rest of you, god speed my friends!

Can't leave some things behind

2009-03-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

People have said all I could ever say about Pre and more, people who knew him, people who ran faster than me, people who saw him run. This summer I ran a little, I ran a few odd races (11 miles in k-100 and the People's Steeple 1500 Steeplechase) and realized that I missed the hurt and I missed the tired. Obviously the focus right now is law and that takes its time and it takes the sort of mental energy you don't have in a week full of tough workouts. But when rugby ended this fall, I went right back into morning runs, for the first time in a year and a half, and got up to 80 miles a week before pulling back about a month out from exams. I can't fight it. Sometimes things don't go your way, and life isn't fair but I pray I can always run because out of all the other things I could possibly do, the hockey, the rugby, the drinks with the pals, even the law, the only one I care about is running. And you come back to a man like Pre. When I was a kid my life changed when I learnt about Pre. I got the old book 'Pre!' in summer between Grade 9 and 10. That year had been my first on in track, and it was up and down, cross country, tough to fit in, surrounded by really tough athletes like Luke, indoors really tough, a lot of racing, a lot of training, sick for a few good spells, outdoors, ended with a really good steeple where I puked my guts out. Then I went out to the Lake. As soon as my break was over, I started getting up really early in the nice cool morning and hammering long runs. I'd come in, bagged, dehydrated, and dreaming. I'd run to town and get a running magazine and digest it. And I'd read about Pre. I felt like he was like me, a bit of a loner, driven, and wanted to have his guts to go with my relative lack of talent. I thought of him doing his morning runs in the pines around Coos Bay, and imagined myself running through the same trails, I felt like we were neighbours because we lived in the west, though a few thousand kilometers separated us. I came back to cross country practice that fall at River Park, and ripped some of the meanest workouts ever. And here I am now, it's 10 years later, and I still hear the call. You may not know it to see me but I'm thinking of Pre, and thinking of those old trails. See you this summer and in the fall.

Summer plans

2009-03-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamed that I was on the East side of the trench, North of my normal stomping grounds, looking across at the flank of Steamboat Mountain. It was late in the year, and the grass was yellow and shimmered with the heavy hatches of late August. For some reason the dust from the grass was red like in California, not yellow as it ought to have been. So this afternoon I went looking for jobs at the Lake and found that Spur Valley was hiring and applied considering, I dreamed of the place then found an opportunity there, within a few hours. Weird but this is me talking. Also applied at Eagle Ranch a little closer to home.
This is my way of telling you all I will be out at the lake this summer, so come visit. Give me a little notice if you don't want to sleep in a bed that has sand in it!
yours
Hurtin' Albertan

