My New Philosophy on Life

Rudyard Kipling
If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

that's it

I have always been one to believe that if you are sick, your body is telling you to rest and recover until you are not sick anymore. I believe in training through little aches and pains and maybe a small cough or runny nose or even sore throat. But when i have a full on cold, i don't train in the hopes that i will recover even faster than i would have if i did train. Well i got that bad cold on Tuesday and i still have it today (sunday).

So i am changing my ways now. I don't care if i am still sick tomorrow, enough is enough, i am training anyway. I have given it so much time to recover and i am not going to give it anymore. And the next time i get a cold, no matter how bad it is I am training through it.

I have tried resting when i get sick. Now i am going to try training through getting sick. It's going to be an interesting experimentation.

Sick, Again?

It's been a rough couple of weeks for me here in Alberta's Capital city.

I got sick for a week and took 4 days off, then had back troubles (which i got a massage for yesterday and is feeling 100 times better) which forced me to take 3 days off swimming, then i just got sick again yesterday and have taken 1 and possibly another day off today. This is getting ridiculous.

It's pretty frustrating to not be able to put in consistent training that i know i need to be doing right now. Actually that is probably the worst part of being an elite athlete (and i use the word elite in very loose terms). When you want to train, but injuries or illness messes up your consistency it can often feel like a waste of time to even put in any hard efforts or mileage at all.

All i really want, is to be able to train with no injuries and no illness for a period of 6 months straight. If i could do that, i would be able to train sooooooo much better than i am now. I have had to deal with a lot of problems over the last year that i have not ever had to deal with before and it is pretty frustrating.

My saving grace is that throughout my career so far, i have always thought long term. When i'm sick or injured i don't push it. I take care of myself, recharge my batteries and try again. This is a dual edged sword however and it has good and bad implications. It is bad because as of now, i have not made anything of myself yet. I am 21 and I am pretty sure that Triathlon Canada does not even have me on the radar for any type of teams or funding etc. It is good because i know that my best is still a long way away and that what i am doing right now is that i am probably operating at like 25% of my potential, if that.

So i guess its alright. If i am going to be a great athlete one day, even one of the greatest, i know that it is not going to happen for a while. I guess that's one of the things that keeps me going. Just knowing that i am not even in the same time zone as far as how good i am now vs. how good i will be as i mature. But at the same time, it is easy to get impatient.

Kris

Back Troubles

Having some pretty brutal pain in my upper back when i am swimming. I have been experiencing this for about a week and am finally heading in to see my boy Rob at Whitemud Crossing Massage tomorrow at 2:00. I swam today for the first time since Friday since i was resting my back, i got in 3km and felt ok. It feels a lot better, but it will be solid after the massage tomorrow. Also got in a 50min ez run tonight with some stretching and then an hour of weights. Running is feeling really good right now and i am really happy about that.

Big things going on with Shack Attack Racing soon. I will hopefully be launching a new site in the near future along with some innovative new ways to connect with me and other Edmonton area sports enthusiasts. Keep tuned in for that.

Finished my last project of the semester for one of my recreation classes this morning. Now its smooth sailing until final exams and then train my guts out and put in some solid volume throughout the christmas break.

November 17th and it was 13 degrees here today. Couldn't ask for anything better.

Cheers,

Kris

Open Letter to the jerk in the silver dodge ram who has a problem with me running across the road at a cross walk

Hello Sir,

I know this letter will never get to you, because you probably know nothing about any type of sport other than Hockey, which is a shame, but the reality of the rig pigs like you in our country.

I am not quite sure why you chose to get mad at me for running across the road at a cross walk, and since i was running i even made it across before you even entered the intersection. However for some reason, (maybe you are secretly gay and because you don't want anyone to know you have homophobic tendencies and you got mad that i was wearing tights) you chose to stop your truck in the intersection when there was no light or stop sign and block traffic just to give me the finger. At which point of course i chose to wave nicely at you, mostly just to piss you off. You then decided that that was not enough pay back and decided to almost cause an accident by cutting off two lanes of traffic just to turn off onto the closest road to me and get out of your truck and yell something. I couldn't hear you of course, i was too far away by now, but just for kicks i pulled down my pants and gave you a good view of my white ass.

Again this must have pissed you off more because you are probably secretly gay and as such are extremely homophobic. So then of course since i was watching carefully you chose to cross four lanes of traffic back to the other side of the road and cross four lanes of traffic again to pull into a road just ahead of where i was running. I could see again that you got out and were ready to get into an alteraction which sir i have no time for since i was in the middle of my training run, so i ran across the road to the other side and continued on my way there yelling "if you think you are such a tough guy then come race me asshole" to which you did not. I continued my run without any sight of you again.

I have some serious problems with you sir, here is a list of them:
1) Don't bother me while i am at work, do i come to your shit hole of a workplace and try to fight you. No, mostly because i am better than you and would never be seen at the type of place that you would work at.

2) What would your mother say about this? Clearly she did a very poor job in raising you and you clearly have no morals or manners.

3) I didn't even cause you to be held up for 5 seconds, was it really worth the 10 minutes of harassing me?

4) I was going to ask what your wife would say about this, but you are such an asshole that i can't see any woman ever being attracted to you. You will probably die alone. Sorry man, that's the breaks.

