I’ve adjusted well to North Bay so far. I was able to keep up with my weightlifting at the local YMCA with the North Bay Norseman/Valkaryies. I’ve been travelling back and forth between Ottawa most weekends to see Laura, and getting in to lift with the Capital Weightlifting Club most Saturdays.

I took a nice break over Christmas to fly home and see the family. Laura flew from Ottawa and we were able to meet up in Fredericton. I played in the Dwayne Williams Memorial hockey game once again and had a great time seeing everybody.

Laura and I celebrated our 6th anniversary with a day at Spa Nordik in Old Chelsea. It was a real treat, and one of the more relaxing experiences that I’ve had.

Capital Weightlifting had a small club meet in Ottawa in February, which I lifted as a 62kg for the first time and posted a provincial qualifying total. I had to eat a little healthier after “enjoying” myself over the Christmas holidays (that box of Toffifee disappeared pretty fast…) to get down in weight, but I made it with a pound to spare.

Snatching at the club meet in Ottawa

Since I fared ok as a 62kg at the club meet, I decided to lift as a 62kg at the Ontario Senior Provincial Championships at the end of March. I was hoping to qualify for Nationals. Alas, it wasn’t in the cards this year. I needed to make my final attempt at a Clean and Jerk of 110kg to make the qualifying total. I was able to rack the clean, but just couldn’t stand up straight with it. I still managed to finish first in the province in the 62kg category, so now I can say I’m a provincial champion! Next year however, I won’t be satisfied with anything less than a National total.

For the second time in less than half a year, I moved right after a weightlifting meet. After provincials, I moved in with some mutual friends from my 1 bedroom apartment. It was a pretty easy move though, as I don’t have much stuff with me here, and the place I moved to was just a few blocks down the road. I think I increased my drive to work by about 30 seconds.

In a few short weeks, I’ll be moving again. The people I moved in with bought a new house. They weren’t planning on it when we initially made arrangements for me to stay with them, but the right opportunity came up and they jumped on it. I had a couple other friends that bought houses in this time. They all got to become a part of the statistic of those buying houses while interest rates were at record lows.

Lucky for me though, they’re letting me move with them, so I didn’t have to try and find a new place. Staying mobile has its advantages. I’ve managed to cut down on some of my stuff to try and simplify my life. Of course, after getting rid of some things to de-clutter, I did manage to get an iPad, but that’s another story…

“The iPad went on sale this week, ushering in a new era of thousands of people buying something just to find out what it does.” - Seth Meyers, SNL

The weekend was full of great instruction on technique and progressions  for training the elusive snatch and clean & jerk. I picked up plenty of great coaching cues and “drills to develop the skills” that  I believe will help me teach the lifts to a greater variety of groups and individuals.

Myself, Coach Mike Burgener, and Janine Daigle (CrossFit Bathurst) at the CrossFit Olympic Weightlifting Cert in Ottawa

Coach B joked that he was going to take me back to California with him, along with a few others. He was impressed with my size, as short people with my lever lengths do have an advantage in this sport! Then there was Janine, who was given a lot of “tough love”, all in good fun though.

We also had Hani Kanama of Toronto Weightlifting on hand to show off some of his equipment, most notably the weightlifting shoes that he’s developed. The majority of the lifters in our club are using them now. Many of the weekend’s participants quickly discovered how much of a difference a good pair of weightlifting shoes with a solid raised heel makes regarding overall stability and positioning.

A few personalities emerged over the weekend, kettlebell trainer “The Iron Angel”, who exhibited some great flexibility, and David, who made the trip from Iqaluit, Nunavut. At 64 years young, he is just one year older than Coach B. David was then affectionately referred to as “Dad” by Coach B, and showed that you’re never too old to learn new tricks and have fun.

Overall, Coach B. is an engaging instructor and commands an attentive audience. There’s nothing like having strong “motivational consequences” to ensure everyone’s paying attention. YAY BURPEES!*

*You’ll have to go and find out yourself what this means!

The certification seminar was two full days of instruction, lectures, demonstrations, and workouts at the Moss Park Armoury downtown. The armoury is a great facility with plenty of space inside, although the pullup bar is a little higher and thicker than I prefer!

Group photos from crossfit.com

Since I first heard of CrossFit in late 2007, I’ve pretty much devoured and immersed myself in the program and all the great resources available on CrossFit.com, as well as everything I’ve learned from training at CrossFit Fredericton and CrossFit Ottawa. At this point I was very familiar with the material, methodology, and movements presented, so I was much more focused on individual coaching and presentation styles, basically how to make myself a better coach. Taking this approach, I was able to get a lot more out of this seminar than if I sat back and simply said, “I already know this stuff”. I was able to come back with a lot of skills that will help me as a coach, as well as some help on my piss poor rowing technique.

