April Challenge - Day 2: Squats

Today's workout was done early this morning - I'm not a morning exercise person. But I still gave it a good try and today, the focus was on legs.

My workout consisted of:

- 40 min on the stairclimber

- Five 1 min intervals of speed running on the treadmill

- 20 min of core exercises

- Ten sets of squats (10 reps) with two 25lb weights

- 100 lunges with two 15lb weights

- back to wall squat (leg bent at 90 degrees, similar to a sitting position) for 30s intervals

My legs are on fire. I felt a bit of the strain during the exercises but now, I feel like someone has beat me up below the waist. This just shows me how much more strength training I need on my legs in order to build up my speed for my run.

Attack Ads - Stop it already.

I love TV. I watch TV every night. I normally PVR through commercials but lately, whether it be laziness or just curiosity, I've sat through commercials to see what type of election campaign advertising the competing parties were going to throw at us.

What they flung at us was shit. The campaign began as negatively as the last two and half years in Parliament. It began even before the elections started. What's even worse, it can't even be called advertising - I'm ashamed that these commercials have been done by another agency who thought, this is good advertising. Who can blame them? Nothing's changed in campaign advertising - your enemy is bad, you are good and the more desperate that party becomes, the more negative the ads become.

Let's take a look at the Liberal attack ad:

Not to excuse anything that Harper has done, but let's be honest - the majority of Canadians do not care about this compared to issues that will impact their lives, like the economy and health care. Those who are offended by the Harper government's flagrant disregard for democracy have already made up their minds on which party they will vote for. If the goal of this ad is to get the swing voters, I doubt it'll swing anyone.

Now for the NDP -

A little "happier" and lighter than the doom and gloom of the Liberals - interesting use of puppet/animation. It does target a big issue that Canadians are concerned about, but spending more time talking about what the Conservatives haven't done for Health Care and less time about what you plan on doing for health care doesn't make me feel super confident in your party. However, I appreciate the fact this ad doesn't look like armageddon is happening tomorrow.

Now the Conservatives:

It's like the Liberals and Conservatives hired the same agency to produce the same ad for both camps, just switching out the leaders. Who the fuck cares that Ignatieff loves America? He's here now, he's ready to lead, how the fuck is this an election issue? Spend this money (and the time you're wasting of mine) and tell me what you plan on doing.

One would hope the Greens would do a better job:

What the fuck was that? This ad looks even scarier than all the other ones combined! It barely tells me anything about what the Greens plan on doing beside not being negative (but being negative at the same time). What happened to friendly, smiling, aloof looking Elizabeth May? Maybe she was bitter she wasn't allowed in the debates.

All in all, a terrible tone to set this early in the election campaign and another reminder to Canadians that this yet again, a useless election.

April Challenge - Day 1: Walk the Plank

So my goal for the next 28 days is to train for the Sporting Life 10k which takes place on May 1. I've already started on the treadmill this past week, but the goal here is to also do some strength training in order to get beach ready for my trip to Thailand in May.

So I did about 2 hours at the gym today, which included:

- 27min of running (5K - need to get this time down to 24min somehow)

- 10min of skipping (goal was to get 1,000 skips in - I think I achieved about 800 before I was like, no more.)

- 30 min on core - I tried a new exercise on the swiss ball. One handed planks (more on that below) and various crunches and situps

- 20min on freeweights

- 15min on back

- 15min on flexibility exercises (stretches, yoga poses)

The one handed plank on a swiss ball was perhaps the toughest thing I did today. It was less than successful. After trying to stabilize myself for about 2 minutes, I thought I finally found my perfect balance, removed my left hand and promptly fell face first into the floor. Thankfully, no one was around to witness this sad display of fitness (or lack thereof). So I modified it and did a regular plank with the swiss ball. Still incredibly challenging but better than the one handed plank. I'll continue to try this exercise - we'll see how many attempts and faceplants it takes before I get it.

April Challenge - Getting my fitness on

So this month, it's all about training for the Sporting Life 10K run taking place May 1. We started up a group to run at BBDO/Proximity and we have about 15 people on the team at the moment.

The Sporting Life 10K helps raise money for Camp Oochigeas that provides a great camp environment for kids with cancer. This is a place where they can forget they have this terrible illness and just be kids.

Please support us by going here or if you'd like to donate to me directly, please go here. I thank you for any contribution.

My challenge this April will be to run, but also strength train. I'll try out new exercises everyday and let you guys know about my progress. My posts will start tomorrow.

PS - April is also Cancer Awareness month. Buy some daffodils from the Cancer Society to help fund cancer research.

March Challenge - Day 26: Fail.

So I've failed at my March challenge of keeping up with reading interesting stuff and blogging for 28 days.

Was this a well thought out challenge? Not really. Should I have put in more thought? Yes, I was lazy. The parameters of this month's challenge were not defined properly nor was it a specific enough challenge. So my first fail in three months of this challenge.

Oh well, here's to hoping April is better.

March Challenge - Day 25: Perhaps the NDP shouldn't have voted down the government

Poor Jacky. He must be regretting his move to bring down the government with the other parties. In this first week of this election, he's seen his support wane and a lot of that support going over to the Liberals.

Some point out that it's because the Conservatives and Liberals have done a great job at focusing the media's attention on a two way race between the blue and red, leaving Layton out in the cold. Some others think that it has something to do with Mr. Layton's health and that people view that as a reason not to vote for a candidate with ailing health.

Regardless, this really has become a Conservatives vs. Liberals debate. Everyone wants to see a majority government, but don't know which side to turn to. As I said in my last blog, it's time for a party to take bold moves and propose a true vision and not just one or two nice to have campaign promises.

March Challenge - Day 24: Election...2008?

So this first week in the election has seen some new (albeit not so great) campaign promises, but also a lot of old rehashed campaign promises from parties from the 2008 and 2006 elections. While it's important to reuse and recycle, regifting campaign ideas and calling them new is terribly unappealing.

Take the Liberal's universal daycare promise for example. They've been promising this since they were in power in the 90s. Has it happened? No. Will it happen? No. Their plan this time, to share the burden with the provinces. Have provinces committed? No. It's like telling investors you have plenty of business partners willing to help fund your idea, but when the investors contact your partners, the partners haven't the foggiest idea.

Then there's the NDP tackling the oil sands issue. It's totally expected of the NDP to put this on their agenda. But let's be honest, even if Canada experiences an orange sweep this election season, Layton would be hard pressed to try to touch the Oil Sands considering the troubles going on in oil rich regions of the world. There is demand - oil sands make money for Canada. Touch that and you risk damaging Canada's economic growth.

As for the Conservatives - minor moves and shifts this campaign - nothing too out of the box considering they want to hold onto their lead. This is the dumbest idea ever as they are slowly watching the Liberals gain more support. It's time for bold action in order to inspire voters to go out and vote and perhaps choose a majority government that has a vision for the country in the next four years. Talk of stability is fine...but stagnation is just around the corner if we don't start making some big moves soon.