Friend Making Monday–20 Questions

If you’ve taken part in FMM then you know the rules. If you’re new, please take a moment to answer this week’s question on your own blog then add your link in the comments section here and over at: www.alltheweigh.com so we can all see your FMM questions and answers. Please invite your blog readers to add their links here too so everyone has to opportunity to be seen. The idea is to connect with other awesome bloggers so take a moment to post your own FMM post and comment on a couple of other posts. Now it’s time for this week’s topic!

Twenty Questions

1. Share something that you enjoy doing when you’re alone.

Drawing

2. What do you plan to eat next?

Afternoon snack with the kids, veggies I think

3. When did you first travel on a plane? Where did you go?

I first traveled on a plane when I was 19 I think, I flew to Philadelphia so see the girlfriend I had at the time

4. Do you currently have a crush on someone? If so, share a few of the reasons why.

Yeah, most folks are crushing on someone it seems

5. List one thing that disgusts you that probably wouldn’t bother someone else.

Um.. I'm not even sure of this one.  Bugs I guess, I'm not a fan of bugs at all.  You know that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where they are walking on the big bugs, and then the girl has to reach in the hole filled with creepy crawlies..  ick!

6. If you could buy a new car tomorrow (and money was no object) what would you buy?

Jet Black Camero!

7. Who was the first person who broke your heart?

Um, Seriously?  This question does suck, do I really want to put that on someone?

8. If you could spend the night with a celebrity tonight, who would it be?

I get the feeling that Robert Downey Jr. would be awesome to hang out with.

9. Are you a morning person or a night person?

Depends on the day really, but I am up early for work all the time.  I would say I am generally a morning person overall.

10. What’s your favorite board game?

I think Carcasonne is my favourite game.

11. Can you play an instrument? If so, what do you play?

I can play a few songs on guitar, but I can't sing at the same time.  The songs I can play sound pretty good though I think.

12. What is the last thing you ate?

Homemade mac and cheese for lunch here at daycare!  Yum!

13. Do you wear a watch?

I wear a watch when I am working out just to have the stopwatch function close at hand.  Generally though, no, I use my phone as a watch.

14. Do you go to church?

Nope, Amber and I have talked about doing so once she does not work on Sundays though, I think it would be a good thing if we can find a place with a good speaker.

15. Do you ever wish on stars?

Yeah, sometimes, never seems to work though

16. Have you ever been on a motorcycle?

I have been on a minibike, like when I was ten years old, that was pretty cool, but not a full on motorcycle.

17. What is the last thing you purchased?

A wedding card for my friend Keri.

18. How big is your bed?

It's a Queen bed, we need a King I think!

19. What size shoe do you wear?

I wear a size 10 typically

20. What are you looking forward to most in the coming week?

A few things to look forward to this week.  Injustice: Gods Among Us comes out tomorrow, I'll be getting that, and I have a race on Sunday!  And finally a few days of nice weather, I'm tired of all this wintery type stuff!

Now it’s your turn to answer this week’s questions. Don’t forget to come back and link up in the comments! Happy Monday!

WCP Race

So a few months ago I had the idea of the WCP International Race weekend. The time is nearly upon us!  This morning however I woke up to snow on the ground, again, and I got to thinking that I really have not had the amount of time to train outside that I have wanted, and the weather sucks.  The training thing I can get over, I set my own date for the race, I did a whole lot of running early in the year inside to get ready, I can run the distance.

The weather thing I am SO NOT a fan of.  I guess I thought about last year’s March where I wore t-shirts half the time and figured that late April would be fine this year.  It does not seem that way.  The whole Idea of Race At Your Own Place was to have race day be enjoyable!  Well as enjoyable as it can be when you are setting out to complete a race distance that challenges you.

I propose this change to the admittedly very loose rules of the WCP Race Weekend.

I think we should change it to race weekends! Having multiple weekends should ensure that, the weather gets a bit warmer here in Canada, and since I have not mentioned this on here since the announcement give some more people some more time to join in, and an week of training if they want.  Or run your distance each of those weekends and take the best time!  Oh I like that.  Gives people an opportunity to discard a race where they have a shoe explode or something.

All in favour?  *raises hand*  All opposed? *none* by a vote of 1-0 I accept!

The WCP International Race Weekends are:

April 26-28

May 3-5

Bib download to follow later today on this post and on the Facebook event page.

