Peiche

I just want to points something out. There was this guy that worked for the Japanese air force that could predict with 80% accuracy which new pilots would become successful - by looking at their faces.

Check wikipedia. Its a thing. Maybe not to the scientific community. But its still a thing.

Based on your facial features, old greek people used to think they could tell alot about your personality. So I analyzed my face.

Judging by the best [worst] picture of me I could find, I have a "square-round face". So, this gives me the following charming characteristics:

"They are known as water-shaped faced people. They have plump and fleshy face. They are known to be sensitive and caring. They are thought to have strong sexual fantasies. If you are looking forward for a long-term, stable relationship, these people will prove to be the right choice."

I think I did it wrong. My lack of long term, stable relationship history coupled with my insensitive and uncaring nature makes me wonder if this pseudoscience is nothing more than a cousin of the horoscope.

But the real question is, if I put on lots of weight, and get a rounder, and plumper face, will I become more sensitive and caring, and will I get strong sexual fantasies???


D.C.

Chapter 2: the fight for survival.

    In the past, the weeks immediately after training camp are pretty crucial in the grand scheme of things, although they are relatively easy weeks, they just build a foundation for bigger and harder weeks in the future. That wasn't the case this year, the reigns were loosened just enough to allow for some changes in the workouts, aka, we made the easy workouts just a lil harder. Pretty good news for me as I often feel pretty flat until the bigger workouts.

     Now some not so great news was that I have class random thursdays throughout the year during our practice time. Pretty stupid if you ask me, but I must endure, and that sometimes this means getting up at 6:30am to grind away while the rest of the team sleeps. Not gunna lie, I did feel pretty hardcore. And it did give me an extra 12 hours recovery before the race...

     First meet of the year, the simple thought is, "its gunna be a tempo, no one wants to play just yet, lets have some fun lads". But just as easy as that thought popped into the head, it got blown out. Apparently that was the day we needed to push from the gun. Turned out to be a pretty damn good idea too. Bunch of us under 26min, and even a couple of us beat the AUS champ from last year. Let us roll baby, roll! 

    Now of course it is XC and the nose hasn't won a battle since at least grade 8, but with a constant supply of kleenex and tylenol and of course water we toed the line for a second saturday with a different strategy. 600m(@ 10km effort)-1km(@tempo). It took a while, like 7km to finally break everyone, but it worked, a solid finish, a solid workout, nothing to do but look ahead. My body on the other hand, wasn't a true friend and cramped up in the last mile, and I dropped 5sec in the final km. 

     I do have a handle on this cold, I'll be fine. (Some guys on the team are starting to chat a bit about maybe taking me down, I think they keep forgetting that the real races are 10km, giddy up)

     The fight: not only to stay on this all-star team but to built this all-star team to what it can be, to prove ourselves as one of the best in the nation, or even something as simple as to prove the nation that we do belong and that we aren't scared. The fight is on! Hail and Hell!


cough cough sniffle sniffle.

rj

Appendix 1: food for thought.

Alright, so first off I'd like to say as a runner, an endurance athlete, our diet needs well organized. It needs to have lots of the 3 main food groups: carbs, water and meat. A fair amount of the 3 middle food groups: fruits, vegetables and peanut butter. And a little bit of the bottom 3 food groups: beer, pizza and salad dressing. Now when to eat certain things and how much to eat of each is of course the hardest question. So, I will break down how my diet works while competing, and its a pretty simple guide. It can be used for anyone who wants to drop 10, 15, 25 pounds****.

Monday: easy run. basically eat whatever i want, its Monday.

Tuesday: workout + morning run. Need to recover from workout, eat whatever i want.

Wednesday: easy run + morning run. need to fuel up for tomorrow's workout, eat whatever i want.

Thursday: workout + morning run. need to recover from workout, eat whatever i want.

Friday: easy run. carbo load day, basically eat all carbs in house. and i shall call it mount pasta.

Saturday: workout or Race. come on, its race day, eat good before race, eat everything after.

Sunday: LSD(not the drug). yeah, must not do any moving other than eating.


**** for best results run 70-95 miles per week. otherwise you might get fat.

eat up, because you know what they say about big bananas.

rj

Chapter 1: Get Hydrated and Stay Regular.

     I guess we are doing this, some questions were answered, and for now the running gods are in my favour. Training Camp and Frosh Week happen to mingle pretty good, and 7:30 am runs are pretty killer... But not for this guy! I got to sleep early! Oh ya I'm the man! Seriously though, finally getting back to the team, and all the craziness of XC is exactly what I needed. If the coaches or media crew is reading this, the rookie party didn't happen and it wasn't awesome.

     Of course as the week progressed, the long days started to get to me, and once school started it was worse, I will admit I was kinda blessed and I had a class during one of our practice times so I had to partake in a solo venture. And not only did it recharge the batteries, but gave me the confidence I needed to realize that although my summer wasn't perfect, it was enough so that in the next 2 months I can still become the runner I had dreamed of being before CIS last year.

     Finally Saturday rolls around, the day of our TT, and some of the guys are a lil nervous, and being the person I am, can't let people get to worked up with the TT. My sister had got me a pair of FLASH boxers with a cape on them for X-mass. I figured what would lift some spirits and calm some nervous??

     Yeah, I ran the race in Boxer shorts!

     Now a team TT is always suppose to be pretty chill, but as always it never really turns out that way, for some reason, I put myself in a chase pack behind a lead group of 3. with about 1.5 km to go, I mad a decision to enter "no mans land" and try to move on the lead group. Now I know you people know of "no mans land" and there are two options, 1. Just keep slowing down, 2. Catch the group ahead. everyone knows the latter is very rare. So I put myself in a position to fail and kept working until I finally bridged the gap! The race ended shortly after.

You know what they say eh?
Not bad for a beer belly.

onward and upward from here my friends.

rj



ECA

THE PREFACE.

     The nerves I feel every XC season are always so different, it's a combination of excited, scared, fired up, anxious and this year worried. Only worried because I must pray to the running gods to let the knee hold out, I have been doing a fair amount of maintenance work to stay out of danger but knowing that I am no longer invincible frightens me. Can I handle the 140km weeks? Can I handle the intense workouts? Can I manage with minimal R&R? Questions I do not know the answer too and am very eager to find out.

     As per the rest of the summer, I managed to average about 8-9 hours a week, ranging from 110-125km for 12 weeks, mainly singles as well. For the first time in my life I convinced myself to take a down week, which felt very weird, and I am not sure how I feel about it.

     On the flip side to that, found my way back to school, after a brief solo training camp very similar to what I believe life at Percy Cerutty's Camp would be like. Good food, and 10 miles of beautiful beach to run on. Many say beach running is over rated, I could spend hours running on that beach. Never wore shoes for all 3 days. Was wonderful. 

I guess to finish this all off, 

CIS is in ten weeks,
The beard is beginning to emerge,
So let the battle begin.

rj