Tales From the Milk Drinker

When I bought my new gym membership at Popeye's I got a free fitness evaulation. Some of the results were obvious and some were surprising!!!

-They test upper body strength on one particular machine. I maxed out the machine. With Ease.

-In the flexibility tests I was extra flexible in a few positions and way way way below average in a few others (good in the ones relating to powerlifting, wicked bad at anything where you rotate the trunk of your body sideways) Somewhat related to this some of the exercises showed that relative to my legs and upper body my trunk is my weakest link, by a long shot. If I can work on this it should make me be able to squat and deadlift bigger weights.

-I have an ideal resting heart rate

-I walk with my feet (and hand) rotated away from the direction I'm walking. This is common in heavier people.

-I did a cardio test that relates heart rate responce to work load and I scored 3 levels ABOVE average for heart/lung work. I had hoped to be average (at best!) The test scale had 5 levels above and below average.

-I scored a chubbsie 22% in the bodyfat analysis. I'ld like to see that number come down a little although the personal trainer giving the test insisted he'ld consider me a "healthy" individual. The bodyfat machine measures your electrical resistance and this test also showed that, aside from being hefty, I was also slightly dehydrated if you consider the balance of salt to water in my body. This is probably from eating too many salty foods.


Overall I was pleased with my test and very happy that my blood pressure was within the normal range because that's something I have had higher measures of in the past. At first I thought a fitness evaluation would be embarassing and useless but I actually enjoyed it.

Thanks to Adam "eddie" Arsenault there are some videos of me on youtube now. Please copy and past this link into your address bar and enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=abramsvillage&search=Search

I'm developing a Saturday pattern for Waterloo.

I got hooked up with a group of Powerlifters who train 4 times a week at a local gym. On Saturday we meet to work on Bench Press and then we go for a big greasey brunch at a local 60's style diner - sort of like Frank's in Fredericton. It's a great motivation to get your ass out of bed.

Hopefully I do a little research reading this afternoon. Maybe look at some world oil statistics on the Beyond Petroleum Website.

Check out the new digs:

My Bed. For Sleeping in and often watching movies on my laptop.

My Desk. For working and communicating with the outside world. Sure has a lot of wires.

My door and my dresser. Not much to report here.

I'ld say the room is about the size of the medium sized room in Brown's Court. It had a funky odor when I moved in but it's either faded or I've ceased to notice.

Yesterday was the first day of school here and I went in to talk to my supervisor and another prof I'm going to take a course with. They were both super cool which is great and a pleasant change from the last few years. I think I'll really like it here. The residence I live in is awsome. There's a community center where we can use pool tables and foosball and a big screen tv and we can borrow movies to watch at home. There's talk of forming a house intramural team which I would probably go for. I've been to the gym once and I'll go again tonight.

My supervisor gave me my first project - sketch out what I think our research will be including a problem, a procedure and method. He seems really in touch with my level of understanding of what graduate work should be - that is that I'm still figuring things out. The other prof I'm taking a course with is a cool guy and we chatted in his office for a long time. He's from Newfoundland so he understands what it is to leave home to go to a school that's just not available to you at home.

I ate a meal at the cafeteria for res students yesterday but I wouldn't rush back. It was good but it cost WAY too much money - 16 bucks. To be fair I had an unreasonable amount of food but come on sixteen bucks for chicken nuggets potatoes and veggies and soup and cake and milk and fruit salad. I think people who buy their food through a meal plan get it a lot cheaper, but I'm not totally sureh how that works.

Also the parking people are a little bit jerky. I had to buy a permit to keep my car in residence and it was 100$ for 4 months - UNB was 80 for the year. The thing that really got me though is that if I wanted to drive to class it would cost an extra 120$. That's off the wall! When the security lady told me that I was like "Oh well that seems reasonable" and she didn't even clue in that I was being sarcastic. I want to walk most days but I wanted the option of driving if the weather was bad. Jerks.

Well I'm posting today from my lovely townhouse/residence in lovely Waterloo Ontario. I had a great drive up on Thursday and Friday with a pleasant and peaceful stop in Quebec city. I think things here will be great. There are 3 other room mates and they're all winners. I'll do an introductory post sometime with photos. I want to dedicate this post to Neil Moore and an understanding of something called the false worry syndrome.

Often challenges in life are spoken about to us by other people who blow them WAY out of proportion. Neil is someone who realizes this and gives the naysayers no attention. One example of FWS is what I'ld heard about driving through Montreal. Many people told me things similar to:

"It's a terrible place to drive. You can't figure out which lane to go in and everyone is going like 130km/h. You have to drive though a tunnel and it's really scarey. You'll be lucky if you make it through."

Let's debunk this myth shall we:

"You can't figure out which lane to go in" - Oh contrare Mon Fraur. There are many signs with clear instruction and diagrams in case you can't read. My goal was to get through the city back onto the Trans Canada highway which leads to Toronto Ontario. Let's think about that for a minute. I was on my way to the biggest destination in central Canada. Common sense would say then that you just stay straight on the road and don't take any obscure off ramps. Common sense prevailed. A shout out for this also goes to my cottage neighbor Donny MacLeod. He gave me one piece of advice everyone should hear - Concerning road signs ONLY look at the one overhead of the lane you are in. The others only matter to cars in the other lanes. The main road you want to get on is highway 40. Everywhere you look you'll see signs with highway 40 and arrows pointing every which way. These are for people in other lanes to try to get them into the lane you are in, so just ignore them.