The 5 Gnarliest Hills I Ever Ran

2009-01-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

The New Year is a good time to sit back, reflect, and think about the things that are really important to you. Like running up really big, steep hills in the middle of nowhere. And family, I guess. This is a list of the 5 gnarliest hills I ever ran, some great memories and some ideas for the future.
5. Forget-Me-Not Mountain - John Wrightson and I drove out here once early in a rainy summer. We parked the car, waded across the Elbow River and started running straight up. We followed what had until recently been just a little trickle, but was gouged out into a wide u-shape by the recent rainfall, and was filled with loose rock of all sizes and trashed trees. We transitioned across a steep, grassy avalanche slope and along a windswept ridge, then through a mature stand of pines of some sort, running on steep slick moss slopes. The top rewards you with a sick view off the edge of a very sudden cliff. Luke Ratzlaff and I once hiked it but why not run it? Right? Ask John about this one.
4. Eagle Hill - This hill is in Sibbald and it is uber classic, as much for the coolness of the time I first ran it. One late November day, Brad Hove and I headed out, listening to good old Gordon Lightfoot 'the lamp is burnin' low upon my tabletop/the snow is softly fallin.' We saddled up and started running, in no real direction, in some knee deep snow in a Northern exposure which had me gasping, then looped around and hit a trail - about 45 minutes in! This trail was covered in soft, heavy snow, and was very slow going, but somehow that never seemed to slow down Brad, he pulled ahead of me a number of times as he was in great shape. The trail, which we were on some of the time but not others, looped back and forth, up and down little drainage patterns. These steady rolling hills were murdering me at Brad's pace, and they seemed to be without end. Finally the trail turned notably up, and worked its' way through the trees into a South facing meadow where we scampered to the top - Brad hammered the pace and left me barely able to hold onto a run, especially considering the gnarly chunks of rock on the trail - good steeple practice eh? We got to the top and looked to the West. A fearsome wind had come up which we had been sheltered from in the valleys and trees. It was so strong we could lean into the wind, yelling and laughing like demented wolves, on the windblown sandstone ridge, watching a tremendous, bruised purple stormcloud roll in from the West over Yamnuska. Man that storm looked mean. We high-tailed it back in a semi-direct fashion and made it to the car just as the first flakes started blowing in. I watched that storm in the rearview on the way back into town. Then we chilled at Brad's and had some lasagna and I was struck with the beautiful simplicity of things - a friend, a warm place, a simple meal and a run. What a sacred day, and a hill that could bring you closer into touch with the universe.
3. Edworthy - there are two classics at Edworthy that I have combined under one entry. The first is the really steep grassy hill on the South side of the South parking lot which we call 'Motorcycle Hill.' I remember once feeling really good in a practice there in cross country season, so when the actual workout was ove I asked Jason and Christine if I could do a few more of the super steep hill just to hammer myself. So I did four hard repeats of the hill and finished with my t-shirt absolutely soaked with sweat. What a beauty that one was. I'm just listening to Kickstart my Heart and soaking in the sheer gnarliness of it all.
We also used to go over to the big set of stairs, where we ran a workout that came simply to be known as 'The Infamous'. We would do it maybe once or twice in cross season and once early in the spring, when there were no major meets nearby. We would start at the bottom of the stairs where there is some outcrop, and hammer 3 or 4 times all the way to the top, then take a small set break. From there we would do different portions of the hill very fast, or for different amounts of time. Next we would switch the the middle section of the hill, which is ideal for all sorts of bounding, lunging and hops (two foot, left and right foot) before finishing with some sets of carrying another runner of similar weight. Usually towards the end on the short set breaks you could notice your legs shaking under you. When I was in grade ten we did workouts there at 10 on Sundays all through the winter, it was savage to rip through there in your spikes, in the quiet cold, the guys in front of you kicking up snow like a bunch of mad huskies.
