Once upon a time, this fellow named Adam (or was it Cole? No way to be sure) moved to Winnipeg. Shortly after we became friends, he asked if I would help him out, seems he needed some photos of himself to send to a friend. I said of course!
These were the results.
What a great guy.
HEY! I’m that Adam-Cole!
awww baby! come visit before you go to Mtl.!!! I’m on meds now and thusly will leave the house this time.
It happened. I imploded. The beginning of January was pretty good for me. I went to Cuba, started running again, thought I had my head on straight. Then I hurt my foot and haven’t been able to run in almost 3 weeks and since I’m kind of a table with 3 legs I fell over. There had been a councilling appointment scheduled for me on the 28th, they called and cancelled. I haven’t really left the house in weeks. My mother is seeming growing more frustrated with that. I played show in Guelph last week and saw my friends which was really nice but I couldn’t handle seeing them again when we they came back to Toronto with me. So I stayed inside and haven’t left since, I’m eating once a day and sleeping from 4 or 5am until I wake up and feel the impending guilt of sleeping the day away.
So that’s the bad news. I am alive. That’s the good news I guess. That and that I have finished recording and mixing this album I was making. You can go and listen to it on my Bandcamp.
I have another councilling appointment scheduled for tomorrow. I am going to ask for meds. I don’t really see any other way.
This time tomorrow I will be in Cuba. My mother, Amanda, Dan & I are headed there for a week to… well relax I suppose. Those who know me well will agree I am notoriously bad at relaxing. Even the idea of having to relax stresses me out a bit. I feel it’s one of my major short comings but this week I am going to keep my head up and out of the sand.
Since I will not be near a track or anything I am changing my workouts for next week. The goal is to run 45 minutes easy, plus 1 mile hard everyday. I’m going to wake up feast on fresh fruit and potentially run on the beach! That will be great… like a tropical chariots of fire. I plan to spend my days outside soaking up as much sun as possible, swimming and trying to find some fun activities. Night time will be for feasting on whatever vegan goodies I can find and potentially finding a place to go dancing.
Today I went for my “love run” which wasn’t actually very long. I just went running, which isn’t something I do very often. After a brief warm up and some dynamic stretches I hit start on my watch and just went. Sneaking my way down un-plowed streets and through parks I don’t know I almost got lost a few times. At 35 minutes I turned around planning to do the same time back but ended up a block south of my house well before my watch hit one hour. It was a good run all in all. My calves felt a bit tight and at times my splints felt inflamed but I relaxed the pace and they feel fine now so I hope all is well. It was quite cold and my face was painfully numb by the time I got back in. Thanks to my thicker tights my junk was fine this time.
7.8miles - 56 minutes - 7:10/mile
I’ll try to post in the morning before we head out. If not have a good week all.
This week so far has been really tough for me mentally. I’ve been dealing with mild shin splints and my feet look gross all covered in callouses and blisters. It’s been making running a bit tough and that’s kind of the crux of my ability to stay sane. I don’t want to get too much into it but that’s the reason I haven’t posted in a few days.
Sunday:
10.5 miles in 1:14:55 @ 7:14/mile
This run was super icy and there was a nightmare stretch through a small forest that was complete ice and I had to walk it both ways. I did my best to take it out slow after reading a few articles about the purpose of long runs. I did the first 5.25 at 7:40 pace, guh. I ended up getting lost when I turned around and had to use the “return to home” function on my Garmin for the first time. By the time I got back on track I felt the first hints of a shin splints on my left leg. Not my best run. *shrugs*
Monday: I took the say off and felt like a big sap all night.
Tuesday:
15 min warm up, drills
8 x (400m /w 400m rest)
15 min cool down, drills
I went to the TTFC to run my normal Tuesday work out and forgot my watch, guh. I have no idea how fast I was doing the reps so I just went by feel. This week the last 2-3 felt easier than last week, I think I should be pushing harder.
Wednesday: I took the day off and again sat around doing nothing all night feeling sorry for myself.
Today: I went to the track with the goal of doing a 1 mile time trial. I just didn’t have any speed in my legs. I think it’s too early to be trying for time. I finished the mile and had a load of energy left so I did another rep trying to hit the same pace and then a faster rep in an attempt to get my legs moving. I cut out the plyo and did some work on the weight machines instead so I wouldn’t aggravate my shin. finished with a nice long stretch.
