100 Things to Uncomplicate Your Life

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I didn’t create this list but copied from another forum.  Can’t get any better than that.

1. Don’t try to read other people’s minds

2. Get up 30 minutes earlier so that you don’t rush/get a ticket while driving too fast/have to explain why you’re late/get fired

3. Get 8 hours of sleep per night so that you think more clearly

4. Stick to your budget

5. Start saving and investing every week, no matter how little you can spare

6. Balance your checkbook

7. Don’t try to be friends with everyone. Cultivate closer relationships with fewer people.

8. Don’t try to do business with everyone. Identify your target client and take very good care of them.

9. Before getting angry, ask yourself if it will really matter in 20 years

10. Focus on being a good person, not on pleasing others

11. Stay home this Saturday, and finish off that nagging chore that you need to finish

12. Kiss and make up

13. Make a weekly menu, and shop for only those items at the market

14. Ask your grandparents the best way to uncomplicate life, and try it for a month

15. Fill up your gas tank when it’s half full

16. Don’t drink alcohol when you’re tired, sad or mad

17. Pay your bills on time

18. Get an annual physical examination

19. Say “I love you” to your significant other and to your children. Studies show that more marriages last, and fewer kids use drugs, when these words are spoken every day.

20. For just one day, imagine everyone’s intentions are good because most people’s are

21. Give away clothes that haven’t been worn in two years

22. Throw out clothes that are in disrepair, and can’t be mended

23. When you have a conflict with someone, talk it out. Don’t let it turn into more than it is.

24. Know what your priorities are in life, and act as if they are your priorities

25. Tell the truth

26. Don’t cheat

27. Don’t steal

28. If you’re holding on to a ridiculous grudge, let it go

29. Clean your house weekly, so that it doesn’t become too large a chore

30. Do your best at work, or at school

31. Don’t eat when you aren’t hungry

32. Eat when you are hungry

33. Be yourself

34. Say no unapologetically

35. Cook simple meals

36. Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses

37. Pay off your car before buying a new one

38. Organise your desk at the office

39. Change your smoke alarm batteries when the clocks spring forward, and again when they fall back

40. Organise your important paperwork

41. Take only half the clothes that you planned to take with you on holiday

42. Help your children with their homework every night, and have an open dialogue with their teachers

43. Have white sheets and white towels in children’s rooms/bathrooms, because they’re easily bleached

44. Spend your time with nice people

45. Avoid drama

46. Don’t text or talk on the phone while driving

47. Turn off the television/video games/computer; they’re time consumers

48. Don’t engage in office politics

49. Refuse to gossip, or talk behind other people’s backs

50. Do the dishes right after dinner

51. Never go to sleep angry

52. Ask nicely for what you need and want

53. Walk 10,000 steps per day to help your heart

54. Do 20 push-ups before speaking in anger

55. Leave work at work

56. Don’t befriend anyone that isn’t trustworthy

57. Don’t envy others

58. Have your oil changed

59. Take vitamin C BEFORE you catch a cold

60. Don’t work more than 8 hours per day

61. Weed your garden weekly

62. Wash your car weekly

63. Have a spring cleaning month every year, and do one room at a time

64. You don’t need to be best friends with work colleagues, but build respectful partnerships

65. Don’t drink and drive

66. Don’t look for reasons to be angry or sad, look for reasons to be happy. You’ll always be able to find plenty of each.

67. Be friendly with your neighbours

68. Return emails and phone messages promptly

69. Schedule in free time

70. Don’t procrastinate

71. Do what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it

72. Be more flexible when you’re able to be

73. Forgive and forget. End of story.

74. Break the consumerism habit…put a three month moratorium in place on buying anything not deemed a necessity

75. Start your diet on September 1, rather than January 1, so that you won’t also have holiday pounds to lose

76. Take care of any health issues or concerns

77. Have your tires rotated

78. Have your brakes checked

79. Have your eyes checked

80. Don’t let your imagination run away with you

81. Let go of perfection in others

82. Let go of perfection in yourself

83. Don’t try to help those that refuse to help themselves

84. Find a way to reduce your commute to work

85. Have an alloted amount of worry time per day/week, that you strictly abide by

86. Drink more water

87. Eat more salmon

88. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill

89. Wear your hair in a classic, easy to care for style

90. Finish what you start

91. Wear classic clothes and shoes that never go out of style

92. Create a daily routine

93. Have a 1, 5, 10 and 20 year plan for your financial and life goals

94. Slow down

95. Eat out less often

96. When you ask your husband which outfit looks best, thank him for his answer and wear the one he liked rather than focusing on why he didn’t like the other one

97. Allow your children to grow up

98. Clean out your garage, and donate anything that hasn’t been used in the past year

99. Stretch every day

100. If a relationship is over, let it go

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Failure – an understatement!

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Wow, where do I begin?  OK how about some race reports for the last 2-3 weeks?

June 19th Lake 2 Lake Classic 50k MTB Race – DNS – I wasn’t feeling it and some reports indicated the trails were crap so I lamed out.  Post-race reports from others say it turned out to be a great race, and I remember the weather was perfect.  I also learned this was the last year for this race.  Oh well, I missed out.  Add it to another regret.