2.) Mount Swansea - this is a classic, to give you an idea of how steep it is my pb for the five kilmoeter route is just under 41 minutes - roughly 25 minutes slower than my pb on the track. You can go on the road, or to get really gnarly follow up a bunch of super steep mountain bike trails that will gas you and almost certainly force you to take a few walking steps to straighten out a bit. The hill itself gains over 800m in elevation last time I looked on a map, so it is super steep. My favourite way to do it is after a long day of farm work in the early evening heat. That way you suffer and sweat like there's no tomorrow in the lower elevations, filled with sparse pines and tough grasses (and the odd cactus if you have sharp eyes), and really enjoy rising through the different types of forest as the hill climbs. When you hit the very top, there you are, all alone in a nice cool breeze, on the lichen covered rock, totally trashed from dialling in your threshold and holding it for 40 minutes, looking out over the whole valley. Pretty much every time I do it I uncontrollably yell "YAHOOO!!" It is a great mental workout because the hill is steep and prolonged enough that when you try and put the hammer down just a little more ith its you instantly and you are in lactic for the next five harsh minutes. There is a little variation in grade but no relief until a brief (80m?) flat stretch at 4.5km. You just need to put the head down and work and hurt. First time I ran this I was in between Grade 9 and 10. Just by finishing, with no breaks I felt like I accomplished something and carried that into what was a really fulfilling cross country season. This one is an annual classic for me now, and I suggest it to anyone who is fit - if you aren't confident about your fitness but really want to hurt your self-esteem and feel like crying give it a shot.
1.) Gnarly sand hill, middle of the Ghost - one time right before Christmas the Hurtin' Albertans and I saddled up and headed out for the Ghost. If memory serves it was myself driving, Ryan 'can't think what nickname I had for you back then' Russell, Matt 'The Dudeliest of the Dudes' Sinclair, Nyiall 'Tank' Majock, Mad-Dog Theriault and T-Bone Walmsley (Trevor and Cory). We drove down this crazy road above the Ghost River which was devoid of water and really more of a big braided floodplain, that looked like tundra. We took a break to climb some weird conglomerate cliffs which was sweet. Then on the way back this hill beckoned, as from a dream. It wound up and to the NorthWest with a sandy, occasionally gravelly path. The edge of the hill was devoid of trees owing to the haggard wind that eternally poured out of the mouth of the mountains, possibly a mile or two away. At the top of the hill were two evergreen trees, one that the wind had killed, no taller than my hip, and the other which the wind was killing, bending it over and actually peeling its bark open. We started up the hill, which exemplified all the finest elements of great hill runnning - it was long (it probably took three or four solid minutes of hard climbing), steep, with a decent amount of altitude (top 1600m) with soft sand underfoot that, though hardened some by the cold, slid by underfoot cutting your stride length down to what felt like one single foot sometimes, plus the fact that the wind was hammering right into your face and blowing around all sorts of grit, strong enough to toss you around a little as your lactic-filled legs struggled with the climb. When I finished I kept my legs moving out of necessity, then turned and cheered on the boys as they finished, a little less fresh as they had a tough workout the day before and I think Majock may have been lost. Everyone stood up and looked at the dead tree and the one that the wind was tearing open and thought the same thought - what a gnarly hill. We looked out over the cool, Arctic looking floodplain, at the Rocky Mountains, and the pines stunted by the cold, windy microclimate of that elevation, before running back to the truck. Definitely one of the best days of my life, and the best hill.