Home Gym

I have begun to amass the equipment needed for a bit of a home gym.  I don’t have an idea spot for it yet as we have a tenant down in our basement but sometimes you just have to make due.  The garage is me making due.  See earlier in the year the garage door on ‘my’ side stopped working (inside a garage door opener the gears are plastic!)  And while it’s totally fixable, I don’t have the money to pay someone to do it, or the skills to do it myself, or really even the need to be sure my car is parked inside.  Since winter is (hopefully) over, there really is no point to parking in the garage anyways.

Last fall I picked up for free a bunch of the old cement and plastic weights.  Back when I lived at home we had these and I actually spent one summer working out with them.  My dad still has them and uses them I believe.  Then just two weekends ago I picked up some more and a weight bench so that I could do bench presses at home.

Before

Problem is I needed a space to do all that.  So I spent some time last weekend cleaning out my side of the garage and making it a bit more useable.  We have quite a bit of junk back there that was left here by other people when my Grandma had the house.  My Aunt before we took possession asked people to come get their things, and then we even had a huge yard sale.  So I’m just going to be chucking this stuff out.  I’m still in the process of setting up the place, and I’ll be getting some of the puzzle mat things that we used to have on the karate club floor to use as the mat part so that I can do crunchies and other ab work on the floor without being on cement.

This morning I made use of my partially finished home gym for the first time.  Since all I would be doing at the gym is bench press and pull ups I did that here with a little bit more of a warm up since I had the time.  I bench pressed on the bench naturally, then did my pull ups on the garage door rails, some box jumps, jumping jacks, push ups and crunchies on the bench.  I followed all that up with a 2k run.

Clean, but not done

I didn’t have to leave home at 7 to get to the gym in time enough to be able to do all this and then get to karate, in fact since I saved the time driving is why I had the time to do the short little run.  I think this is really going to be a great thing!  It will be even better when it’s not just barely above the freezing mark when I am out doing it too!

Floor in, but too dark for a good picture

A little cluttery in the back still, but good!

Why I Will Be A Trainer

I have spouted off a few times about how I can’t be a personal trainer simply due to the fact that I am very blunt and a bit demanding.  I push hard for result and expect that of other people and as we have learned say things that others take as hurtful when to me I am merely stating facts.

Maybe my statement of why I can’t be a trainer is too general.  I can’t be a trainer for people who’s feelings I am invested in not hurting.  Like my wife for example, I don’t want to hurt her feelings.  I want her to be successful at the things she does, but not at the cost of our relationship obviously.

A couple of friends of mine have asked me to help them get ready for races and such, or just generally work out with them.  Supposedly I am inspiring.  That’s pretty cool.  I went running with Nikki a few weeks ago, and while she was nearly dying she did run/walk the whole 5k of her May 26th race course.  I did ok there, I pushed her to go.  I did not get told that I was being annoying or patronizing.  It was good.  Another friend, Sarah, has sort of asked/implied the same thing.  We could go to the gym, run on the trails, and find monkey bars and such in preparation for the Tough Mudder that we are doing in September.

I think it’s a good idea, not that I can be a great trainer or anything, but that I can train with them and they likely won’t feel the same heat from me as Amber likely does.  Amber knows me too well, know when I am putting her on and knows when I am being genuine.  If I was like “Good Job Amber!” When it had taken us (this is an exaggerated example!) like 3 hours to bike 20K.  She’d likely tell me to shut up!  Problem is I know her too well too, I know what she can do when she’s trying and when she’s not and so that leads to problems.

I have been told many times that being a good teacher, and in the case of teaching physical things I really do believe this, you have to be a good liar.  You have to be able to lie about the scale of goodness you are comparing to.  For instance, I have a black belt at karate, I’ve been doing it for almost ten years.  A new person starts and they are learning their first bunch of kicks.  I will tell them “man those kicks are awesome!” Are they?  Not necessarily, but that person is trying their guts out to do them.  They are awesome compared to if they were doing them without the effort, or compared to the first time I saw them do kicks.

Our ‘rule’ at karate is that everyone should go home with a smile, yeah we teach but we want people to go home happy with what they did that day and impressed with what they have learned. (Until you get to red and brown belt and then you need people to be happy but slightly troubled because they are having to push themselves).  I don’t think as a trainer I would have that rule, and that is probably my biggest problem.  If I thought a grown person was not trying I’m going to call them on it and then they will be all cheesed about it.

So maybe the thing is really that one shouldn’t jump right in to training with people by practicing with their spouse, but practice the whole trainer thing with some friends who you can live with being upset with you for a day or two.