Recovery and a Rant...

Recovery was the order of the day today. Before going out last night I made sure I had nothing on the work calendar and could take the day off.

If I had any work meetings I wouldn't have been unable to unwind. I have two things working against me, the first is my Ironman DNA and the second is my age.

I always tell people that tell me they know someone who does Ironmans is that they have issues. It usually startles them for a bit, then they do a deep thought and they typically reply with a chuckle and  "your right". Having the Ironman gene basically means you take things to the extreme.

Oh, and I'm not talking about I did one Ironman. It's only when you've done two or more illustrate you have the gene. Doing one could just be a bad decision. Two or more, you have issues. Needless to say if you have done 12 you definitely have the gene.

So going out and having a few beers with the Ironman DNA basically means we get on the train and don't get off the train until our subconscious says it's enough. Add to that that I'm now 49 years old I don't have the same constitution I've had in the past. In the past I could party till 4 am and do a 100 mile bike ride the next day.

Yup, those days are gone.

First off, we didn't close down Jersey's, from what I can remember and second off, I woke up this morning and felt I was hit by a truck. I forgot what it felt like the next day.

I did work emails, setting up some meetings for Monday, but for the most part I just vegged out and watched TV with a sore head. Drifting in and out of sleep all day. As the day went on I started feeling even worse. By Dinner time I as in a bonk state. Alice ordered some pizza so the carbs helped. I think must sitting up my heart rate hit about 140 bpm. It reminded of of that time I did something similar and had to train the next day and with my heart rate monitor on I noticed I went anaerobic just pumping up my bike tires.

It's all good though.

Rather than beating myself up on how I wasted a day or over ate or ate the wrong food or hurt the strides I made with my diet, I'm not. No good comes from "buyers remorse".

Before the night started I mentally prepared by telling myself I was not allowed to get down on myself on any of the side effects.

In a way it's a "positive affirmations" approach. But my affirmations would be something like "you had fun, you enjoyed yourself, yes your body is beat up, yes you self the day away, yes you ate too much chocolate and potato chips......how cool was that. Enjoy the moment and let's not turn a positive into a negative"

I'm glad to say the approach worked. Every time I was going to beat up on myself I stopped. I emptied my head in a very zen like way and just stopped any negative self talk.

I really think having that day or two off of doing no work, however you get there is important. It's like a mini vacation. I used to call them mini-vacations in a bottle.

Needless to say the only training I did today was walking from the couch to the kitchen or bathroom and make no mistake it wasn't easy training.

Alice too was tired. We both fell asleep watching TV on the couch. I heard the kids coming in and by the time we woke up, got off the couch and went to bed it was 5 am.

I was going to bring this up on yesterday's post but didn't, I have big concerns about the movie "The Interview" and the movie theatres not wanting to show it because of cyber threats.

What really bothered me the most was the first time I heard it my initial thoughts were "I sure hope they don't listen to this and stop the showing". For two reasons, first what they are doing is terrorism and you can't let them bully you or they will do it all the time, and the second and most important reason was I really wanted to see it on Christmas day. It was going to be part of my family Christmas plan.

Then I hear that the attacks were from North Korea and that the theatres won't show the movie. What the heck has happened to us as a society? I often think what would our ancestors who fought in WW1 or WW2 think if they saw the way our society reacted to these threats?

I watch a lot of WW1 and WW2 stuff. Wow, were these guy courageous. They were real men. Bigger men than I could ever be. I see them interviewed with their family's 50 years after the war and the wife and kids would say "dad never said much of anything about his war experiences". This was a common threat. Then they would finally get the dad to open up after 50 years and the horrors and killing he faced daily and hourly were off the chain insane.

This morning I was watching a show on Stalin and his rise in Russia. Then you think Hitler was around at the same time. Stalin was responsible alone for the killing of 26 million of his own people. Hitler war was responsible for over 50 million deaths. That was less than 100 years ago.