2008-12-28T22:08:00.000-08:00

Let me begin with a quote from Whitman which was the thread that ran through my term.

'I know a man, a common farmer - the father of five sons;
And in them were the fathers of sons - and in them were the fathers of sons.

This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person;
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable
meaning of his black eyes - the richness and breadth of his manners,
There I used to go and visit him and see - he was wise also;
He was six feet tall; he was over eighty years old - his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome;
They and his daughters loved him - all who saw him loved him;
They did not love him with allowance - they loved him with personal love;
He drank water only - the blood show'd like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face...'
from Walt Whitman, 'I Sing the Body Electric' in Leaves of Grass

This isn't a great piece of poetry but it is a fine and meaningful piece of description for me, personally and looking out at our shattered society at this time. We have come into ruin over our collective inability to go without and save a few dollars to purchase useless shit from China. Now those soulless bastards are holding all the cards until their hand grows too weak in turn. Everything in our society is appearance, there is no substance. Don't blame Wall Street, blame yourself - we bestowed billions upon those fools only because they exemplified the false idols we worship most and lack the spine to admit to aspiring to - lust, greed and power and were ambitious enough to take all they could get, unlike us, satisfied by watching 'Heroes' and flying to Cancun whenever we feel like it. This is the fate of that noble working man paraded about at election time. How sad that these are our dreams - being fat and stupid and leaving lives with plenty of photographs and clothing to prove we existed. If there is an upside to the depression hopefully it will be the end of those 'Sweet 16'esque shows about the ridiculous binge of materialism that led into this collapse. I hope those fools all go belly up. There will be pain as we all pay for our excesses - I deserve to leave school into a climate of massive unemployment to correct my vanities.
The man Whitman describes is a sort of hero to me. Part of his magnetism is owing to the fact that his substance and appearance are indistinguishable. He does not project an appearance or manipulate the way he appears to others (Facebook anyone? everyone does it) but is, and they respond to the fundamental honesty of his existence. I am reading from experience into this poem perhaps but that is only natural.
It's all so shallow. But the world of Whitman, and the common farmer he described is not lost, it is close at hand. My Opa told me of his life on the farm, they had no liquor because they could not afford it, not with all those children, the Depression and the hard life of the soil. And they grew up strong, noble and intelligent. Can we say the same of our generation with our mindless pleasures? I haven't really enjoyed drinking for a few months now, perhaps I will again - how old am I - it just seems like a waste of time. The pleasure I rediscovered was the morning run, in the cool silence, in September in the days womb, on the grass that soon frosted, into the darkness of December. Those mornings are eternal, the nights of drink already forgotten. They are eternal like the common farmer of Whitman, who exuded radiant, soothing energy and lived a blessed life.
This is now our notion of experience: that of youtube, the internet, I want to experience everything in the most shallow and fleeting manner possible. I will go to Europe or Thailand with no language ability and drink exclusively with those who share my demographic, and visit all the places the tourbooks tell me, and be deeply touched by the Sistine Chapel ceiling and also meet some hilarious Aussies. That's why there's hardly any good writers or artists coming out of the West these days. No experience. Or then there is the Michael Frey made up experiences of being a weak, flawed individual, please pity me as life experience.
I think often of my grandfathers. They didn't have these things that we have. In place of the internet, of television, they had the love of his brothers and sisters to occupy him. There was no shortage of work and boredom was unthinkable and even less tolerated. His trip to Europe was to bring death to a faceless enemy or receive death himself. He worked in a coal mine and was crushed in collapses, dragged out and carried home to heal up for a few weeks before returning to the darkness. Our return to their way of life is certain... and behind it, skylighted in the distance of prairie time, the Siksika trotting on spectacular paints, waiting.
Sometimes I feel that I ought to go to church. There are numerous churches around where I live now, in the ahistorical city, the faceless forgettable city that history will overlook utterly. There will never be a Cola Di Rienzo here, it is not worthy and never will be. I wonder running past them what their pastors will say, how they view their religion and their work. Are there Kierkegaard's among these pastors, in my neighbourhood? There is one church that posts some more obscure New Testament verses that are rather interesting. Will it be laughable? 'God came to me in a vision'. Yet always so heartfelt, bless them. We all find comfort from the delusions we choose, there is no reason to discriminate. I suffer from such delusions but won't own up to them or take the time to even identify or acknowledge them - onward always onward and therefore I derive no comfort from the wispy blankets that drift around me and know that my downfall is coming - and from what - to fall from nothing to less than nothing? Too stubborn and too foolish I guess.

Soon as I'm back in Calgary...

2008-11-28T22:34:00.001-08:00

1.) I'm going out to the mountains and hammering a run for the better part of a day, listening to Corby and Gordon Lightfoot and telling stories about the old days climbing cliffs and farming with Brad Hove and the time I ran into a bear to whoever will listen. I'm looking at the Hurtin Albertans for a little help in this regard. Nothing like going for a good 30k stomp out in the woods, hollerin, doing pullups on trees, jumping into beaver ponds, (A-Game when you're back...) Eat some beef jerky and have two litres of water on the way back. Maybe run into some randos on a milk run from New Brunswick cooking up deer meat out in the middle of the Ghost. Been known to happen.
2.) Be a dirtbag again... oh wait...
3.) I'm calling some people. You know who you are.
4.) Get out to the Lake and spend some days just soaking up the quiet, have a beer down at the White House with the ghosts of White House past.
5.) See my Cousin Benny whom I hear is now turned half Texan and is gonna have to prove he ain't.
6.) Write an actual blog entry about something substantial.
7.) I should be able to understand why I like a periodic change of scenery. It's always so shallow, like Augustine said, everywhere you go you take yourself with you, and here I am and there I will be. The buildings are different and maybe a few people. I'll have a few more days under my belt in which to have deepened any repentances I have (and probably won't not yet save that for the quiet hours of Christmas says the procrastinator in flight from the weakness he can't acknowledge). Like all that predictable exile lit that was in vogue ten years ago, there's something to be said for being dislocated, something soothing in letting things spin past you, observing for once. I don't feel like partying any more, there's no reason and any good reason defeats the purpose anyways. Like when we beat the alumni his year. The party was half-hearted for me, the real celebration having been on the field, with the team. Just like when I went out to the Lake this summer, it is to hear snow crunching underfoot and firs creaking in the cold, that is all.
8.) I really need to get my swim into gear.