15 min warm up, drills
1 mile - 5:05, 1200m - 3:45, 400m - 1:06
Weight Machines Exercises x 3 (I don’t know what they’re called)
3 x 10 Bicep Curls to Should Press @ 15lbs
5 minutes of Abs
15 min cool down
20 minutes stretching
I met a few guys from the Mississauga Track team and they offered to let my run with them on Thursday nights. I might switch my Friday and Thursday work outs or maybe I’ll just sub work with them in for my easy run on Thursdays. We’ll see how it goes, it’ll be really great to run with a group. They had a group of 5-10 guys running 32-38 splits so they’re around my pace range.
Goodnight punx.
I need to stop sleeping in. It’s beautiful outside and I’m having one of those awful feeling days where I know I’m not leaving the house, oh well. This week was both of my parents birthdays so Happy Birthday, it’s your Birthday! to both of them.
I’ve been lazing about too much for my liking. I really honestly want a job, a shitty job where I was dishes or flip burgers and don’t have to care if the place it going under or not. I’ve applied for every prep cook/dish job on Kijiji and haven’t had any replies. It’s strange you’d think those jobs would be easy to get, but maybe there’s a secret dishwashers union made up of wingnut anarco-punx I can join somewhere. Either way at this point it will have to wait until I return from Cuba in two weeks.
Yesterday I did pace work at the TTFC. My Garmin actually wouldn’t turn on so I didn’t get to time my reps. I went by feel and cruised through my workbouts and a nice warm up. In the morning I had been worried about a shin splint I thought I felt coming on but it seems to be okay. I met a nice dude whose training for a marathon while I was doing my warm up. When he finished he ran the first bit of my 3rd rep with my and timed it. I pulled away from him quite a bit but we estimated my time.
15 min easy, 15 min warm up drills & dynamic stretching
4 x (1200m @ 5km pace, 4min rest)
10 min drills, 15 min easy, 15 min stretch
That’s really it. It’s noon:thirty and I’m awake finally. I’ve cleaned the kitchen and I’m going to go and eat some veggie burgers I made the other day. I have the day off from running today and might go find a yoga place for a evening/night class if not I will stretch for a while here.
Maybe I’ll go downtown and walk around for a bit see whats going on. There’s bound to be something going on somewhere in hip and happenin’ Toronto.
Wholey fucking cow I’m going to be able to jump so high in 3 months! Well, if I do what I just did once a week I’ll go a bit higher at least. I have just returned from dinner with my mother and before that I was at the TTFC doing a plyometric work out, which is really just a fancy word for jump training. Apparently it is supposed to improve your ability to move dynamically, increase strength and build connective tissue. It can also be a bit hard on your joints and you need to be at a certain physical level before you attempt it and even then it’s not difficult to get injured if you’re not careful.
I used to do plyometric exercises in my boxing days but we just called it training. Everything in boxing was about being dynamic because well… it’s a much more dynamic sport than athletics. Here’s a story about how awesome cross training/plyometric exercises can be.
When I left Kitchener for Winnipeg I had just finished a summer/fall of training. I should mention I wasn’t doing a very good job of it and was injured quite a bit but I was training, my PR for 10km was around 39:30. Then winter hit and I moved to Winnipeg where I stopped running and boxed for one year straight at least 4-6 days a week. During that year I went for runs maybe two or three days a month. We did running in class as a warm up, I did lots of skipping, we would also do “stairs” which was 6 flights 2 steps at a time with a medicine ball over your head. I cannot count how many times I ran up those fucking stairs, I hated them but I did them all the time. We would do box jumps on the side of the ring, split jumps, smash a huge tired with a sledge hammer, and thousands of squats in a dozen different variations.
In the spring I went traveling and couldn’t box for the month I was away. For that month I ran 3-4 days a week to stay in shape for a fight I had in the fall, mainly doing speed work, plyo, and strength exercises but no long or easy runs. The night I returned I was into my 2nd bottle of wine and sitting around the fire when someone mentioned there was a 10km race in the morning raising money for the Anarchist Black Cross and Winnipeg Copwatch. I agreed to run, obviously. I was hung over, I hadn’t run more than 4 miles in over a year and I won in 36:30.
I want to harness some of that intensity I felt during that year. It’s a different sport one where you can train for 5 hours a day which I could never do for running. But, somehow there has to be a way to get that strength and aggression I felt when fighting into my running. Maybe some people would think that’s a bit much. Running isn’t an aggressive sport and I don’t want to be pushing people or yelling at them. But I remember during that race I started to fall back and I was just pissed at myself. Like I’ve trained so hard all year I should be able to run a measly 10km. I had no idea how fast I was going but still I haven’t felt that in my running since high school. Maybe I just need to train harder haha but how?
