South America Powder day

Sports 101

The beginning of Trishmas season was a ball of fun! Trish, Rick, Silva and I had a blast at the Bball game! I am waiting for the train and I still don't know who won? Ho hold on, just heard, we didn't! Boo! Still a great night!
Today was a rest day and I think I rested well! Started my day staying in bed until 630AM. Pulled my sorry asz out of bed and went for a walk to Timmy's with Trish and my dog Karma to get a cup of morning addiction. It isn't often that we have breakfast together this was a great day, sit down while reading the paper and have a morning meal together. I think we have paid for 3 years of newspapers and read r months worth! Oh well! Its the cost of looking like you know what is going on!
I have been reading a few race reports from I'm Cozumel the past couple of days. First, congrats to all the participants for being there and pushing yourself to the limit. Secondly, thank you for being an inspiration for all those who have not been to the start line yet! Every blog I read, every finisher I talk to pushes me more towards the start and the day that I can hear, 'Fortin, you are an Ironman'! To all of you people that I read about every day, keep inspiring me and keep pushing yourself to the limits you accepted yourself to go to! I look forward to getting to the point that I can say I am there, I am part of your group!!!
As my rest day comes to an end, once again I will say that it has been awesome! Another day of learning, training, sleeping, having fun and learning more about the world of I'm and everything else that is so cool about it!
Cheers and have a great night!


and to finish off a truly entertaining evening, we were so caught up in chatting with friends, we missed out train stop and ended up spending $20 to get a cab back to the car! good thing they were cool people! :)

I win!.jpg

Well, it is confirmed. The previously growing guy has been victorious in the second part of his bet. To make it exciting I ate lots and didn't do my morning business before my weigh in. So like the stock market I have been dropping since the bet started. And, like the stock market I expect a downward adjustment over the coming months before I stabilize at some width significantly smaller than where I started!
Thank you all for the challenge and the ongoing chatter! Any other best you amy want to extend may be considered!
Cheers and bon appetit!

For those not familair with the purpose of this picture, it is to capture on my blog the challenge that started my quest for Ironamn.  June 1, this year I was pushing 222lbs and growing.  My training partner High and another good friend Craig challenged me to lose weigth.  What an awesome bet, I continue to drop weigth, registered for an IRONMAN, and best of all......teh bet was for dinner for all the gang that was present when the bet was made!  I hope they are all hungry!

hey everyone, it' Trishmas eve!!

What the hell is Trishmas eve?  Yeah, that is what I said the first time I heard it as well!  Well, it is the night before December 1, 2009.  And in December is the birthday of my awesome wife, Trish.  Yeah, I know it is one day so what is with the Trishmas stuff.  I tried, you guys have a talk with her!  So, for most husbands, December 7 would be the day to have breakfast ready, dinner out, flowers and all of the other romantic things that go along!  Well, yeah, sure, my darling milks it for all its worth and had dedicated the entire month of December as hers!  Everyone take a moment in wishing Trish and Happy Trishmas!
I hope that she has the greatest season of all!  Tomorrow I am going to start by treating her to dinner and a basketball game, oooo, lucky her!  Then on Wedesday she gets to go for Wings and beer, Thursday she has a night out with the girls and then on Friday, well that will be her day again.  To be totally honest, she deserves anything on the planet that she wants.(OK I am going to gush about my wife)  She is the coolest most patient, supportive, did I say patient, understanding, enthusiastic person in the world.  If I was a girl i would still want to be married to the she is so damn cool.  She is 100% behind this IM chaos, has supported me through 5+ years of obsessing over ski industry stuff, she makes my lunches, washes my clothes, organizes my mess!  and she has a full time job!
She is the most awesome!  Happy Trishmas trish!  I love you!

PS  when I am done Ironman(and maybe a couple more events, I will clean up the garage...)

Cheers as the beginning of the holiday season is here!  Take time to thank the ones who stand behind us as we ride our days away, our friends who dont see us as we go run, our spouses who take care of stuff because we go to the pool.  It is a time of the year to reflect on how lucky we are to be who we are and the lives we have the privilege to enjoy, take a moment to remember how it is we got here and lets all celebrate a happy, healthy and safe future!

a great weekend of fun...

It was am awesome weekend!!  Other than the fact that I should have been skiing and am not!!  Oh well, it could be worse!

The weather is certainly providing for some very non seasonal activities.  Early November and still able o run trails and be out road riding without being frozen,  WOW, it sucks!  On the positive side, I did get to do both of the non seasonal activities and had a great time doing it!  The photo of the trail was an awesome run yesterday.  The trails are in great shape and very dry and the area is awesome.  It is in a river ravine that I have not run before and a great change of pace from running on the road all the time.  I will definitely be using them for training next season. It was also a great morning, the temp was perfect, the rain has stopped.  We had 11 people out.  It was great as Trish came out for the run as well. THe course is good as it is an 10k loop s you can choose how far you want to run, cut off at 10k or do more!  It has a couple of awesome hills as well, to make certain that the workout is not too easy. I did discover than for my training runs I need to put a focus on doing my run and not the groups.  I went out at a 4:45k on my start.  So, in the future I will pay attention so that I can get maximum benefit from the workout!

