(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

Swearing is Bad
Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Hey there you crazy sons of guns. Wanna blog? Okay, let's go!

I'm at work right now, I just moved around a bunch of heavy stuff and my shop is a mess, there is some sort of crazy experiment going on in here. I'm a bit overwhelmed, I'm gonna take a break.  I often find myself overwhelmed and or confused here at the ole' 10-3.  I'm the shop guy at an environmental consulting firm. I'm here to help in anyway I can- prep for field work, clean stuff, build stuff, keep the soda pop fridge stocked, basically I do the things that all the smart people are too smart to do, or get paid to much to do. Sounds pretty simple right? It is for the most part, I'm a champ at keeping the pop fridge stocked. These people are engineers though, and engineers are smart as hell. They are always asking me to do complicated things and to build these weird little contraptions.

This is generally how it goes down...

The smart person will come to my shop with some sort of sketch and tell me to build what is on the paper. They will use their fancy engineering talk and I will immediately become confused. I have a history degree, so sometimes I try to utilize this and ask "historically, how would this be done?" However, this trick has actually never worked, so I remain confused. I will act confident and pretend I know exactly what they are talking about. Then when they leave I call Danielle (smart engineer, wife of a runner, she's got my back) and I get her to come give me a more detailed explanation of what the hell I'm supposed to do. She will break it down in terms I can understand and usually I can figure it out from there.  The people I work with are great though, they are amazingly understanding and supportive with the whole running thing. It is a sweet gig. Maybe I should get back to work, I'll finish this up later.

So summer is coming, we've had a few scorcher's here in Guelph already. The humidity up here is pretty gnarly. I was roasting out there on the track today, and my workout was actually kinda garbage. But hell, I don't mind too much. After that shit of a winter, I refuse to complain about the weather. I can't stand winter running. Winter running is hard, man. You gotta bundle up in layer after layer of the warm stuff and then go slip and slide around the streets just to get your miles in. And in the winter it gets dark at 4:30 so you gotta wake up early to get your doubles in. Recently I've been rocking 12pm-7:30pm doubles, it's amazing. anyways,  back to winter running sucking. Let's talk about frozen knobs, some of the worst pain I've ever experienced as a runner has come via the frozeness of my weiner after not keeping that little guy warm and snug. I swear to God, the feeling of a thawing dink after a long cold run can be excruciating. It has literally brought me to tears before, poor little guy. Yeah, so I don't mind sweating a little bit and getting a little sunburned. Bring on the sun!

I was just reading a thread about a high school kid getting DQ'd for swearing. It reminded me of the time I was at OFSAA regionals in high school. The scenario was that the top 4 qualified for the show. I run the race and finish 5th, just missed qualifying, I was pissed, so right as I crossed the line I let out a "muddereffer!" and I was promplty DQ'd. Turns out the guy who came 4th scratches from OFSAA and 5th place from regionals moves on, Sonofabitch! So kids out there, some advice for ya; swearing after a race is a fine way to let out emotion. Just make sure the officials are not around. 

I have always kinda had a tendency to say stupid stuff when I shouldn't. In 8th grade I had to miss out on the class graduation trip because I was a dumb little smartass. We had this lady teacher who was lame and the dude who was our math and gym teacher was a dick. I was getting in trouble one day for something stupid and I told the lady I thought she was a bitch, and I told the dude I thought he was a dick. They told me I couldn't go on the graduation trip because, and direct quote here; "I am sick of Rob Watson's attitude!" It sucked, the class got to go to Toronto and do all sorts of fun stuff. I just stayed home and did some not so fun stuff. I probably just did a puzzle or something. So kids, another lesson from Rob. Don't be a smart ass, if you think your teacher is a dick keep your mouth shut. Wait until you graduate and they no longer have any authority over you. Then unleash your fury via blog or twitter, that's the way things work these days. Also if you are at bar and you think someone is a douche wait till they are gone before you make fun of them. Douches don't like being called douches and they will (maybe) punch you in the face. Also if you are reading this you are probably a runner and you can't fight, you'll get beat up by the douche. I've been punched by a douche, it sucks.

Remember blog #6, yeah that part at the end when I talked about getting thrown out of my friends birthday party for throwing pizza on his roof...when I was 6! Yeah well that buddy is getting married! in Korea! he's marrying a Korean lady! Just wanna say congrats to Spence, getting married and gonna have babies!..hmm, I don't like it when my friends get married, makes me feel old. I turn 28 in two weeks, that is not cool. I should probably look into getting married and having some babies soon myself.

Woah! just killed a wasp in my house. I sure hope there are no more wasps in my house, I still haven't found that chipmunk from blog #33. When I was a kid my dickhead friend hit a wasp nest with a baseball bat and ran away, he didn't tell me he was doing this and I got stung in the face by a wasp, it hurt like hell.

Okay then, I'm gonna go eat a orange Popsicle. Have a good one folks.

Till next Thursday Flotrackers, keep fit and have fun!

-rob-