My Backyard

First off, I would like to start with a commercial that I've recently seen.

For some reason or another, people seem to think that if they were to win the lottery, all of their time would be spent outdoors, doing stuff that only "rich" people can do.

African Safari for 2, probably $5k to $10k, all flights and tours included. Pricey trip, but it's not out of reach for the regular working Joe, such as myself. If you plan to save for a trip like that, it can be done.

Jumping off a cliff into the water, free. There are places all around that we can do that. It doesn't take millions of dollars to "finally" do that.

Helicopter tour of mountains and volcanoes, $150/hour. If you live in Hawaii, you are lucky and don't have to travel far to see volcanoes (just look down, really). But if you live in western Canada, you can hire a helicopter for $150 for a 1 hour sightseeing tour of sights that are just as fantastic. You may not see volcanoes, but you can see things that are just as beautiful, if not more. (Moraine Lake, for example).

So the world instantly becomes your playground and backyard if you win the lottery. Well, I disagree. People need to realize at just how accessible these places are nowadays. You don't need to be filthy stinkin rich to do outdoor stuff. You don't even need much money at all. Just enough for gas, some beef jerkey and a sweet potato, and you can live like a millionaire everyday.

Sweet potatoes, ready for boiling. Mash up, and eat after working out. Endurace food to the max. Your muscles will dig it.

Here is my backyard. I went for run this morning up Moose Mountain. I had done this run before, but this is the first time this year. It was pretty wet, and there were some pretty snowy/icy patches. I had to be at work no later than 8:30, so I only made the first summit, but that's ok. I slogged up to the first summit as fast as I could, and going down was a blast. I kept telling myself this is "faaaaaaaaaantastic!!!", "I love this" and "woooooooeeeeeeeeeee" the whole way back.

GPS data can be found here.

View from the first summit, looking West towards the ranger station. I needed about an extra 1/2 hour total to make it there, but I did not have enough time today.

Looking south, down my beloved Rockies.

Looking north. It was so beautiful this morning, I could have stayed there all day.

I am currently training for some upcoming races. Some of the races I don't plan on completing (although I will if I can), I am just entering in them for a motivational carrot to be dangled in front of me. As the first picture shows, I have learned the value of using sweet potatoes as a recovery fuel after workouts, especially after runs. I don't know why they are more advantageous than regular white or red potatoes, but they break down quickly into glucose and replenish depleted reserves in your muscles. So that works very well for me.

I have also confirmed that I am indeed gluten intolerant. Not celiac, but if I wheat on an empty stomach, I'm done. So a paleo approach to nutrition is going a long way in my training. People say it is 60% nutrition, 40% exercise. Well I believe that a good routine is 100% of both.

And lastly, I am back at blogging. It's been on hiatus lately for no reason other than just not blogging at all. I can see from my site tracker ticker that I've reached 11,000 views on this blog, so that's totally awesome! Lat time I blogged, it was around 9,000. That's awesome (reiterated).

:-)

Thoughts on Motivations

So I don't blog as much as I used to. Perhaps I have run out of things to say, or I've said all I had to say. I doubt that, but it is Sunday evening now and things have happened. This blog post, however, will not be about those things, but only feature some photos of what's been up while my thought train thunders down the line.

Slugs from the south. Lovely, lovely critters...

Once a week I would like to blog, perhaps as a recap or about a specific topic. This won't be some thoughtful, insightful, in-front-of-the-fireplace-legs-crossed-with-a-glass-or-brandy-in-a-comfy-chair type of post, but just things I feel like saying. If you're expecting that, well, I guess you should click on "Next Blog". I guess I am not out of things to say afterall.

Running in the humidty and heat. At 630am.

The biggest thing I have to talk about is motivation. Where it comes from, and where it goes, and what to do with it. Please, do not take what I say as advice, but merely accept it as a Lorne brain dump. 

Giant freekin spiders. Sheesh, probably poisonous too... Let's pet it.

I spent 21 or 22 days on the paleo diet lately, I can't really remember. I was perhaps looking for this fountain of youth or a magic pill. But for what? I don't need to lose weight. I don't need hardcore sport performance improvement. I didn't really know what I needed. It probably had something to do with not losing energy and  being able to keep up with my 2 year old son. So I dived in head first and tried it out. I was aiming for 30 days, but that is in fact, just a number. So no wheat, no dairy, no sugar, no processed foods. Food I can catch, hunt or gather. Meat, veggies and fruit, nuts and seeds. It's pretty straightforward and i did really well. One of the first things I noticed was an increase in energy. This was largely due to the fact that I was consuming a low GI / no sugar diet, so no insulin crashes. 

Driving in Georgia. Many many miles of this.

That was the continuing trend for the whole time. No crashes in energy levels and a feel-good feeling throughout. I was highly motivated to make it through, and especially motivated as I was on the road and traveling lots. I wanted to beat the travel odds about eating well while on the road. And I succeeded. For a while, at least. I could eat at pretty much every restaurant, but had to carefully scan the menu for what I needed. And pretty much every restaurant had paleo friendly choices (with clever omissions of certain ingredients). So I remained motivated. But after a while, especially on the road, I tired of eating chicken salads and such, and Trader Joe's GF Beef Jerkey, and nuts, etc.... But I proved it is possible. It's just not my thing though.

South Carolina peaches, nom nom nom.

You see, I am a foodie (self-proclaimed), and I love to try everything. So that became an issue, especially being in a new culinary location. I wanted to try new foods, and since I ran out of reasons to continue eating paleo, I stopped eating paleo. But a new problem arose.

Somewhere in someplace in either South Carolina, North Carolina, or Virginia. I can't remember.

I took the stop-paleo situation as a total dive-bomb into lack-of-motivation land. I don't know what happened, but since then my motivation has not existed. I guess I have to wonder what I am motivating myself to do. Well, perhaps I linked eating paleo to successes in health and fitness. And since I stopped eating paleo, I figured I didn't need to exercise anymore. Well, I know that is not true, since I love to exercise (yes, I do). But what happened is that I did stop exercising, and I lost motivation to do the things I love to do when it comes to exercise. When I stop running cause I don't feel like it, something is up. So what is it? I don't know, but here are the things I would like to do:

-100 pushups in a row. Yes, that is right. 100 straight, strict pushups. I can do about 30 right now. Hmph.

- 5 km run in less than 20 minutes. I've gotten to 20:20 before, and now I am probably around 24 minutes.

- Canadian Death Race (Aug 2013). 127 km of dire agony on my legs. I don't know why I want this one, but I do. 

- 12 strict chinups. I dont' even think I can do one.

The knots of roads while driving into Washington, D.C.

So what am I to do? I bought a day planner to keep myself motivated. That didn't work well, as it has sat empty for the last week. I read about how to do it. That works Lorne, that really works. Eventually you have to do it and stop reading. I guess all I have to do to is start slow. Crawl-walk-run. That's my approach. I think perhaps that my largest problem is I hit the ground running and fall apart quickly. I think I can still run a 20:20 5km or do 50 pushups. I can't, and I don't want to admit that I can't. Pride and ego are getting in the way of progress. They're getting in the way of anything, really. They're killing my motivation. So I guess I know what I have to do. Break down my goals into crawling steps. 

The White House at night.

Next week, I will detail how I break down my goals into achievable steps. I will try to make my blog posts into weekly posts as well, as I think that is good. I've learned a lot about myself just by writing tonight.

Lorne :-)