Subway Commit To Fit

So I entered to be the Subway Commit to Fit ambassador yesterday.  It took me a while to fill out the form and gather the pictures I wanted to submit, but it is done.

Who doesn’t want $10,000?  Especially after the fact for getting in shape and eating right.  I’d say my odds are slim as they are going to have one winner from Quebec and one winner from the rest of the country.  There will be four other prize winners that get $1,000 as well.  But hey it’s worth a shot.

This is what I submitted to them.

I used to be an overweight couch potato. Until March of 2010. I weighed 230 pounds, had a sore back whenever I played hockey and was out of breath after any real activity. I was also a karate student that was going nowhere. I decided that it was time for me to get into shape and began to go to the gym. I was there every day for four months and began to eat healthy. Once I had started to lose weight, 50 pounds, I got a trainer and began weight training programs. By November I weighed 160 pounds and was a fit and athletic machine. I achieved my black belt that month, and that year at hockey, after playing on the same team for five years, was named the most improved player due to the change I had made in my life.

Food was a large part of the process in losing the weight and eating out at restaurants was something that I had to do quite frequently due to work and school, Subway became my go to place to eat as I could eat healthy low calorie meals. I probably ate three or four 6" subs per week during the weight loss process.

Losing weight was only half the challenge, now I strive to be fit, active and healthy to maintain what I have achieved. I go to the gym four times a week, play baseball during the summer, hockey twice a week in the winter, attend karate to practice and to teach roughly 5 hours in the week as well.

Committing to becoming fit is the best thing I have ever done for myself. It has allowed me to do so many amazing things and helped me feel great about myself in every aspect of life.

 

From Fat to Fit VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

(I just discovered that photo album feature!)

Something slightly odd is that it was a few weeks ago when I found the ‘before’ pictures from our first cruise when I was sunburnt, they came in really handy here.

If I win Ten Large the Halloween party this year can be at my place!

From that day on, if I was ever going somewhere, I was running!

On my quest to be able to compete in this 10km Mudnewton I have upped my running distance to 8km this week, in doing so I changed my course entirely rendering any time comparison moot.

The new course was this:

I left home and went to Parkhill Rd. east to Reid, then South until Charlotte, West with a little detour to get up to Wallis, then North to Parkhill and then back to home.  Google maps said it was 8km and that’s good enough for me.  It was mostly uphill, so maybe not the best choice of route as a first outdoor attempt at 8km, but not impossible.

I did this run in 39:27  so 33 seconds faster than it took me to do 8km on the treadmill at the gym on Thursday.  Not too shabby I would say.  The initial 5km took longer than last weeks route by about a minute but considering that it is uphill  from E to H on the map (about 2.4 km) I’m ok with that.

A friend of mine asked me the other day “Did this stuff interest you before you lost the weight?” referring to things like the Mud Run and the Warrior Dash.  I replied that yes they would have interested me, but it would have been impossible for me to do them.  I do these things now because I can!

And why wouldn’t I do these things?  Why spend so much time at the gym and apply it meaningfully for one day grading to Black Belt when I can apply it to so many other aspects of my life.  That was a big part of the whole lesson in needing to get in shape for that grading.  Discover what you can really do!

I am just one example, but endeavour to find out what you are capable of doing if you remove the barriers your mind sets up around you.  Not only will you amaze yourself, but many people around you!

Almost There…

Yesterday at the gym I ran 8 kilometres on the treadmill.  I ran there and not outside because it was insanely hot and humid here and really I’d have to be a lunatic to run outside in this weather.  I’m all for the outdoors and sucking it up and such but there is a line there and I’m not willing to cross it.  This same point even stands for things I enjoy.  Like Paintball, I would not paintball in the weather we’ve been having because I’d either die from the heat because we need long sleeves to avoid poison ivy, or I’d suffocate in the paintball mask because of lack of breathable air.

Oh right the 8km.  So I started running just a couple weeks ago as you may recall and made some pretty nice progress time-wise.  However what I need is distance.  On that first run I only planned to run 2.5km because I was not sure if I could do anything more than that.  I ran 8km yesterday at the gym because that seems like a good target to get me closer to the 10km I have to run in this even I am doing in September (it was also and easy number to do the math to convert miles to kilometres since the treadmills use miles).

I’m happy to say I did run the entire distance, as if I would have let my body tell me when it had had enough, at a pace that was pretty close to my times out running on the streets. An average speed of about 12km/h (the fastest 5.2km I have run so far was at about 13.4km.h) if that’s the pace I keep up I would finish my 10km race in about 50 minutes or so.  But considering I still have six weeks to prepare and Jodi has a cardio workout planned for me I intend to set a shorter time goal than that on race day.

Give me two weeks and decent weather and I’ll be running 10km outside in under 50 minutes.

Injuries Part III

Should one person really have the material for three injuries posts in a blog?  If your living life to the fullest, yes!

Check out Part I and Part II!

The Other Knee
Back in 2002 I think it was I lived in an apartment over on Barnardo St. Just a little ways north of us was a church school or some such and on their property was a hill.  It was the kind of hill that goes flat about half way down, but also increased in steepness as you went along their property.  So at one end it was a death defying plummet towards a thicket with a high probability of a jump part way down, and as you approached the other end it was a fairly tame hill with and nice little whoosh in the middle to give a sled ride a little more character.

I took my soon to be step-daughter (soon after to be ex-stepdaughter or however that goes) sledding one day on this hill.  We started at the large end and she was scared to go down.  So, in my wisdom I said ‘It’s fine! I’ll show you.’  And so down I went.  That ‘probably to catch air’ half way down turned out to be a certainty and I flew off the sled landing awkwardly and twisting my knee all up.  Of course I had to pretend I was fine and continue sledding for about another hour.  We did so on the tame end of the hill.

The Spider Bite

Also while living on Baranardo I was bitten one night by a spider, unfortunately it was not radioactive.  At first I thought it was an ingrown hair or something that would just clear up on it’s own.  Eventually my forearm swelled by about 50% and my boss at the gas station told me I had to go to the hospital.  The doctor put heat on the area then lanced the bit of puss ball that swelled up and then left me.  Of course then I had to squeeze it, and make all the goop come out.  It was gross, but awesome at the same time.  I was occupied with that the entire time I was waiting for the nurse.  I then had to get an I.V. of antibiotics three nights in a row and then take home huge antibiotic pills to take for the next ten days!

Bike Wipeout In Toronto

I went to University of Toronto for a few months in the fall of 1998.  To get around I had my bike and I would frequently ride up to the mall near the Erindale campus because I hated being at the residence, my roommates sucked! So I was riding back from the mall and decided I would take a shortcut across the grass and ride over a sewer lid.  Problem was that the sewer lid was up on like a concrete spire with a big ditch and long grass cut even with the lid.  My tire hit and bent right over and I pitched clear over the handle bars and landed right at the edge of Mississauga Rd.  I wasn’t that hurt, but my front wheel was ruined and I was nearly run over after I hit the ground.

It’s amazing I’m alive.