Pilgrim

2008-06-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

This summer I have been doing a lot of thinking about things I never thought about before, things like a career. I had a job and quit it. I wanted to go to the Yukon, and to New York and didn't. I decided it was probably best to see if they needed me out at the farm, so that's where I'm going next week. I want to go out and do some good hard work and get a tan and sleep out under the stars at night, and go out to the mountains after work. I want to go where I don't know nobody really, where I don't gotta worry about hurtin no-one's feelings, where I can soak up some sun and talk to god in the rocks and trees. I realized how special my job on the farm was, living out there in the valley. I don't have any money right now but don't need any. I am a pilgrim, a supplicant to the farm, basking in the smell of the pines blowing across the farm on a hot South wind.
I finished Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, with the end of 'Cities of the Plain'. What a book. I found the majority of the epilogue disappointing though; the end of the epilogue though was fantastic. The book and the trilogy as a whole are just fantastic. There are points in The Crossing (book 2) that seem a little lost, but in some the trilogy is bliss. It all comes together in Cities of the Plain, uniting the heroes of the first two books in a manner that was superficially predictable(Ie John Grady Cole seems naturally to fit in the hole left by the death of Bill Parham's younger brother Boyd) yet exciting because I wanted to see the awesome things McCarthy would do with the union of those heroes. And I wasn't disappointed. Just more to fuel me out of the city and into the country. John Grady Cole is my hero. Everything he does is true and subscribes to a sense of justice that grew up out of the dirt like ocotillo and is as natural to horse as man. Looking back on this year, on my life, all the untrue things are found out, in time, even by myself. And that doesn't mean just outward lies, but even doing things for the wrong reason. Look at the finest runners in Canada - those who do it for the recognition, for the teams, they flatline and never attain legend. But those who run because it is true and they must, do much greater things on the track and in life. I think of my last job. I feel like I got roped into it, nothing was as it appeared, I could smell it stank and kept on but finally left. Other than the actual work I did the only true thing I did was told my boss 'I quit'.
Before that I ran a leg in the K-100 for a friend's law firm. I ran like dogshit on the hilly leg 5 to the top of Highwood Pass. It was a good lesson in pain, and motivation to actually get fit again - how long have you heard that from me? Driving back down I got an appreciation for the size of the hills though, they looked flatter running up them, I was wondering why I was sucking wind so bad. But I deserved a little hurt - my feet were really sore from my new shoes and I even had to stop and re-lace them midrace. I thought it would never end and was even cramping in my calves in the last mile. Thanks to FMC for the opportunity to run with them and met some fellow jurists, it was a blast!
Anyways, I am going to Edmonton Tuesday, then when I get back, out to the farm. Come for a visit.