Fast forward to today and we see all the waring in the middle east and then there is a lot of warring in places we don't even know or care about so in reality we don't even care or recognize those wars.

When you look from 40,000 feet up you realize war is just part of the human condition. To expect people not to fight and not to kill each other is unrealistic.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not for war, at all. It's horrible. It brings out the ugly in people.

But I am against terrorism.

And I'm against being weak against terrorism. When a country like North Korea tries to intimidate us with threats and we let them into our living rooms and then get so scared that cancel the movie release, we are basically saying we are afraid of you. They actually won and then it becomes perpetual for others to follow. If it works, others will follow. It's human nature.

There is actually two losers her on this movie. The first is us, we got terrorized and I personally would like to see those that made the decision to not play the movie be removed from their jobs. They are weak. There is a saying, "if you stand for nothing, you fall for anything". I see so many people make their decisions based on public opinion or in the guise of being politically correct. To me those types of people are weak.

The second loser is North Korea. If I was North Korea, I would have welcomed the movie coming out. I would have then went on the media world wide and expressed disappointment and went for the world sympathy vote. Instead, the regime run by a 20 something, basically a college kid, does some cyber espionage and frankly he's probably pretty blown away that it got this far and they really did shut down the realize. In my minds eye I see him sitting with friends having beers, laughing in disbelief that it actually worked.

To me I could go on and on. The bottom line is the world has gotten way to politically correct. We've become a country run by talking head intellectuals who couldn't lead themselves out of a wet paper bag. Yet we listen to them and are afraid to take a stand. Now people are looking back in embarrassment and the president of the united states has to speak out publicly how disappointed he is that they are not showing the movie.

Our WW1 and WW2 vets are rolling in their graves. I could only imagine what message they would say to us, I think it would "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me".

Besides, let's think about this. Do you REALLY think someone is going to walk into a theatre for this movie to do anything bad without taking their life in their hands? Do you know think every theatre in the U.S. will have so many of the movie goers packing? Do you not think there will be guys intentionally going to each screening packing with the hope that someone walks in to cause some trouble?

You think I'm joking?

I'm not. I'll tell you a short story. I was in a bar on a Sunday afternoon in Indiana about 2 years ago on a business trip. I ordered lunch and struck up a conversation with the guy beside me. He did steel work and was from somewhere south. We got to talking and he told me that he was packing.

Now I'm Canadian, and basically no one packs in Canada but a cop. I was intrigued and wanted to know why he was packing? He went on to tell me it was all legal, he had permits and the reason he was packing was because of all these random killings in shopping centres and movie theatres and he was packing to protect himself and others. Stressing more, others.

I actually came to believe him. He asked me a question, "do I feel more safe knowing he is sitting beside me with a gun and if a guy came into this bar and started shooting that he'd be able to protect me?"

 I thought about it and I did feel safer knowing that.

So back to my theatre illustration. This guy, I think his name was Pete, and all the other Pete's would be gladly protecting and waiting for the "bad guys".

On a personal level I'm not about to live my life in fear because some bully wants to bully me into changing my lifestyle. If you want to stop bullying, you stand up to the bully.

There is my rant for the day.

Actually, I lied. I have one more. I find that these people that are so "into the weeds" on their point of view and think they are so liberal and open minded are also the first to unfriend you from Facebook or block you from Twitter. God forbid you have a different opinion that is not politically correct or you question their helicopter parenting style and next thing you know "poof, they are gone".

I can say I have seen a lot of positions that I totally disagree with and there is a number of people I just have nothing in common with or can't stand, but I have NEVER unfriended or blocked them because I disagree with there views.

In a way I know our society is in pretty good shape because of it. When life is good, people who are not very strong are allowed to think they are stronger than they are. If WW3 started, they would be removed / kicked down from their pedestals pretty quickly and the real leaders would come out of the wood work and get to work fixing things.