Today I was able to get out with Bryan Payne at http://trainingpayne.blogspot.com for an great ride.  When I started the day I thought it was a little cold so I made a half decision that I would swim instead.  I sent a not to Bryan, who suggested he had the gear and was ready to go. AWESOME idea!  The day was great it was a fantastic ride.  we rode up north west of Burlington for about 60k. I have been on some of the roads that we were on, but not nearly all the great scenic places we were able to see today.  We saw chickens crossing the road, a field of pics eating corn(cool photo).  It was great as the traffic was light as well! I also liked the opportunity to ride with Bryan.  I respect Bryan as he is a committed trainer and works hard behind the sport.  his recent awesome finish at Clearwater proves that.  We had a great ride talking about, tri's, families, work and all sorts of other things.  A great ride enjoying the weekend!  You can learn a whole lot about a person chatting on a ride. If you have read his blog you will know he is a great guy and very entertaining.
THis great weekend finished off with a few friends over for Grey Cup! What a game, down to the last play!
I hope your weekend was great and you were able to fulfill a little more of your dreams!
Congrat's IM Cozumel folks!  hope you had a great race!

Another goal accomplished......:)

So, some of you know how this training stuff(coming back to it) started for me. For those who dont I will tell you the short version! A few short months ago, I was tipping the scales at a little higher weight than was acceptable. I was getting to the point that I could no longer squeeze my butt into clothes. So, a good friend of mine Hugh started to call me 'fat guy'. He is the same friend that all old guy(because I am a couple years younger, I can) In an evening of banter I suggested to him that I could make my weight number go backwards but, his age number would always get bigger. Those were fightin' words! I was at 222 lbs and he bet me that within 3 months(begin of Sept) I could not be under 200lbs. Hmmm! I am not a gambler of betting man, but, when a sure bet comes along there is no way I can pass it up. As I looked back, I gained weight sitting on the couch watching TV eating bad food, I could do the opposite and get back to where I was. The bet was to my benefit and to all those who were there. He would buy dinner for all of us(there were 7 of us there). Another friend who was there knew I dont go halfway when I make a commitment, so, he thought he would up the challenge. He said, 'you can lose it but you cant keep it off until December 1' He would double the bet by offering the same wager, another dinner for me and all my friends. A no brainer x 2!
I won my first bet at 198lbs! It was a good dinner! Tomorrow I will accomplish my second goal, winning the next bet! I should be at about 192 and more than 10% reduction in BMI. I love friends who are willing to take dumb bets!
What kind of goal did I accomplish....losing weight seems it would be the goal!  No!  It is a means to the end.
A couple of years back I had friends who completed an IRONMAN.  I looked and spoke with them with the greatest respect seemingly knowing what went into training and accomplishing such a crazy goal.  As a blogger friend would call it 'BHAG'(big hairy audacious goal)  In the back of my mind I thought, WOW, that would be such a cool thing to accomplish.  The thought was very shortly followed by a rush of negativity of all the crazy things you had to do to get there.  And away I went. Yeah, on my bucket list, but I will dig that out later!
My Goal!  My silly friends betting me(and losing) accomplished an unconscious goal of not allowing my mind to prevent me from doing what I dream!  Along the way of feeding my friends via silly wagers, I had to get in shape.  So, swimming, biking, running was what all my friends did so I joined them.  I could not swim a length of a pool so it was self imposed torture to do it.  But, suck it up butter cup, you have something to get done here!  I learned to swim and actually started to like it.
So this weekend I have spent a little time reflecting on where I am now because I was willing to accept losing.  I am on the train to being more physically fit than I have in 30 years.  I am on the train to hearing someone saying 'john, you are an IRONMAN'.  On a train of learning new things, meeting some awesome people.  A train that will likely almost wreck a few times over the next year!
BUT, I have accomplished the goal and realization, that, ONLY ME CAN DECIDE WHAT ME CAN ACCOMPLISH AND NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE!  Live for your Dreams!  they make life a blast, you learn more along the way.

Mind over matter....

this week was a great one all around. Over the week, I had great workouts, enjoyed spending time with my friends, had some good sucesses at work, have a great side project cooking along.....like most weeks, all I can say is Life is Good! The only thing I can complain about is the lack of snow! Mother Nature is being nasty to the skiers of the east. Last year at this time it was wonderful, this year, Ha! HA! Not gonna happen! Oh well, at least I am healthy and can go skiing when it finally does start to snow.
Tonight was a night of mental training! Mind over matter! As it is off season, doing nothing is always an option(within reason) After a day of running around I got home with the intent of going for a run. After wrapping up some loose ends for work I was ready to go. Then, my mind introduced the 'no, you can rest thought' I knew I was doing a long run in the morning, so could it be that bad to do nothing? Hmmmmm.....the battle went on for a short while. Then proper reasoning took over....off I went to get my gear on. I headed out with no real distance or plan in mind. In theory if I was on a plan, it would be tempo day. A good run faster than race pace. So I trotted off along my run. I found myself before long feeling not bad and sped along a little. Hmm, think maybe I should slow down, but, the mind took over. My yoga practice has taught me a bit about relaxing as I am running and allowing myself to relax more. So I continued along with a good focus. As I moved forward I found myself in a great groove with my mind taking over and allowing me to relax and push a harder pave than I have done in the past. I just kept pushing not letting my mind tell me different. It was a great result. My pave was just under 5 min/k. Faster than my last tempo and a little easier. I used my mind to push me harder without giving up rather than allowing it to defeat me and allowing me to sit at home!
It was a great lesson in mental training and one that I will carry forward with me! I am happy that I went out, the result was fantastic.
Remember the mind is a powerful thing, it will play all sorts of funky tricks on us. We chose to do an IRONMAN because we have the ability to direct and lead out thought process. As we work through the off season, dont let your mind rule your game, rest when you should, work when you should, have fun and take time to have a beer or tow once in a while. Hell,let me know where you are going and I will join you!
Have a great weekend! and remember, Live for your Dreams!

Good luck IM Cozumel folks!