(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

NB Market Research
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Blog #34

Do you know what I realized this weekend? I realized that I am not very good at public speaking, not very good at all. I kinda suck at public speaking.  I went down to the hometown and did a little talk for the LondonRunner track club. Great group, that LondonRunner crew. I was asked to do a little talk and maybe help inspire some kids. Instead, I just babbled incoherently and essentially called a bunch of high school kids p*ssies for not running enough.  It was brutal, these kids were just looking at me like I was some friggen weirdo.  I don't even think they knew who I was or why I was there.

I figure there are several reasons for my crappy public speaking. First off, I do absolutely no prep, I am scared of this kinda stuff, so I just try not to think about. Then, when it's go time, I wing it and hope for the best. This is a terrible approach if you're looking to have a successful public speaking experience.

Mom : "so you ready for your talk"

Me : "yeah, I guess"

Mom : "so what are you gonna talk about"

Me : "running, it'll be fine. Can I have some ice cream?"

Another big problem I have is not taking my audience into account. I'm speaking to a bunch of high school kids here. Some of them are serious and some of them are actually quite good. But man, I wasn't even close to being on their level. I was just talking about a bunch gibberish about running lots of miles, and them being wimps for not working hard enough. Geez man, when I was in 10th grade I spent more time playing with my wiener than running. I'm a hypocrite. I should of just gotten up there and said; "hey guys, have fun with your running, respect your parents and don't smoke crack"

That would have been perfect. That's what I'm doing next time.

Aside from that public speaking debacle, things have been rolling smoothly.  I am rocking the callous training right now. Just running a lot and working hard, building the callous so that when the real work starts I'll be ready for it.  The only problem with callous training is that it makes you tired as balls. Man, before every workout I just gotta swallow the pride and give it a go. Reid and Gillis are also both very fit and very good, this makes the kicking of my ass even worse. I keep telling myself that I'm doing this for the greater good and I'm looking at the bigger picture and so forth and so on, but man oh man, This is rough. My ego, my poor ego  is taking a beating. Maybe I'll go yell at more high school kids to make myself feel better.

Speaking of yelling at high school kids. I was out for my run last night, I'm just running down the path, minding my own business. I run past these four high school aged kids, aged 16ish I'm guessing. As I run by one of the kids calls me a "fag", his little punk friends then proceeded to laugh at this righteous insult. I'm a 27 year old dude, and I should have just shook this off. But I didn't. I responded with a slightly more mature comeback (slightly) and thus the verbal battle was on. Each side took turns trading insults and threats and such (hey NewBalance, these kids think your running pants are "gay". There's some market research for ya). Finally, I just had to continue with my run so I carried on my way. About a minute later, I looked at my watch and realized that it was time to turn around. But I couldn't, those young street toughs were back that way on the trail! What was I gonna do? I was screwed. I had to just keep heading out further from home until eventually I came across another route I could take to get home. Turned an 80 min run into a 90 min run, eff' those kids.

Quick note here, I'm racing a 10km road race next weekend in Ottawa. The race is quite stacked with international and national talent. I'm looking forward to lacing up the NB205's and giving things a go. I hope that I can go sub-30, that'd be a decent start.

Alright, gonna talk quickly about fruit. I just grabbed an orange to snack on.  I love oranges. They're great, so juicy and tasty. But oranges are risky because sometimes they are dry and sucky. It is very frustrating when you go through all the work of peeling an orange and it turns out to be a dud orange. I got a dud orange earlier today and I was very disappointed. I yelled at the orange and threw it in the garbage. I settled on an apple instead. Apples are quite good. I think that apples are better than oranges because they are easier to judge. The bruises are clearly visible and you know what you're getting from the get go. Apples are more dependable than oranges. Apples are safe.

So I'm going to Louisville Kentucky this weekend for Krazy-Fest. I'm going to try to behave because I am pacing a 5000m on Tuesday and racing that 10km on Sunday. But having said that, I also hope some silly shenanigans go down because then I'll have some stuff to blog about. That'd be sweet.

Bed time.

Have a good one internet.

-rob-