"Everyone is going like 130 km/h" No. They aren't. The posted limit is 70 km/h and most people were going 80 as was I. I saw one single speed demon who blew by everyone and weaved in and out of the traffic dangerously. Two minutes later I saw him at the side of the road having a chat with a police officer who looked pretty pissed off at the guy.

"You have to drive though a tunnel and it's really scarey" Oh grow a set would ya. In case you didn't realize we're always driving in tunnels - it's just that usually the walls are made of trees ditches and guard rails instead of cement. Trust me, if you veer off the highway along any other part of the trans canada the results will be equally tragic as if you go off the road in the Fontain Tunnel in Montreal.

"You'll be lucky if you make it through" Well than I must have a horse shoe up my ass. It turned out that staying on the main road you came into the city on and driving the speed limit (+/- 10km/h) is the perfect recipie to get you through.

In conclusion I'm glad I had such a great drive up. I felt a sense of accomplishment when I pulled into Waterloo at 6:30 on Friday night. Unfortunately it took me two hours to find my townhouse but that's because I was pretty tired and being a bit of an idiot.

Read the other post first if you please.

This guy is about to pick up the weights for the farmer's walk.

The final event was the stones - an event that struck fear into me. So far I had made some sort of success in each event - lifted some traps, did the farmer's walk some distance, etc. I feared I might not even budge the first and lightest of five stones. We had to pick them up and place them on the haywagon seen below. I got really physced up and was able to do the first 2 - the 200 and 220 lb stones. The third stone was only 240 but I couldn't budge it. Possibly this was because I was exhausted but more likely if you look you'll see the two smaller stones are real natural rocks of odd shape and easy to get a handle on. The 3 bigger stones were poured concrete and sperical and thus harder to grip.

I was proud to have moved the first two stones and glad to have enjoyed the whole contest and saw it end. All competitors recieved fifty dollars for their efforts which I felt was very classy on the part of the organizers especially as it was free to register for the competition. I like the way the contest focused on "functional strenght" instead of lifting a regular size and shaped barbell which is perfectly balanced like in powerlifting. Overall it was really fun and I'ld do it again. I was 9th place overall. Adam "Eddie" Arsenault was 8th and my friend JP Richard was 7th. We were all by far the 3 smaller guys in the contest with the top guys being near to or in some cases over 300 lbs in bodyweight. The overall winner was Chris Harper and the runner up was my favorite competitor Brian Arsenault. Third was a mountain of a man named Alex Wallace.

On Thursday of the last week of August I was scheduled to be a helper at the strongman contest in the Acadian Festival at the rink in Abram-Village. When I got there I tried my hand at three of the five events and decided to enter it. Here's the story:

First event was a tractor pull. Competators lie down with their legs against a firmly secured platform and pull the tractor between the blue lines on the rink (fifty feet) as fast as they can. I got it in just about the time limit, 75 seconds. The winners were in the high twenties and I actually bet one guy from moncton who didn't finish pulling it. It was a relatively small tractor which weighed about 4500 lbs. I was proud because it was my first event and the adrenaline was flowing pretty fast. I couldn't believe I was pulling a tractor! Also this was one of the events I didn't get to try previously so the pressure was on to perform in front of the 500+ crowd.

The next event was the lobster traps and the one I felt I was most confidant in. We had to stack lobster traps on a platform, a row of 3 topped by a row of 2 topped by 1. That's easy you say. Except for the 200 lbs of cement in the bottom of each trap.
I got the bottom 3 in place well but couldn't do any more based on a lack of proper strength and height. Shown here is one of the volunteers, Jules Gallant (brother to Pierre Gallant who Daniel and I played soccer with) putting a trap back into place for the next competitor.Next was the log flip in which we had 75 seconds to flip a large log which was on a hinge (making it much easier) as many times as possible. I got six and was again proud of my showing

Next was the farmer's walk, an event that I had good confidance for but ended up being (in my opinion) my worst one. You had to pick up a pair of weights with a combined weight of 500 lbs and walk as far as you could in 75 seconds. I only made it 50 feet which was by far the least of any of the 9 competitors but I feel is still respectable when put in perspective. My trouble wasn't lifting the weights it was grip strength. As I walked every step made the weights shake and I would stuggle to not drop them. It was still really fun though. Here's another guy doing it

Oops it appears blogger is saturated with pictures. I'll contine in another post above this one

I'll be driving tomorrow to abuot Quebec city or Drummondville on my way to Waterloo. I promise to post more later, including the story of the strongman contest. I'll take some pictures on my way up to Ontario also. I'll arrive Friday night and hope to post this weekend.

Take care.

I have obtained the lappy for September and by that I mean laptop. Stay tuned for stories about how I competed in the strong man contest at the Acadian Festival in Abram-Village last night. It was fun.