Garden, framing, climbing, work

2008-05-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

Well friends, it's spring in Alberta. I watched the leaves come out and the ice recede just this past week, when a fortuitous phone call landed me out at Gull Lake helping build an addition on my friend's cabin. The leaves unfolded from the poplars sticky and green as we finished the interior walls, built the second story walls, girder, beams and stood and blocked the trusses. Man breaks down nature and rebuilds it in his own image, thus the mountain becomes the skyscraper and the tree the wall, observe the nature in those calculated human designs, the unattached trusstop swaying in the breeze in time with the trees surrounding, the grain of the wood unaltered by the sawmill. I left and went for a run at Dry Island Buffalo Jump, which smelt of pasture sage and the true prairie I had near forgotten living up in Edmonton. There I saw rocks suspended in the air by pillars of clay that runoff had eroded around and spotted a deer in silhouette, the answer to my thought 'where are all the deer that made these tracks' standing frozen against the Western horizon, hoping that I would forget him. Then, at home in Calgary I dug and planted a garden, inauspicious at 60 square feet but better than nothing: spinach, beets, carrots, white onions, two types of lettuce and radishes. Within five rainy days of planting the quck growing radishes are sprouting out from the ground in my tiny patch. My wrist is better and I am back into climbing hard, and going for 5.12. I was close last year at the end of July, I don't know if I could taste it quite, or feel it but I was close and I want to put in the strong conncerted effort to get there. This was prompted by the fact that I found I could come back from injury and climb 5.11 off the couch so to speak. So I need more, I'm greedy and want to climb harder rock! I guess I better get a real job though. So many things to do, climb get a bike - I want to do crazy long hikes with a heavy pack and hurt all day long.

2008-05-07T20:33:00.000-07:00

I was having lunch in Keremeos the other day. I was not thinking about anything in particular. But then it dawned on me why I don't see any good art coming out of Canada these days. There was a table of ladies who had driven out from Vancouver for an art weekend, however their idea of an art weekend was sitting around a table chatting. That's not art. That's chatting. And talk is cheap. As I write this I recall the staging of some play by One Yellow Rabbit theatre in Calgary, a think by Dave Bidini, something or other about hockey, and it was evident from the press photos and advertisements that none of these people knew anything about hockey. They held sticks that were too long and didn't appear to have been cut down or even taped. What a bunch of poseurs. There goes some tax funding, so a bunch of artsy fools could go to the store and get some props to misuse. Where is the eye for detail, the critical eye that would have saved them a degree at least of falsehood? They may be world renowned but they will never be mistaken for Shakespeare, nor would they want to be and in time they will be forgotten.
I think you gotta hurt for your art.
That goes beyond the disfunction often associated with great artists: Hemingway and the bottle and dames, Jimi and heroin, Kerouac and whatever was the drug du jour for him, Dickens and his experience of poverty. It means that you gotta earn every word cause it hurts. Think of John Steinbeck, who wrote all his best stuff when he was down and out. When the success came, and he moved out to New England, his novels suffered dearly. Contrast that with these kids from Creative writing programs, with their bland, detached writing. That's cause they live bland detached lives - look no further than the fact that they are clueless enough to be in such a program anyways.
Think of the finest, most profound of writers, and you will invariably find a life without comfort. Dostoyevsky, with his tormented hyper-intelligence, his depth of feeling, over and above his much discussed prison term which was as much an incident of his nature as a cause. Nietzsche: struggling against his physical weakness, for every word, suffering migraines and bedridden for days before returning with a vengeance to the struggle of creation. And the finished product is enough to make the reaer feel as though he flies.
My favourite artist in this regard is Masaccio. Perhaps he did not struggle in the way of Nietzsche but he put his art ahead of all else, and died an untimely death as a result of his own neglect. He died for his art, for that brightness so ahead of its time in the cheeks of his figures.
Think of these things the next time you pick up a pen, or a book. Does the author, the artist, earn you attention, with every word, or does he take it for granted?
I recently read a section of Mr. Rushdie's new book. He is too busy jetting around to all the best parties to do any actual writing apparently. However there is a new novel out with his name on it, filled with the quirky oriental names that are the shallow defining feature of his writing. This novel is gilded shit. Don't be fooled. Give it a squeeze, then wash your hands of the whole mess.

