How the #$%^ am I going to train for this?

     So, part of me getting off my @$$ is a feeling I have.  I feel that as we are more urbanized, we as people, and myself as a man, are getting soft.  Sometimes we have to do something to test our mettle, even a little bit.  It's cool to go to the gym, however, how often do we test ourselves against something real? I was thinking that if you have a job that demands physicality (hunters, farmers/cowboys, armed forces, protective forces, etc) this doesn't' apply to you.  How often do you push yourself out of your comfort zone.  So, I have decided that I want to I am going to do this: Warrior Dash.





   And if I do O.K., I may do another one, just for laughs.  I have already recruited some of my friends to do it.  It runs on 16 April and 17 April of next year in North Texas.  If nothing else, I will be in better shape than I am now.  But, I have one small obstacle to get around . . . .

     How the heck do I start training for this?

Going Back To The Gym (aka: The enemy is training and gaining)

     This started off as a conversation that I was having with a new friend of mine, here at university.  We were talking about getting older and being out of shape.  We talked about gyms and time and things of that nature.  Then the conversation turned to adventure racing, a little bit.  As the beers were going down we decided to stop being like many of our contemporaries, lamenting weight gain in our thirties and actually doing something about it.  I mean, I am not trying to recapture my 20's, but on the other side I should not just let myself look like $h!t, right? So, she and I made a pact to exercise. 

     But, thinking of all the other times people make these pacts and don't follow through, I put a twist on it.  I challenged her to do an adventure race with me.  We are doing a sprint.  What is that, you may ask?  Many times it is a 5K course littered with "challenges" (read: obstacles).  Some are longer, but you get the idea.  So, we are going to do one that was done here this past year called Warrior Dash.  It sounded like fun and it is six months away.  You have to pay to do it, so there is actually "skin in the game".  I have never done one, but I figure, "What the heck?" and why not?  If I train for this, the only thing I have to lose is weight.  And I gain a little bit of what I have allowed laziness to take from me.  And if I can lose some of this man moobage, that would be a plus.  Trust me, I won't look like this or this, but maybe I can be this guy.

     Today is day one.  And I will start with Couch to 5K.

Election Fever--Something I Don't Get.

     So, it is Election Night in the good ol' U.S. of A.  Every two years, we go to the polls to express our dissatisfaction with certain people that represent us or keep them employed because they are doing sssuuuuuuch a good job ( like the irony?).  As a person who likes to exercise his right to vote, I always try to keep informed on the issues, generally, and if I don't know something, I like to find out.  I may feel one way or the other about something, but I want to argue from facts and see how I feel about things from there.

     This mid-term election season has seen many people say a great deal of outlandish things just to sway people to their direction.  Most of the things aren't fact based.  I know, I know, you are probably thinking, "T.O.  How is that different from any other election cycle?"  Well, this time it feels that much more considering how the Presidential elections went.  And let's be completely honest.  Many people did not want to see a black man as President.  Yeah, I said it because-it's-true.  I am O.K. with this also.  They don't like the party that helped him get elected.  I get that, too.  But the lengths that some are going to, just to retake/reclaim/restore what they feel America should be, bother me.  Especially since I don't recall any of this talk being around when we had eight years of the other guy and twelve years of the Republican/conservatives controlling the Congress, for the most part. And before you start throwing stones, I am not calling anyone racist.  I saying how it looks.  Similar to the fact of the image of the inner city welfare

     The other thing that I don't get is this:  Why are national networks calling races before the polls are closed?  I get it, we always want to project winners and know things for certain.  But, did we not learn anything from the Bush/Gore debacle, no matter who you voted for?  I mean, they are proclaiming that a political party has won such-and-such with only ten percent of the precincts reporting and the polls across the country are not even closed yet.  I am currently taking a Statistics class and one thing I have learned is that this early sampling is very flawed.  The message you are also sending to those who have not voted yet, who may be wanting to vote, is that their vote doesn't count, since the thing has already been decided (not really).  To follow on that, I am really bothered by the fact that with only 1,000 out of over 8,000 precincts reporting, so far, the papers and news organizations are declaring a winner.  With only 10% reporting and the race at 55%-45% for the incumbent.

     This seems very un-American to me.