Jon Gilson, Again Faster, cleaned up my rowing

Overall, the presentations were professional, engaging, and with enough comic relief to ease those “Fran jitters”. I met a lot of great people over the weekend and it’s always great to hear success stories from those that are passionate about fitness. I met one guy who said he started at ~300lbs and he’s lost 75+ so far!

This guy obviously put in the hard work and dedication inside and outside the gym. THAT folks, IMHO, is doing CrossFit as Rx’d.

Since this was the first meet of the weightlifting season, the goal wasn’t to put too much emphasis on the amount of weight lifted, especially since I’m just getting back into it after dropping almost a whole weight class since provincials in March, mostly due to a bad case of food poisoning. I’ve managed to put some weight back on, but not all of it. I was more concerned with making my lifts and just getting more meet experience.

Here’s the skinny:

bw: 64.9 kg (lightest I’ve weighed in at so far)

Snatch – 75, 78, 84

Clean & Jerk – 92x, 92, 95

Total – 179 (3rd Place)

Video:

I pretty much power snatched my first two attempts, so Pierre decided to move me up to 84, which is just 2 kilo’s under my PR. It felt good to make that, as it’s been a while  since I’ve gone that heavy.

I was a bit disappointed to miss my first clean, since it shouldn’t have been hard, I just got a bit too far back  on my heels. I managed to recover and make my next two attempts. I kind of wanted to go for 100, which would have been a competition PR (and would have moved me up to 2nd place), but fatigue was starting to set in. The ~7 hr drive up and not enough food were probably the main contributing factors. I’ve decided I need to eat more during the break between Snatch and Clean & Jerk.

Overall though, I was very happy with how this meet went for myself. I managed to sleep much better the night before and I didn’t have the nervous shakes when I went out onto the platform. This was probably more what I was looking to get out of this meet; building confidence and being comfortable enough that I can perform my best.

One final note, I have to congratulate the other lifters from our club. They all did very well in their first meets, especially Rob (94 kg) who went 6 for 6 and hit PR’s in both the snatch (101) and clean & jerk (125). The way things are going, he has a legitimate shot at qualifying for nationals this year. Christa and Liz also had strong showings going 5 for 6, and 4 for 6 respectively and lifting close to their training PR’s in a competition environment.

The next meet is scheduled for North Bay on October 17. Hopefully we get a few more lifters from our club out for that one!

So I’ve managed to jump on a Joomla! project in the local community on a volunteer basis as part of a website redesign for the Ottawa Talent Initiative, an organization that I’ve joined to help me in my current job search. As I mentioned before, I’ve built a lot of bad websites in my day, so here’s a chance to be part of a team that might actually make a nice one.

What exactly is Joomla!? Joomla! is a content management system for building websites and developing online applications. It’s open source, fully extendable, and has a lot of people out there using it. This means there’s a lot of fully functional extensions already written that you can just download, install, activate, and see on your page in minutes.

When I first joined up on the project, I was hoping to brush up on some of my php and MySQL skills, getting right in and doing some coding. After playing around with Joomla!, it looks like the power of the extensions makes a lot of that unnecessary. It’s going to be much more of an exercise in the software development process. Coding afterall, is just one piece of the puzzle, an ends to a mean, a set of instructions to get something to do what you want it to do.

Tim Horton’s annual “RRRoll up the Rim to Win” campaign is certainly something that all Canadians can relate and look forward to. It combines the cheap thrill of caffeine and gambling. Cheap is certainly what a lot of us are looking for these days.

One of the more common “penny pinching” tips is to examine your monthly double espresso soy non-fat venti frappa cappa latte budget from your local Globo-Indie-Organic-Fair-Trade-Save-The-Whales coffee shop. While I certainly appreciate a good cup of coffee, I’m not above shelling out for a regular Timmy’s with pocket change rather than running up my credit card, especially when there’s a chance to win a new car, or you know, a doughnut. It could be a leftover piece of lettuce from the sandwich bar, I just want to win something!

My prediction is that Tim’s is having a banner year with their campaign in spite of the current R-word. I know for some people, it becomes a game of seeing how your odds stack up against the rest. Whether you brag that you’re 0 for 32, or the lucky one beating the odds batting 5 for 5, there’s plenty of people out there throwing down a loonie and change hoping to score the ultimate: the free coffee, which gets you more caffeine AND another rim to roll.

I’ve been impressed by what people have managed to create within the context of wordpress without it degenerating into some awful mess like myspace, so I figure I’ll park my name here for at least a little while. Anyway, it’s about time I bought up my own personal domain. I have a pretty unique name, so there wasn’t much threat of it being claimed by someone else, but you never know. Cybersquatters are a pain. So there you have it. The humble beginnings of ianhaya.com.