#5 - Blue Belt

Well, I already wrote this out once but for whatever reason it's not here so I guess I'll write it out again!

Unfortunately I don't remember much as this happened on July 7th, which is quite awhile ago. What I do remember is this:
I was doing the Advance Class when about half way through the class was halted by Professor Tim Shears, who at the time was the head Coach at Gracie Barra Vancouver. He was also one of first coaches for striking when I first started training again in 2000. He was teaching the Fundamentals class and it was time for promotions so he brought both of the classes together. He handed a few stripes and then gave out 4 Blue Belts, of which I was the last one to get.

There was a LOT of higher belts there that night, which means I was about to get tossed around. Basically all the new Blue belts have to give the senior students a free throw, meaning that can judo throw us and we can't give any Resistance. I think I tosses about 8 or 9 times that night, once which was really hard and left me seeing stars (thanks, Joe).

It's been 11 years since the first time I did BJJ, which is about the time it takes to get a Black Belt for most people. I tend to take a the scenic route apparently. It's been 6 months and I'm about due for a stripe on that belt but a lot of injuries, including a damaged disk in my neck, have kept me from training consistently. Not sure how much longer I'll be able to continue but I would really like to earn my purple belt. at this rate it should be.... 15, 16 years? Hopefully not. But even if it is I hope I can continue to train and learn and have fun in this strange and most excellent of sports.

#8- Run the Warrior Dash

This was good times! Thankfully The Warrior Dash came to Canada this year and had the event in Whislter (which I've always wanted to check out but never had any reason to go). I was willing to travel to do the race last year, but I'm grateful that it was so close to home. Only bad thing is Whistler is a Ski Hill (mountain). I'll come back to that in a sec. First though, the best way to get an idea of the race is to just watch it from the perspective of one of the Warriors!




Getting ready for the event was pretty easy. I spent about 3 weeks preparing by running half miles followed by Oly Lift complexes, rope climbing simulation, bear crawls and push/pull/squat circuits. I'd do this 6 times or so to simulate a 5K race with obstacles. I even did some steep hill runs in the workouts, but not nearly enough.

Pre Mud-Bath

I did the event with Claudia and our friend Kelly, who we met in China. She brought along her buddy Paul, who was pretty stoked on the whole thing, too. 










The race itself has about 4000 people, everyone going in a new "Heat" or "Wave" every 30 minutes. There's about 11 obstacles, including a Net Wall, Balance beams, A Blackout Tent, A giant Slip and Slide amongst a few others. The toughest one though was the Ski Hill itself. 1 mile straight up the face of Blackcomb Mountain. My legs were DONE after that and were pretty shaky running back down and through the mud. I still finished with a decent time of 32 minutes. Paul came in 14th overall with 23 minutes which is pretty damn good!



One of the things I liked the most was all the ridiculous costumes people wore. We opted against it but if I do it again I'll probably get dressed up.








 After the race you get sprayed down with a fire hose then you can trade your chip in for a beer and a turkey leg. Unfortunately the "after party" was over at 5:00pm, so we went back in the Village and had our own.

Mud, Sweat and Beers!

 

 

 

As fun as this was, I think I'd like a bigger challenge. The Spartan Race is in March and looks a bit tougher, and then there's the Tough Mudder next June, which looks fucking insane! I think running through strands that are emitting 10,000 volts qualifies that last sentence.

Time to start running!

Number 27. ISSA Specialist in Sports Conditioning Certification

So, after procrastinating on the exam for about 2 years I finally ran out of extensions and ended up doing the 12 week course plus exam in about 4 or 5 weeks. I still need to re-certify my CPR before I get my actual papers, and I should be able to do that pretty soon. Summer is over and work is leveled out so I'll be able to catch up on a lot more stuff now. Including this here Blog.

So yeah, the exam was 57 pages of written exams including full year programming for athletes, 6 case studies, 100 multiple choice  and 100 T/F questions plus I had to make and edit a a DVD of me training an athlete. I had to outline the program, why I was picking each exercise and then demonstrate to the athlete. After they'd do it and I'd correct form and provide feedback. It was actually pretty fun, but the time constraints made it a bit frustrating. My own fault for putting it off for so long.

14. Get Off Continent.

Finally made it out of North America and my first stop was China!

I was here for roughly 4 months so I’ll try my best to get to the gist without leaving out too much.

