What do I excel at?

This is the question we should all ask ourselves before we even start to judge the performance of our Canadian Olympic athletes as they arrive home from Beijing. After every Olympic games the inevitable discussion begins about whether Canadian Olympians lived up to our expectations as a nation.
However, before we begin to judge our athletes performances, on the World Stage against the best competition each Nation has to offer, I think we first need to decide whether we even have a right to comment on their performances by asking ourselves the question "What do I excel at?" What am I a World leader in? What have I dedicated myself to and focused on for the past 4 plus years to make sure I was among the best of the best on the world stage? If you feel you do belong at the top of your chosen field then feel free to judge, otherwise please keep your judgments to yourself.
You have no idea how hard these athletes work and how much they sacrifice to motivate and inspire not only the youth of our nation but all members of our society to achieve excellence in their own lives. I have had the pleasure of getting to know several current and past Olympians and the role they play in our society goes far beyond the hardware they return with from an Olympic games.

Congratulations to all our Olympians and thank you for inspiring me to pursue personal excellence.

Cut and Paste

Here is a little quote from the Brett Sutton interview on slowtwitch.

"Everyone's pinching my training sessions. There's no magic session. It's about how you put it together, for that athlete. We just try to create the environment where success is inevitable. Everybody's wondering about the sessions. I never worry about that. They ask, "where's your logbook?" I'm not interested in the sessions. That's the easy stuff. Any idiot can buy a book with 55 sessions. It's the way you put them within the training cycle. I can't write a book about where to put them in the training cycle, because I've got eight different training cycles depending on what athlete you've got. If you're a 48 kilo girl, you're gonna have a different training session than a 95 kilo bloke. We might have a routine, but within that, everyone has their own thing going."

Click here for Part One and Part Two of this interview.

Despite his history Sutton is a very interesting guy.

The Olympics are Coming

Well it is almost time for the Olympics again. The only problem is I am not sure how I feel about the whole affair. When you add the political turmoil of the Games being in China and all the issues that go along with that with the doping scandals of various nations it is hard to get excited about things.

I have to say that I agree with the idea of not asking athletes to sacrifice their dreams to make a political statement for their country. Especially when we all buy things made in China on a regular basis. A series of acts that has a greater influence on the state of affairs in that country or any other country for that matter that happens to have questionable human rights and labor law issues. In fact a large number of products I sell on a regular basis have some roots in China or Taiwan.

It is also hard to know whether having the Games in China will have a long term positive impact on some of the issues in question. Will having all these eyes on their Nation make the Chinese leaders take notice of the changes that need to occur?

The current doping situation is equally frustrating and distracting. I find it so hard to watch and be inspired by such incredible athletic talent when that little voice in the back of my head is asking whether they have achieved that level of excellence on their own.

Being a cycling fan I have to say I have had about enough. This year for the first time in a long while I did not follow the Tour other than to check the results online each evening. Quite frankly I am tired of hearing about the dopers not to mention the BS they come up with once they are caught.

At least I have the comfort of looking forward to watching two really amazing guys I know compete against the best in the world at this years Olympics. Two guys who I can trust are as clean as you get. Zach Bell who I got to know a couple years ago while he was in and out of K-Town is racing the Points Race and Madison on the Velodrome and Simon Whitfield a long time childhood friend is looking to recapture his crown as Olympic Champion. These two will give me at least two things to look forward to at these games and with any luck there will be a lot more positives to come from the Games as well.

Go Canada!

The Canary In The Coal Mine by Rappstar

Nice little piece of writing by Jordan Rapp

The Canary In The Coal Mine

Bonnie D. Ford of ESPN wrote an excellent piece on the Tour. In it, she talks about Sastre and Evans and the rest of the top-10 riders being escorted to doping control before doing any of the media events. Can you imagine that in baseball? Or football? Imagine the entire NY Giants team filing into a tent for blood samples before the accepted the Lombardi Trophy. Or Kevin Garnett being chaperoned off to a secret locale before donning his NBA Championship had. Unfortunately, I can't.

Shawn Merion had a positive doping test a few years ago and received a four game suspension, that he protested (so he kept playing) until it was convenient to serve. Can you imagine if the Chargers decided to leave the NFL for a season instead (as Sanier-Duval did this year)?Until baseball changed its drug testing policy, you had to be caught for doping FIVE TIMES in ONE YEAR in order to be suspended for a year.

Click here for the rest of the piece.

Parenting

So far so good along the parenting front. Not too many sleepless nights so far. Little Oliver is starting to find a bit of a rhythm and we are even seeing a few hours of uninterrupted sleep at night.
Unfortunately one of his favorite places to sleep is on one of our stomachs as we are laying on the couch or bed. Pretty nice for us as well but I don't think you sleep as well when they are that close.
I am sure that I am some what sleep deprived as I fell asleep on the couch tonight before dinner and missed the phone ringing at my feet.
Hopefully we can establish a bit of a routine soon as I would love to get back to a bit of exercise soon and limit my lose of fitness.
I have touched base with a few of those that did Placid and it got my fires burning. I need to make a plan for the coming fall and next season.
Off to bed as it looks like the boy might cooperate again tonight and go down early.
Hope I didn't just jinx us.

Congrats Ironman LP Athletes

Sitting here watching the last few finishers of this years IM LP I am having mixed emotions.

I am still glad I made the decision not to race. Family and my business needed to take priority over the race and there is only so much energy to go around. However it would have been great to have that feeling of crossing the finish line again knowing that all that hard work had paid off.

That being said, watching the Ironman Live coverage has kept my Iron fire burning.

I am not sure when I will do another but I am going to start to make a multi year plan to get myself to the start line in the next few years.

I just watched the last Kingston Finisher cross the line. "Congrats Joan!"

A few weeks ago I did the run portion of the Smiths Fall Tri and had a blast. It reminded me of how much fun it is to go short and fast. With that in mind I think I am going to try and do a multi year build that gradually increases the race distances each year. A more traditional approach instead of going long to kick things off.

Welcome Oliver