Running in the Cold

Every morning I wake up and want to throw on some shorts and a T-shirt and head out for a run to start my day. Now that it's winter and freezing and snowy I can't do that :( I hate running on a treadmill every single day and I have even more the track upstairs in the ARC running around in circles. I get bored very easily so staring at the same thing for a good 45min drives me nuts. I don't know what I'm going to do for the next couple winter months. Definitely have to keep myself motivated because it's so easy to "take a break" during this time.

Convention!

Tomorrow we are leaving for the PSAHPERD Convention! I am actually really excited . I have never been to it before and it seems like it is a big deal. I was looking through the program and there looks to be some really cool sessions being presented that I would love to attend. I wish I could make them all. I am also excited to be a part of the FIT Club work out Saturday morning. Except the session starts at 7:30am so we are going to have to be up prettttty early. As a new-bee going into convention does anyone have some advice on maybe what sessions to attend or how to get the most benefit from going?

Assessment in PE

In my Foundations of PE class we are currently doing debates. Yesterday's debate was on assessment in PE. I have always been for assessment because it's the only way to show that your class is a success. After sitting through the debate I think my feelings have changed a little bit. The con side really made a good argument. They pointed out the obvious about grading athletes. It's not fair to grade someone who is not sports-oriented the same as an athlete. But assessment isn't always necessarily grading. The con side kept saying how the point of PE is to teach the students life skills that they can take outside of the classroom and use for the rest of their lives. Which I agree, rather than punishing a student who can't necessarily do a specific skill.

As physical educators is it our job to bring in a class and assess every single student. Sometimes that isn't even possible. With PE classes being cut many classes are being combined so the teacher may have more than 1 class at a time. So is it even possible to assess every single student?

Is it our job to bring the students in and teach them something they can use the rest of their lives? Is it our job to just get them in the gym and moving for the short amount of time we see them?

What are your feelings on assessment?

Thanksgiving Dinner

So on Thanksgiving day I was browsing my twitter and my friend had posted a tweet that said:

Fun fact: You have to run more than a marathon's distance to work off the avg. amount of calories eaten at Thanksgiving dinner. Enjoy!

I thought this was a crazy fact so I did some research on my own. I found this website that had a list of thanksgiving food and amounts and you could go through and check what you ate for thanksgiving dinner. Then at the end it would take what you checked and calculate how many calories you consumed and how far you would have to walk and how many steps it would take to burn it all off. It has specific portion sizes so it is only a rough estimate but it still gives you an idea. I decided to do my own meal and it came out like this:

that comes to 2790 calories. You will need to walk 27.9 miles, 45 kilometers, or 55800 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps!

THATS CRAZY! First off I know that I probably consumed more than that because I did eat larger portions than they provided. I dont think I even want to know what I actually consumed! I think I will be getting my butt to the gym daily for a while now to work off all of that food!

Here is the link below if you would like to try yours:

http://walking.about.com/library/cal/blthanksgivingcalories.htm