June 25th Welland Sprint Triathlon – DNF – That’s right DID NOT FINISH.  I barely finished the swim (3rd from last overall), where I found myself not being able to catch my breath.  Even on the bike my breathing & heart rate were off the charts and I was barely moving, kept getting coughing fits probably from inhaling too much Welland canal water during the swim, and hyperventilating to entire swim.  Lets see what probably led up

Welland-Swim Exit

to this:

  • My swimming is simply not up to snuff – as in I almost drowned in this race.  Although I did progress since I started last January, it simply wasn’t getting better quick enough, not to mention lack of open water practice.  Once again, I just seems I’m not cut out to be a swimmer and you know what, I have no regrets about ditching the swim.
  • Mentally I was simply not feeling it as seen by my shitty / lack of training in June.  A combination of things simply left me unwilling to put in the time or control myself.  This also led to a very bad diet, including pizza, beer, chinese food, etc. etc.  Simply atrocious and one of those embarrassing setbacks.  Well, there’s consequences to a bad diet and lack of exercise….weight gain, and plenty of it.

    Welland-Bike Start

Well that covers the race reports, or whatever you wanna call those.

So with what happen at the Welland race, I officially pulled the plug on swimming, again, and like I said, I have no regrets.  I tried – tried hard, but it just isn’t working out.  Not to mention I don’t really enjoy swimming anyhow.  With that said, any multisport I do in the future will be duathlons – run, bike, run.  I’ve adjusted the race schedule to reflect this revisited direction.

Now regarding the diet; I knew I was on a bad path but I didn’t think it was that bad until I jumped on the scale this morning – 222.6 lbs - Yeah that’s right, last year at this time I was low 190s.  I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about it – all that hard work evaporating away and I have no one to blame but myself. I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this eating issue for the last few months – what’s changed? I’m still not 100% sure. All I can do is set goals, be accountable, and forge ahead.

Now that all that is out of the way, my main focus is to bring the weight back down, and any racing participating I do this year is only to have fun. Trying to be competitive at over 220 lbs is simply not going to happen.  Hence the reason all the races are basically shorter distances while I drop some weight and build up my fitness again.  Since I’ve dropped going to the pool, I’ve also restarted my strength training routine 2-3 times a week to hopefully gain some of the muscle mass I’ve loss this year.

Speaking of goals, here are a few milestones I’m shooting for:

  • Aug 1st – 212 lbs
  • Sep 1st – 205 lbs
  • Oct 1st – 197 lbs
  • Nov 1st – 192 lbs

Those weight targets are while maintaining or even gaining some lean muscle mass, hence the slower drops.

And finally, I had to have a new look for the site to go with the new direction, something a little more simple and clean. Hope everyone likes it.

Final Message:

Setbacks and challenges will happen throughout life.  You can choose to dwell on them or you can pick yourself and push through them.

 

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Race Recap: Woodstock Give-It-A-Tri Triathlon

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I’m just going to start off by saying, it’s a miracle I even pulled this off given my training has been non-existent for the last 2 weeks, in some part, it was out of my control due to life circumstances….by I digress.

I’ve done 3 duathlons(run, bike, run) to date, but no triathlons(swim, bike, run), until yesterday that is and I’m happy to report that I did not drown.  :roll:   :lol:

Full breakdown of the race is available HERE but I’ll elaborate more in the post here.

The race was put on my Multisport Canada, a.k.a. Recharge with Milk Triathlon Series.  It was pretty well organized with a nice atmosphere and everyone was friendly, except for the weather.  It was a chilly day sitting around 14-15C and a strong NW wind.

I had a big cheering committee for this event; Mrs. Fat Guy and my sister & brother in-laws.  Thanks guys!

We arrived around 10:05 AM and with a scheduled race start of 11 AM, I had to hustle.  I ran to get my bib number, my registration package, timing chip, and got body marked.  I also squeezed in a pitstop at the port-a-potty before the lineups started.  Ran back to the car and got all my stuff together.  Then, ran to transition to setup.  There was no room left on the rack that I was suppose to be in (went by bib number) and I looked at the next rack for the 526+ bib numbers and there was 2 bikes on it so I just racked there as I knew at this point, it wouldn’t fill up anyhow.

As I was unpacking, I heard an announcement about a mandatory pre-race meeting which really messed me up to get ready.  I went to the meeting till about 10:50 at which point I bailed to finish my setup and put on my wetsuit.  I got to the start area a couple minutes before the start, swam a 20-30m out and back, and that was my warmup.  The water was warmer than the outside air which was kinda of interesting for the middle of June.

The race length for this “try-a-tri” race was suppose to be 300m swim, 10k bike, and 2k run.  Well, just before the start of the swim, the first buoy decided to go for a little swim.  In the end, the swim course was closer to 425m which is why the swim pace for everyone seems really slow in the results.  That extra length REALLY killed me.