Been a while

2008-04-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

So friends, it has been rather a while since I've written. And all those great goals, all the ambition, the energy of the end of last summer. The tai chi and the swimming. Where has it all gone?
The Law.
Has it all gone there or has some chipped away into laziness. Well I hope my marks turn out pretty good, I've never studied harder for anything yet many are studying harder than me. And there are still the books, like so many used women (not by me) around looking so seductive in their vulnerability. T.S. Eliot. The rest of Cormac McCarthy's 'The Crossing'. A few books on Manet and Toulose-Lautrec. Some ridiculous yet enervating charcoal drawings. And a pile of books on law.
And here I am now, exhausted but with a strange source of energy coming from those exertions, so directed. Looking for something different. I'm thinking of writing poetry again. I look in the magazines and it is all dogshit when are people going to remember what poetry is? We're stuck in the 90's Creative Writing PhD garbage. I'm going to bring in a new poetry (how many times have we heard that before) with nothing but the strength of my will and dissatisfaction. Did I mention my stalled novel? Late at night. I can't wait till I'm done, where will I go what will I do I want to go to the Yukon and drive up and work hard all day and camp in those light nights somewhere different every day and be exhausted for months and drive up the Dempster and quit and get lost in Kluane. And I want to drive down to Texas and New Mexico and get Easy Rider fun. and I want to go to Writing on stone for the sacred green days on the silent prairie and be with the sun and the wind and the blue sky again.

Golf?

2007-08-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

Showed up at the golf course Saturday afternoon, fairly reserved and a little jaded. There was a big wind blowing from the North, a new system coming in that would bring in a big cold rain for the next two days. Anyways I hit (and by hit I mean mostly bladed) a few balls on the driving range with my cousin, and grabbed a few beers, figuring that, if I'm going to play golf, I might as well be half cut. Make a few nice drives with my old school persimmon woods that were passed down from an uncle, then decide to dedicate myself to drinking beers with my brother and another rowdy cousin and making fun of people as they teed off, as there was about seven parties of us in my older cousins stag. They left and our group teed off, last. I was in a cart with my dad and a bunch of beers, with a cousin of mine and his uncle whom I'd just met in the other, all accomplished golfers. They all made nice drives that were grabbed a little by the huge wind, I avoided the problem by blading my ball across the ground onto the ladies tee. Texas whippit jokes ensued, and not for the last time on that day. Anyways, I basically said, to hell with this garbage sport, grabbed the three iron and pounded the ball straight down the fairway. The wind didn't seem to bother it and suddenly I was way down the hole. I played out the hole sloppily. The next two holes I beat the shit out of and parred, somehow making some amazing shots to the applause of the party ahead, before I was back to parring. But my dad said that was the best golf I ever played, and I had to admit that, being half cut, golf had it's advantages. The feeling was definitely gone by hole 12 or so when I just wanted to get off the course and do something real. But if you can believe it, I actually enjoyed a game of golf!

2007-08-24T23:09:00.000-07:00

Came back from the farm today with about 25 pounds of both potatoes and carrots, and promptly gave some to the neighbours on either side. My ambitions now are limitless and limited at the same time, that is to say that my goals are somewhat less than concrete, something I'm not really used to after years of training at set paces with very specific goals in mind. No, this August the goal was to live deliberately yet effortlessly, in order to be fully relaxed on entry to law school in early September. Part of this meant that I needed to embrace inaction to a degree, and take the beer over the run when offered, but it certainly did not amount to any sizeable couch potato action. I did a few gnarly runs in the mountains, some with a nice big group, and some solo efforts where threshold was dialled in, and held, pushing occasionally into lactic as I climbed through the forest onto the bare rock step by step. I returned to my former job as a farm hand, where I was welcomed after an absence of more or less two years as though I were a long lost (not quite prodigal... I don't recall selling my inheritance or anything of the sort, and I'd like to think I earned my chunk of the fatted calf, larger than expected though it may be) son who had returned to do a hidden penance in the fields with great and unquestioning love. The mornings were early and I sweated and even ached for my money once again - man that paycheque felt good when I finally read how much I had earned there in the dust! I kept my fingers and skin tough on the hangboard, did abs from time to time and lifted a little bit of weights for fun. I even got out to ski a few times. Jumped off some pretty high cliffs, wakeboarded (once, and I still have the same two lame 'tricks') did some decent hiking and scouted some good rock to climb. Here I am back in Calgary, tomorrow being my cousin's stag. We are all signed on to golf 18 holes; golf is my least favourite pastime, I simply can't stand it but I ought not to put my own idiosyncracies ahead of thise sort of propriety right? I really just want to make my cousin happy. Would it be good for me to work on my golf? But there are a million things I enjoy more, or would like to try more, like rodeo, karate, tai chi, actually learn a language proper, than golf. When I was a kid I would always play golf and actually I had a decent stroke, but I never cared, the places we played were always surrounded by mountains and trees and I would rather do anything - nothing even - in the woods and rocks than on the manicured suburban nature of the golf course. So obviously I was a moody kid, and when you throw in the fact that I didn't care for golf course etiquette one can deduce that I had some interesting rounds of golf. Once I lost control of a golf cart, ran it through some flower beds, off a terrace and smashed into a huge sprinkler. Our neighbours were on the hole ahead and wondered where the geyser of water was coming from. I didn't see it because I ran away and hid - one of those few formative moments where I realized, though in my early teens, that running hit the spot in a way golf never could for me. Running has no hesitation, it is all dynamic and it is definitively human. Anyways, who know what I will be up to this year. I am going to law school, but it is a four day week, and I'm sure there'll be other things going on for me to sink my teeth into.