Some answers take time to find. For now here’s what I did tonight.
15 min warm up
15 min track drills
3 x (20 x box jumps, 40 x adjusted split jumps, 15 x incline push ups, 15 x dips, 20 x abs)
4 x 40m bounding, 2 x tuck jumps
3 x (6 x bicep curl to shoulder press 25lbs)
3 x (12 x shoulder raises front, 6 x reverse fly 10lbs)
3 x (50 x arm swings like I’m running, seated, 10lbs each hand)
3 x (12 x calf raises)
8 x 60m burst start to 90% sprint
10 min cool down
15 min stretching (dynamic and static)
Next time I will do more leg work and more chest aswell.
Goodnight Punx
Two Things.
Wishing you good luck and fair winds in all you do.
Seeing how this posting business works.
First time blog texter.
Ed Cz
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You did a wonderful job Dad! Thanks for visiting m’blog you’re a good man.
-Adam
They’re not doubts so much as… excuses, maybe, or we could just call them faults in my vegan will power. I lived in Winnipeg for years and for a large portion of that time I would consider my lifestyle largely vegan. I worked at the anarco-vegan worker collective. I dumstered local meats and cheeses. There were so many cool and radical people around me, working on farms and eating local dairy and meats. They were so connected to their food, way more so than my vegan room mate who was on a steady diet of ramen. So I felt justified with my local dairy and meat purchases. Given there was a flaw to that as well. The more I justified my consumption the more lenient I was on how I came to have my food. In the end I was back to shopping wherever for whatever and feeling the guilt. Really that’s the reason I’m “going vegan” now, the guilt. I’ve surveyed the other reasons and they all have their flaws.
Really is being vegan about your consumption, about your monetary contribution and would that make rich people more vegan for abstaining? Does it make stealing unethical goods from notoriously evil stores to feed yourself and your poor friends okay, even justified?
Or, is it about something in your heart; a love for animals and a yearning for a more equitable world? Would that make dumpstering meats and animal products, as a response to the disrespectful act of slaughtering an animal just to throw it away, vegan? After all it’s energy can live on in you to help bring down the system that killed it. Is destroying rainforest, the homes of hundreds of species, to plant our vegan soy beans really loving and caring for animals?
Or, is it a political statement? If so does this mean that I support consumer politics now? Wouldn’t that mean you need to be in solidarity with the workers as well as with the animals? Is buying hummous from Real Canadian Superstore really vegan, after all they have 100’s of fish and deli counters across the country? What’s more vegan the imported avocado I buy from Walmart or the local goats milk from the farmer’s market, the GMO corn in my favorite vegan Doritos or the local feta on my greek salad at some bourgeois diner?
For a long time I concluded that being vegan was an unobtainable ideal. It was for rich people or at least people richer than I was. I couldn’t afford to eat 100% local, vegan, organic and ethical. So I tried to be as ethical, as local/organic and as vegan as possible because that’s what having food politics means to me but I would never reach 100% in any catagory. People would ask me if I was vegan and I would shrug and say “not really”. But I felt a bit robbed. I had a food politic I felt was more developed than some vegans I knew yet it never really became a part of my identity because I had all of my excuses, my doubts or whatever we’re calling them. I wish there was a word and not a phrase for what I believe. I’m using the word vegan to describe a more encompassing food politic the same way I used punk to describe awesome radical people and it’s confusing the people in the same way.
So here we are at my dilemma and I can say with some certainty that there will come a time over this year when I will be very conflicted about what to consume. But I am trying to make a decision and move in a direction that will keep my from moving back into my old shitty habits. I’ll go 100% vegan because right now I can. But I’m going to work towards being 100% local, ethical and organic (maybe I’ll buy This Book, or borrow it from Mel). For me sometimes it’s easier when things are black and white like in that old Against ME! song.
I also love feeling like a righteous dude and I’m okay with admitting that. My buddy RJ tells me that you can’t climb upon your consenting vegan high horse and rain down intrinsic wisdom granted to you by mother earth until you’ve been vegan for at least one year but I’m not going to wait that long… haha. Here’s a black and white list of facts saying you should go vegan.
The Hunger Argument
Number of people worldwide who will die of starvation this year: 60 million
Number of people who could be adequately fed with the grain saved if Americans reduced their intake of meat by 10%: 60 million
Human beings in America: 243 million
Number of people who could be…
