Is Mr. Boots Immoral AND if so am I Immoral.

I have been having some conflicting emotions about my cat’s behaviors. First a little background; Boots came into my life about a year ago by a strange series of events and through even stranger circumstances he is now our cat! Mr. Boots is a unique cat to say the least, he is the most laid back cat when he’s indoors, he sleeps, eats, cleans himself, eats some more and sleeps some more. You could quite literally throw this cat against a wall and he’d just walk back over and rub against your leg and purr. I have never been scratched or bit by him. He’s just a lovable cat. He broke every stereotype I had for cats in the first week, and has been nothing but awesome.

His outdoor behavior is much different, he hunts. He hunts small game and big game. Mr. Boots started with mice, which quickly became small song birds, followed by squirrels, and now recently larger birds; blue jays and pigeons. He’s not killing them for food, though he tends to get a taste in, he hunts for fun and tortures these still alive animals in the cutest way imaginable. This is where my moral dilemma comes to be, I have pride when he brings his dead animals to our door and offers them to us. But, watching his killing process is border line sadistic. Once the animal is tired and wounded he backs up away from the maimed animal and crouches waiting for it to make a move and than when (in the instance of the last bird) it goes to make flight, he two paw bats it down and stomps it’s body. Than he rolls with what has to be a smile on his back beside the now more wounded animal and paws at it with same playfulness he shows when you dangle a string in front of him. This goes on for upwards of an hour at times, until the exhausted animal finally takes his last breath and Boots promptly bring his prize to the door or in the case of the first squirrel to the foot of my bed.

          

So what should I do, when I see the wounded animal put it out of its misery? I don’t get to see all the killings so that doesn’t solve the problem. I could put a bell on his collar giving the prey a little notice, but what than will that do to Boots, he is a hunter, and I don’t want to take that away from him. I don’t know what to do. For now I will do nothing, when ever I see Boot’s dead bounty I find myself humming the Elton John’s “Circle of Life”, and that makes it just a little bit better when I am going to sleep and I have a murdering, sadistic, psychopathic house cat spooning me! 

Holiday Training

With the Holidays rolling up training tends to slow down alittle here in Halifax. All the university runners go home and the Track is always hell to get on with exams happening in the Feild house and than Holiday hours never match up with my training schedule. In the past it's always been my oppertunity to get some real quality training in and set myself up for January's training well. Peter Lawson and I work a little harder and when all the varsity runners get back we see the pay off in there fat turkey belly's while we look better than ever. This year is going to be just as good if not better in that I have a new training partner that will be around straight through. I just got to make him do all the morning runs with me.

Two years ago I do 90min at 6am on Christmas morning on a beach in New Zealand, last year I ran around Bedford in the cold. This year I am going to run from Halifax to Bedford and than eat Roast Beef. Though it doesn't compare to two years ago, I will be with family, and will compete for my 5th Crokinole Title in 10 years. If you don't know what that is you can google it and what our family does is all that on steroids.

Going to hit a 100km week this week, which I am pleased with, I cracked out some serious Euro Training this week and am feeling a bit bigger than a usual 800m runner... I am or may not make a career move to the circus.

Happy Holidays.

Biking in Halifax

Now for the story of my and bike and I. In the last year I have had three accidents on my bike, I ride a fixie (Google that if it’s not familiar). Stopping can be a bit more difficult on a fix gear but all three times this was not the cause. The cause has been for two of the times, cars who don’t pay attention. The other was my own lack of attention but it only affected me.

 First accident; I was driving down the Bedford highway (not a real highway by the way, standard 50km speed limit) riding in the bike lane. When a car going to the same direction as me stops suddenly and waved in the car coming from the opposite direction trying to get into a MacDonald’s parking lot on the opposite side of the street. He peeled in and I crashed into his hood ruining my front wheel, fork and left shoulder.

Second accident; I on my way to yoga class was pedaling down hill, hit a pot hole, wasn’t holding my handle bars with any real control, and flipped directly over the bars onto my back. This had no damage to anything but my back and ego. No one was watching and no one came to see if I was ok. Missed 2 workouts with back stiffness, but was told by the ER Doc that I obviously know how to take a fall.

Third accident; one month after the first yoga crash on my way to yoga again I got t-boned by a jeep at a 4-way stop. It was clearly my turn to go, I was half way through the intersection and the jeep gunned it. I was looking right at his face which happened to be looking down at his dashboard. I managed to peddle so that only the back end of my bike was hit. I rolled off landing on my lower back and he managed to ruin my back tire and rim and bend my frame. After I screamed profanities at him he apologized admitted he was in the wrong and drove away. He bloody drove away, didn’t get out and ask if I was ok just yelled out his window “sorry, I didn’t see you, my bad”. I got his license plate number and called the police and am waiting to hear back about who he was. I am going to make him pay for my unsalvageable bike and may or may not yell some more profanities at him.

Moral of the story, I am not going to be a triathlete.  

December is Good

I haven't wrote a lot in the last few months, I have been nervously waiting out the transition to new orthotics and not wanting to jinx the process by saying anything about it. I am now officially injury free and feeling like a million bucks. My foot is completely healed and now to full strength over its new platform!

I am just finishing up a 4 week cycle with a rest week of reduced milage and intensity and I need it! I ran the most milage of the season for a week last week and it borders on the most of my career. I am heading into a three week December phase leading up to the holidays! Going to be training on the new track at the Canada Games Center this winter and looking forward to not smelling the inside of the Dalplex.

I have been consistently taking my supplements and vitamins and that coupled with my much more restricted diet this year I am feeling awesome.

This has been a bit of a scatter brain post but I am finally excited and feeling good and happy to be posting! more coming this weekend!  I will tell my story of getting hit by a car on my bike on Monday and how that has been playing out for me.