THE SWIM

I’m going to focus more on the swim in this report as biking and running is pretty straight forward and really have nothing to add other than what’s in the post link breakdown above.

Let me first start by saying, this was only my 2nd open water swim (now known as OWS).  The first was the day before, Sat, in the Welland canal as a test for the wetsuit and how it was.  From my experiment on Saturday, I learned that sighting (checking to see you’re going in the right direction) was going to be my big draw back as I almost swam in a circle at my first attempt.  What I wasn’t prepared for was the other bunch of people swimming around me, into me, up me, down me, etc that I encountered on race day.  I mean, I knew about it from the reading I’ve done, and also this funny Clif Bar commercial, but it’s still surprises the crap out of you and it’s something that needs to be dealt with….while your swimming and trying to breath at the same time.

When the horn sounded I pointed myself in the direction of the first buoy and told myself to just “take your time” and focus on trying to swim left.  That was until I felt someone trying to swim over me, so I picked up the pace a little only to almost get kicked in the face from someone ahead of me, then someone t-boned me on my left side.  When I looked up, I was already too far to the right and had to correct.  This went on for the first 2-3 mins until the pack thinned out a little.  It seemed like it took forever to get to that 1st buoy.

Once I got to the first buoy, there was someone treading water at the buoy and everyone is trying to get around him.  Interesting.  Just passed the 1st buoy I also tread water for 5 seconds to see where the next buoy was, then proceeded.  At this point I was already tired and gasping for air every time I took a breath.  Once again I told myself to slow down, take long strokes and relax.  That was working for about 30 seconds until someone else decided to t-bone my right side.  I looked to sight and I was right on target so this person was heading in the wrong direction.

Once I passed the 2nd buoy I knew I was on the home stretch and couldn’t wait to get on terra firma.  Then it happen….I saw the bottom of the mirky water…some land.  I stood up and started walking out of the water like a drenched swamp monster, trying to catch my breath.

It took 12m:43s for the swim, but it might as well had been an hour.  It was done…the dreaded swim was done.  Off to the bike.

Bike & run were uneventful.  Based on my HR, I was at the redline for both…that’s all I had.

Official Results HERE.

Results Summary

Official Time: 48m 25s
Overall: 21st of 113 (19%)
Age Group:
(M40-44) 		3rd of 9 (33%)
Gender: 18th of 51 (35%)

 

Garmin Data:
Bike (10k) | Run (2k)

Here are a few pics of the event:

Woodstock Triathlon 2011

 

Next on the schedule is suppose to be the Lake 2 Lake 50k Mountain Bike race, next Sunday on June 19th, but I’m not 100% committed to do this race yet.  Some preliminary reports indicate that the proposed trail for the race is in questionable condition and could be a disaster waiting to happen.  Following that is the Welland Sprint Triathlon on June 25th.  This is a 750m swim, 30k bike, and 7.5k run.  That swim scares me.  8-O

 

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Pre-Race: Liberty! Bicycles 12-Mile Summer Series MTB

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The Liberty! Bicycles 12-Mile Summer Series is an 8 event mountain bike series in the St. Catharines area that goes bi-weekly from Wednesday June 1.  It’s a cross country course in the 12-mile creek area, approx. 15k long with a “LeMans” style running start.  So I signed up for this series to get my MTB fix, and it’s also a great anaerobic workout for the biking muscles.   8-)

So the first race is tomorrow evening at 6:30 PM.  Since this will technically be my first MTB ride of the year, I plan on simply “riding” the course to get reacquainted with the nuances of XC MTBing. As the season progresses I’ll be pushing a little harder.  I have to be careful to avoid falling, or remember how to fall properly to avoid as much injury as possible.  :roll:   :lol:

Got the bike all prepped last night, tweaked the shocks for proper preload, tire pressures, shifting, #142 number plate installed, etc. and everything seems good to go.

This will be the only pre-race post for the series, but I’ll try and put up a race recap after every race.

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Totals: May 2011 Training

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Here we are….poof, May is done.  And it looks like we might be getting some better weather, and this past month was somewhat of a mixed bag for training.

Swimming:  This should have been in the 22k yard range, but it’s not, why?  In the last week and today, my pool has been closed because the ceiling tiles are falling.  Not sure when it will reopen but it looks like I may have to look for an alternative.  I did order a wetsuit so hopefully I can get in some open water swims in the next couple weeks.  So this is up 13% from last month, but down approx. 14% of where it should have been.  Shooting for 20k yards for June.

Running: Another disappointment in a real bad way, and it showed at the duathlon last week.  I’m going to have to pick this up or it’s going to screw up all my races.  Down 16% from April, down approx. 30% from where it should have been.  Very bad. :-|  Shooting for 110k for June.

Biking: This was the only positive of the month, and it was needed considering the lack the previous months.  I predicted 300-400 kms for May, but managed 500k.  But my longer rides on the weekends have been with the road bike, not the TT bike.  I need to start doing the longer rides with the TT bike to get use to being in the position for longer than an hour.  Up 300% from April.  Shooting for 600k for June.

 

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