Tag Archives: laval

Who Gives a #$ about Climate Change

For a while Climate Change was all over the media. Everyone heard about, lots were talking about it. Nowadays, not so much. You’ll see here and there an article about it, but nothing really in the hot spot. What’s unfortunate with the news coverage about Climate Change is that it doesn’t really address the immediate problems we all face. In fact, who really cares about it? Everyone is working hard every day, going to their jobs, caring for their families and just struggling to keep it all together. I don’t see how saying the planet is warming by 0.1 degrees is going to make a big impact on people. Why aren’t we talking about the very real and present dangers. A simple example, fuel prices. Recently in Laval the pumps were up to 1.23$ per litre. What does that really mean? Well assuming you own a jeep patriot (9L/100KM) and your office is 30Km from your home (leaving out traffic), you will be using 108 litres of fuel in a month. At a 1.23/l list price, this will cost you 132.84$ per month. That is a lot of cash! And in a family where both parents work separate ways, you double that amount. This is an expense for being able to work – we’re literally paying a fortune to be able to work. *So why aren’t we more aggressively investing and researching into alternative fuels and energy – not just for vehicles but for our general energy requirements? It’s one thing to talk about climate change, but if nothing is being done about everyday issues, how can we change anything?

On the other hand, considering less omnipresent issues, there’s (ir)responsible forest management. We don’t think about it, we don’t hear about it but it should be in our radar. Here we are logging, illegally logging, cutting for urban development, and let’s not forget cutting for tar sands development. What we forget is that by cutting our forests we’re also eliminating our source of clean fresh water and clean air. I’ll leave the detailed analysis of this closing statement for another time. But think about it.

What are the real issues in your opinion?

From Spartan Race to Death Race

Last weak I participated in the Spartan Race that was held in Mont-Tremblant, Canada. For those who haven’t heard, this is a 5k race with numerous obstacles ranging from mud pits, barbwire, cargo nets, and more, inspired from Navy Seal training and American Gladiators.

The Spartan Race is for athletes and people who are tired of the tedium of the usual races and workouts and yearn to recapture the spirit of an adventurous age. This international race is set up to test not only the strength and stamina but the cunning and creativity of each athlete’s warrior essence. Participants will confront obstacles ranging from extreme to absurd that gain their inspiration from sources as varied as Spartan training, Navy SEAL training and American Gladiators.

Needless to say, it was challenging but extremely fun. I had just started to train again at the time I registered, which only left me with two months to get ready for this race.  I obviously didn’t make the top 3 but it helped me get back on track with my training and push forward to the next challenge. Now I’m seriously training and getting ready for a marathon this fall. This will be my first marathon but I’m definitely looking forward to it. It feels great to get back in shape and I’ll soon be in better shape than ever.

So overall registering to the spartan race, even knowing I wouldn’t win, was a great decision. After living through this small challenge, I’ve been exposed to a much bigger challenge, the Canadian Death Race. This a physical challenge beyond anything I have imagined. It’s 125 Km in the Canadian rockies that must be done under 24 hours – not your average race. The race’s description from the official Canadian Death Race site reads:

Since the start of the millennium, elite racers have come to the Canadian Rockies to cheat Death in one of the world’s toughest adventure races. The 125 km course begins and ends on a 4200 foot plateau, passes over three mountain summits and includes 17,000 feet of elevation change and a major river crossing at the spectacular Hell’s Gate canyon at the confluence of the Smoky and Sulphur Rivers. During the August long weekend each year, extreme athletes, individually and in relays, push themselves to the limits of their endurance against the breathtaking background of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Each year, well-trained and totally committed, they battle heat, cold, altitude and themselves. There are no big prizes for winning: finishing is hard enough. And the bragging rights are priceless…

That is one extreme race. But its something I want to achieve. A few days after the spartan race I went to buy some new running shoes for some serious mileage. I went to the specialized store called Pegasus in Centropolis, Laval (Pegasus CENTROPOLIS, 120, Promenade du Centropolis, H7T 0B3 Laval, Canada). While I was trying on some shoes, the owner saw the marking I had on my arm and said “hey, you went there too?”. It so just happens she was at the spartan race and saw my race number marking, like the one she had. On one of the walls there was a poster of the Canadian Death Race. So I asked her if she knew what this race was like. It turns out she actually did the race. Wow. A string of coincidences lead me to decide to go for this race myself. BTW, if you’re looking for a good pair of running shoes, I strongly recommend you go to this store. They know their stuff. They had me run in the store and looked at my footing then recommended different shoes based on what they had seen and my feedback. In the end I found an awesome pair of shoes that feel perfect.