2007-08-24T23:04:00.000-07:00

To do list:
tai chi
get back into yoga
maybe some karate or something to boot
figure out how to ride broncs and bulls and whatnot
get crazier at climbing
work on biking
keep on running of course
get swim to decency - looking to triathlon for some laughs
more cross country skiing
Grand Cache Death Race

Shipping up to Omahkohkotoki

2007-07-05T15:12:00.000-07:00

As for looking forward, friends, I say this: I am looking damned forward to getting out with my buddies this weekend and going for a nice day of rock climbing down at Big Rock and possibly whatever other locales we might find ourselves at (somewhere up the Highwood). We are bringing a futon and a gymnastics mat because the falls there have the potential to be real rough. Last weekend, to recap, the fellers and I headed out to a little crag near Yamnuska for some top-roping action and action we got and no we weren't diddling her kneecap Ferrell, we were swinging out from immensely difficult overhangs of rotten rock, leaping for ideal ledges, fiddling with hard lines and wiggles in the rock, playing with gymnastic heel hooks, and pulling fractured holds down onto our heads. The fellas have been putting in some good time in the gym and it ought to pay off this weekend! And I can't wait till I get this calf knot straightened out and can rip up a few hours of running in the mountains again there lads!

Sailor Peg workout

2007-07-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

Our ol' pal Corb Lund sang 'That the reality bites and the saddle horn burns'. I've never really ridden a horse, nor have I 'lost a thumb when he (I) dollied to quick', but that doesn't matter, as I know that sometimes reality bites because once a dog bit me and I still have that cocksuckers teeth marks in my ass. I don't know if that dogs name was 'Reality' but you get the picture. I have been dealing with a little nagging calf problem the last couple of weeks and the whole thing is frustrating for me, because it proves that I ain't as immortal as I like to tell myself and others ( loudly.) I gotta take the time to heal even if that means putting the old beloved track on hold, and even not climbing for a bit. Since I can't abuse myself on the track, I decided to settle with punishing myself in the weight room. Here is the harsh workout I did for you: start with the heaviest weight you can curl, do as many reps as you can without losing good form, then switch to the next lightest weight, max out the reps, move down, over and over again until about 10 pounds per arm, any lighter is nearly useless, but for the record I finished on fives. No set break. Change weights as fast as you can. This is an excellent workout, if only for the mental exercise, because if you are doing it properly, you should be in the zone of white hot exertion, grunting and hurting, muscles burning, for almost the entire workout! It is really painful and should probably be repeated only once every few months, and undertaken only by someone a little used to lifting. I tried to make a call in the office right after and could hardly hold the phone to my ear as my arm was shaking so much. If you've done it correctly you will have trouble straightening your arms for the rest of the day, and the next day your arms will be in real pain and more or less unstraightenable.