My trip there was the first time flying to a new Continent. I had, in the past, imagined the day I left Canada and moved to a new country as being really exciting and full of amazingness, fully ready to soak up a new culture and mindset. Unfortunately when I did leave I had a crazy flu, was super sleep deprived (maybe 3 hours of sleep in the previous 36), and other than being able to ask for water or beer or count to 10, I was unable to  speak a of a lick of Mandarin. To top it off I OVERESTIMATED the exact effects of travelling over the International Date Line and told Claudia (who was living there already and meeting me at the Airport) that I was arriving on Sunday, at 11:00pm. Half way through the flight I found out it would be in fact Saturday in China when I arrived.

I spent about 2 hours in Shanghai trying to figure out how to make a phone call so I could tell Claudia about the mix up. Seriously. Keep in mind I’m borderline hallucinating from a serious lack of sleep and too much Nyquil, not to mention I can’t read half of what is written.  Exasperated, I finally got  help  by waving at someone and  pointing at the phone saying “Wa May-O”. Which sorta means “I Don’t Have”.  If I only I could have said “.. a fucking clue what I’m doing.” Then it would have been complete.

I could go on and on, but that’s like the first 4 hours of the 4 months I was there. I could honestly type 100 pages (easily) on the whole trip, but instead I’m just going to highlight each place I saw.

Dalian – 

Above: Zhongsan Square in Dalian. I'd often meet the lady I tutored here.

Super nice city,  but we we’re living about 60km away and the Qing Guay (train) there only ran to about 6:30pm. I’ll never complain about the Vancouver skytrain 1:05am last train again! It was pretty cold with the Siberian winds coming down from the North, but I found the people pretty nice for the most part. The Maple Leaf crew (the school where Claudia was teaching at) were super friendly and helpful and made my arrival there very easy. Finding work was very difficult but I managed to get by teaching some kickboxing classes and doing some tutoring. Thankfully, a little bit of money can go pretty far there.

Shanghai- Man, 3 days here was amazing, and if I don’t make it to New York or any of the other places on my list then I’m ok with that, since this is pretty much all of them in one place. Well, if you go by population - Over 20,000,000 people live here!

We spent out time in the Pudong district where we stayed at some hostels. Our first night there was in a bit of shady hood, with a few pimps and “professionals” hanging around the area. After that we re-located to a different hostel a bit closer to the Bund. When I say  “We” I mean our friends Magda and Luke (who had also just recently arrived from Canada) along with Claudizzle and myself. Being there with Luke was pretty funny; he’s 6’7 and everywhere we went the locals would point and smile at him. If they said anything, it was “So Tall!” to which he would respond in his best Chinese accent “So Short!”

New Years Eve was awesome. After running around trying to get to the right address, we made it to a bar that had all you can drink for $16 CAD! Getting there wasn’t easy though, as there were a bunch of other people with us and we couldn’t get cabs for everyone. Most of the crew got into 2 taxis, and Timio and I hopped on the back of 2 motorcycles and got them to “Go! No Stop!” And No Stop is almost what they did! They drove against traffic in the wrong lane, onto sidewalks and through pedestrians. It was almost like a car chase scene out of a movie. Except with two laughing (and possibly a bit drunk) Chinese guys. The only thing that was funnier then the ride was  Timio’s reaction when they tried to charge us 400 CNY for the ride. We talked them down to 50.

Haggling is a very common practice in China (and other places in Asia as well). They’ll often jack up the price so high that even when you haggle them down they are still making a good profit. As one of my buddies said, “If they accept your first offer, you still got taken!” A good example of this was talking an owner down on a pair of gloves. The original price was 500, and I got them for 30. It’s a bit of pain after a long day, but it’s kinda cool, too. You just have to be in the right mind frame.

Shenzen/Hong Kong- Here we met up with Claudia’s Dad, Don. He’s pretty cool and showed us around Shenzen a bit.

He also hooked us up with a sweet hotel when we came back from Thailand. We were super tired and were only there for a few hours before we had to fly out again, but we stayed up pretty late and made the most of the experience. Though we didn't try out the complimentary gas masks:

Hong Kong was pretty cool too. Not too much different than other big cities in China, other than here they speak Cantonese. This made things a bit trickier for us as Claudia is pretty well versed in Mandarin, but doesn’t know any Cantonese. Not that it matters too much though. Most people here speak a bit of English and it’s not too hard to get by.

That’s it. I have a couple more long ones (Thailand) but in the mean time I’ll put up some of the other things I’ve managed to get done.