5) I really wish you would have chased me on foot. This is what i think about that:

"In training he was fearless, felt himself too easily capable of violence. He often contemplated what he would do if someone stopped and challenged him. He figured he would put them through a little of what his life was all about; taunt them into giving chase. He would stay just a little out of their grasp, egg them on and on. Perhaps they would make half a mile of so, depending on how well he could lure them; perhaps their own sense of pride might surface, a by-product of a terrible misconception about what was actually happening. You would watch for the signs Cassidy thought, the ones you knew so well; the pain, the bewilderment, the blankness that would eventually come close to despair. He would make it a challenge, so they would forget their original purpose and keep on going just to this bastard, this...this... (then it would dawn on them) runner.
Then he would simply turn and face them. He would take on anyone like that, he thought. He would take on Muhammad Ali as long as he could direct the preliminaries.
Cassidy knew very well that he could take men, otherwise strong and brave men to places they had never been before. Places where life and death overlapped in the surreal valleys of muscle gloom and heart despair, where one begins to realize once more that nothing really matters at all and that stopping (death?) is all; where all men finally get the slick skin of civilization off and see that soft pink glow inside that tells you-in both cunnilingus and bullet wounds-there are no secrets.
A visitors taste, in short, of the distance runners daily fare. He would fight them then, if they still wanted to, after they knew. But they wouldn't want to, he was sure of that. They would walk away with nothing more than a hard-won understanding."
-Quentin Cassidy from Once a Runner

One last word,

If I ever see you messing with me or any other runner again, you will wake up the next morning with broken bones and a truck that has been destroyed. And that is a threat bud, this world could use less people like you.

Cheers,

Kris Loshack

Sickkkkkkk

I figured i would take the downtime that i have right now due to being sick to give an update. Well I am sick, but it is at the tail end of it, and i don't think it was the swine flu cause i only had a headache, sore throat, and bad chills and fever for a couple of days. I'm really hoping to go for a run by the end of today and hopefully will be able to swim and run tomorrow. It sucks that just as i get super motivated to train i get sick and can't do anything.

Training up to then was going good. Last week i put in 5 swims, 5 runs and 6 weight workouts for a total of 16 hours. I was around 45km for the running and depending on what the coach says i would like to build myself up to a life time high of around 80-90km per week by Feb-Mar and maintain that all year long. I have never run more than around 40-50km per week in my life usually due to injuries or focuses on other aspects of my sport. I am committed now to becoming a great runner and am ready to put in the mileage and hard work that it takes to get there. Plus i am enjoying the heck out of running right now. It is the think that i most look forward to all day.

I was swimming with the Edmonton Keyano Swim Club this fall, but i chose to leave the club about 3 weeks ago. I found that along with working a job, doing school and all my other training it was pretty much impossible for me to do a full time swim program. I was swimming 7 times per week and doing two hour swims with an hour of dry-land weights and core before or after. This equaled out to being 20 hours a week just focused on swimming. Which for me and my schedule is way out of wack. The advantage of doing my own swim program before with the help of Bill Humby (head coach of the U of A varsity swim program) was that we could tailor it to fit into my life and along with my other training and commitments. So i have gone back to Bill's program and am excited to build upon the foundation that we laid down last year. I believe that with the same amount of work i will continue to progress and hope to get myself down to 17:30 for 1500m short course by February.

I finally solved the pain in my tibias that i have been experiencing while running for the past three or four months thanks to my coach Kevin and Jack from my sponsor Fast Trax. I had a feeling that since i have done so much weight work and strengthening exercises, that my foot and stride have changed and the shoes i was wearing were inhibiting me. Kevin agreed so i went to see Jack and have him sort it out. He spent an hour with me trying on numerous pairs of shoes and going down in stability until we hit the right point. And the result? No orthotics along with a light weight low stability trainer known as the asics ds trainer. I am stoked, i hated wearing orthotics and to know that all the work i have put in to basically change my foot shape and stride has totally paid off. I have said it before and i will say it again, Jack is the best person to talk to if you want to get shoes that properly work with your foot and body. He has a great approach to it and a wealth of knowledge. I will never go anywhere else, plus his shop is grass roots and just and awesome place to support, check it out at www.fasttraxskishop.com

Thats about it for now. I really want to not be sick so i can hit it back hard tomorrow.

Hopefully it will happen,

Kris

The book

Every person has times when they doubt themselves, when the mountain seems too high, too dangerous, or just too much. With athlete this is especially true, and with serious athletes and particularly endurance athletes this is our reality. We do not need to live in a world of doubt however. The doubt/questions end with closing the book. During a safe and unbiased time ask yourself THE QUESTIONS, consider them, dwell on them, make decisions, record the answers and the book is closed. My coach Kevin likes to refer to this as "Clarity of Purpose" I like to think of it as a funnel, where the unnecessary is filtered out leaving the true ambition of that person. Once the book is closed, life is easy. There is no thinking, wondering, wishing, hoping, dreaming. Life just is. Training needs to be done. It doesn't have to be fun every time or even enjoyable. But it needs to be done. It just does not change, there is no alternative.

The closed book is the Key to success. It is something i have been missing for the past year or even two. With it comes purpose, and mindfulness.

I closed my book last night.

Have you?