A Man Reborn

Quick post – just some of my favourite memories of 2010:

1. Meeting Jeannie and our day at the CNE and all the other fun days we’ve shared
2. Exploring abandoned buildings in Detroit with Myla and Nix
3. Riding powder in Whistler and being there for the Olympics with Sacha and Ian
4. Snowboard weekend with endless park laps with Shayne and Simon
5. Shooting DVD special features with one of my favourite directors: George A Romero with Thea, Adam, Jen, Michelle, Colin and Ken
6. Finishing my first Triathlon with Anthony, Kristen and Steve
7. Having the honour of being the best man and giving a speech at Anthony and Ashley’s wedding
8. ROM / Pirate Festival / Oktoberfest / Train trip to Montreal to see Rammstein with Mike and Candy
9. Weekend in Montreal for the Heavy MTL festival with Greg, Derek and Jenn
10. Raw diet challenge with Carolina
11. Scaring kiddies at the Milton haunted house with Jen and Clay
12. Watching Canada win Gold at the Olympics with Ash, Ant, John and Brandon
13. Tremblant/Montreal road trip on my birthday with Simon, Ian and the SNS crew
14. 2010 Zombie Walk and making my costume for it
15. Riding my bike to Guelph in a torrential downpour

Decided to start writing a bit more about other things than just working out. I like writing, so the more practice I get the better I’ll get at it.

Took it easy this weekend – just what I needed after the 5 weeks of craziness at work. Friday I vegged out for a few hours and finished off Final Fantasy XIII which I hadn’t played since I started the project. Pretty good ending although the whole tesseracts area of the last level really made no sense and was a bit dull. Got a txt from Tosha who I met at the fiendraiser a couple of weeks ago seeing if I wanted to check out a mexican wrestling show – sweet!

Saturday I took Ozzy for a bike ride and then headed over to Kombat for a weight workout. Did squats, military presses and bent over rows. Low reps, heavy weight. No messing around with a million machines – just the way I like it. I just got an iphone so I did some searching for fitness apps and got one called GymBuddy. I’m using it to track my sets and reps and to make sure that I progress properly. So far I like it and I’ll give it a proper review after I use it for a little while.

I’m bad at keeping up with cleaning when I get super busy at work, so 5 weeks resulted in my bedroom and office both looking pretty disastrous. After my workout I spent a good chunk of time getting them both cleaned up and it feels good to get it out of the way. It’s a lot easier to maintain it once it’s super clean. I even found all the old blood stains (fake :P) that had found their way to my door frames and out of the way areas in my bathroom while doing zombie makeup.

Left to meetup with Tosha and got stuck in CNE / TFC traffic on Lakeshore (note to self: avoid driving through this area until the CNE is over). Met up and Shanghai Cowgirl and had a tasty havarti/jalapeno/avocado grilled cheese and a pint of big wheel, which I’d tried at the conscious food festival a few weeks ago and really liked. After that we were off to Santo Sangre for some luchador action!

The show was awesome – so much fun! When we got there we saw a couple of couches right at ringside with no one sitting in them. I think everyone just assumed they were reserved and didn’t bother sitting in them – so we sat there, got the best ringside seats and no one said a word. Ended up sitting next to a couple of little kids who totally made the experience all the more amazing. Seeing how excited they got and how into the show they were made me smile and made me happy to be a big kid. I can’t live my life without play and fun and I do lots of things that I’m sure could be looked down on as childish, but whatever – it makes me happy and that’s all that matters. Anyway – few pics below.

After the show we got to meet all the wrestlers and get pictures / autographs. Got pics with the legendary El Santo del Hijo as well as with Trish Stratus and Lita who used to be in the WWE – bonus!  Was going to meet up with some friends after the show but that got derailed so I popped over to another friends place for a bit before heading home.

Sunday I took the dog for a bike ride and then dropped him off after a few K before heading out on a longer ride myself. I got an app called runkeeper pro to track my running/biking – so far I’m liking it – it tracks via GPS and tracks the route and all the timing stats so I’ll be able to tell how I’m coming along. I’ve got a lot of riding to do to get ready for the Ride to Conquer Cancer next June.

Got back and headed over to the farmer’s market – picked up some summer squash, potatoes and peppers for dinner. Made the potatoes into hasselback potatoes and grilled the veg and had it with some chicken breast I had grilled earlier.

What else… found out that Kombat is doing a seminar at the end of October with Andy the Destroyer Souwer, one of my favourite K1 fighters. I’ve got it on my list to train with a champion, so I’m definitely signing up for this. I’m expecting it will be a pretty intense seminar, so I’ll be sure to step up my training quite a bit over the next 9 weeks to make sure I can get the best out of the seminar.

… and I guess I’m a glutton for sleepless punishment, because I somehow ended up with plans for every night this coming week. The good thing is that I’ll be out with friends and not working. I’ll need to be creative with my workout timings and making sure I get some sleep too!

It sucks that I missed fan expo – not because of the show itself, but because of the people there that I didn’t get to hang out with.  I’ll have to make sure I make opportunities to see them all soon!

I did a Try-a-Tri triathlon with some friends over the weekend.  It went pretty well – I survived the swim, did well on the biking and got slaughtered on the run.  It definitely showed me that I need to go back to a properly structured routine to get the results that I’ve got in the past and will get again.  With that said, I’ve planned out my routine for the upcoming week

• Monday – rest / endless amount of errands / work to do
• Tuesday – Biking / Pull ups / Push ups
• Wednesday – Muay Thai
• Thursday – Weights
• Friday – Muay Thai
• Saturday – Weights
• Sunday – Biking

For weights I’ll be going back to the Starting Strength program – heavy weights, low reps and simple compound movements.