(Rob Watson is a Canadian distance runner currently living and training with the Speed River Track & Field Club in Guelph, Canada. He loves crepes, hockey and Labatt Blue. He maintains a blog that only occasionally touches upon distance running.)

His personal bests :
8:27 3k Steeple
13:40 5000m
Marathon 2:16:17

Monkeys Love Bananas
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2011

One time in high school a couple buddies and I decided that we wanted a chicken. We didn't really know where to get a chicken so we figured we would steal one. We drove out to the country and looked for a farm that had chickens running around. It was late at night and we had a hard time finding a chicken farm. We found a farm that had some cows, we decided that we would just mess with the cows instead. My friend Marc proceeded to try to climb the fence to get closer to the cows, he was immediately and violently electrocuted by the fence. He screamed and fell off the fence, the rest of us freaked out and ran away. Marc was left in a ditch, dazed and confused. It was very cowardly of us to run away from Marc, sorry Marc. Eventually we went and checked on him, he recovered and we drove home defeated. The city boys were thoroughly owned by that farmer and his cows that night. We don't have electric fences in the city.

So hey everyone, I raced this past weekend! I ran a 10km road race in Ottawa, it was effing hard. On paper, it appears as though I had a very mediocre result, but based on where I am at with my training I was actually quite pleased. I just wanted to go out there and run hard, make it hurt and get that racing feeling back, mission accomplished. I have work to do but I have nothing but time. My May was pretty good training overall, I smashed my goal of 600 miles for the month, the callous is hardening.

I have a very sexy training log. It's nice to look at, but it is quite worthless without any decent PB's to show for it though. Hopefully those will come soon. I'm racing again on June 26th, gonna hit up a half marathon in Vancouver. Hopefully I can rock that sucker.

This past week I had a buddy visiting from Colorado, he's actually from New Zealand but he goes to CSU. If anyone out there has a friend from a different country I would highly recommended you hang out with them a lot. Foreigners are so funny. They have awesome accents and are generally very nice. I hung out with Daniel for 10 days straight and I still giggled every time he said something, 

Example at the grocery store...

Kiwi: "eh mate. where are the trollies" 
me: *giggle* "Trolly? oh you mean cart. Over there.
Kiwi: "Oi, bloody 'ell"
me: *giggle*

The only time his foreign ignorance got him in trouble was when we were in Ottawa and we came across a statue of Terry Fox. Daniel was not very impressed with Terry's accomplishments and he made a joke about Terry. Immediately there were 4 Canadian dudes ready to beat up our kiwi friend. Luckily for him he used his hilarious accent to ward us off and calm us down. Tip here for all you non-Canadians out there; The #1 way to guarantee an ass kicking in Canada is to talk bad about our main man Terry Fox. He is the greatest Canadian ever, do not mess with him!

Last night I had a dream about crocodiles. As far as I'm concerned, crocodiles are now the scariest damn animals in the world. If my dream is accurate, those bastards are huge and will not hesitate to eat you and your friends, they are heartless bastards.  Animals for the most part are awesome though. I really dig animals. I was a zoology major for one semester in University. But then I had to take all sorts of biology and math and other science classes. My brain hates math and science so unfortunately my dream of being a monkey trainer was dashed. Why do you need to know stupid calculus to get a zoology degree? I just wanted a job at the zoo so I could train the monkeys. Monkeys don't care if I can calculate shit. They just want bananas, I'm smart enough to know that.

Take this guy for example:

That guy was probably trying to figure out how get that monkey off him by using some sorta useless equation learned in school. If that guy just threw the monkey a banana he would not have been thrown in the river. Monkeys love bananas, if you give em' bananas then you can teach them to do tricks. CSU should of had a zoology degree with a focus on monkey studies, you wouldn't have to mess with all the math and science. It would be based solely on monkey related stuff. You'd have to take psychology classes and learn Pavlov's tricks and then you would learn sign language so you can teach the monkey to communicate. Finally you'd have to take a whole bunch of karate and kick boxing classes. Monkeys are strong and hell (as seen above), and just in case the monkey was having a bad day and wanted to fight you'd have to be ready to throw down, those things will literally rip your arms off.

Okay, one last animal story. I came across a deer and its baby on the trail the other day. The baby was cute as heck, but the mom gave me a look that said "Stay the hell away from my baby or I will kick the crap outta you" I had to turn around and go down a different path. Animals are very protective parents. A guy on my University team almost got eaten by an angry mountain lion mother, luckily the kid mountain lion ran away before the mom ate my teammate. He was left unharmed...unharmed with poop in his shorts.

Okay, so congrats to the roommate for setting a new Canadian record in the 2000m last Saturday. Milne rocked a 5:01.57. Dude is quick!

Till next Thursday Flotrackers, keep fit and have fun!

-rob-