I love competition!! I can't wait to get into a triathlon, that moment as they count down to the start and the thrashing water that insues. I love at a running race where you try and figure out who is REALLY going to set the pace and not just going out there to blow up half-way into the run.
However, I'm feeling really outta shape right now. Except today! This morning I managed to dig myself out of bed at 4:30 and was in the water by 5:20 for a pretty vigorious swim workout. The thing is, I felt great! Finished strong and felt like I could do more!
Then at lunch, I made myself go to the gym even though I wanted to go bike drooling. On my plate was just a 5k run. I've been struggling to leave the 8min pace, which is pretty slow for someone who wants to run up front. Today I ran in the 7's and the last 600m at a flat 6min/mi pace. I felt great!
SOO maybe I just have been letting my body convince me I'm outta shape when really I just needed to push a bit harder. I can't wait for the season to start!!!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
"The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else." -Oswald Chambers
When the baby was born, I had those thoughts of "is she breathing?" I can rationally prevent myself from sneaking into her bedroom to feel if she's breathing. But I do think about bad things that could happen to her as she grows up. In that way I'm connected to my co-worker who had a baby at the same time. I can relate to their worry about their little baby, because I worry about mine too. But they do worry more, a lot more, and it is apparent when you talk to them. I am certain this is because we fear God, and they do not. We trust in the Lord for our baby and they do not trust in the Lord for even themselves. Disclaimer: I do have to be reminded to trust from time to time.
When the baby was born, I had those thoughts of "is she breathing?" I can rationally prevent myself from sneaking into her bedroom to feel if she's breathing. But I do think about bad things that could happen to her as she grows up. In that way I'm connected to my co-worker who had a baby at the same time. I can relate to their worry about their little baby, because I worry about mine too. But they do worry more, a lot more, and it is apparent when you talk to them. I am certain this is because we fear God, and they do not. We trust in the Lord for our baby and they do not trust in the Lord for even themselves. Disclaimer: I do have to be reminded to trust from time to time.
I can tell you, I do not want our GREAT baby to die or suffer, while I am alive. I pray that is not in His plan. I don't want to live that day and I don't want to see that day for anyone.
I can connect with a lot of people. I start conversations with complete strangers in crowded places. But I carry the gospel, I know its weight, I understand its gravity and I know it has power. Unlike the strangers I talk with or the encounters I have with people in my life, I have built a relationship with my co-worker that can hold and support the weight of the gospel. So why haven't I told him about my faith? Maybe it is fear...
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
212 days old!!
The baby is 212 days old today!!
Crazy to think that I started counting down to her birth at 210 days and over 400 days later she's moving and playing on her own.
I think of all the things I want to do for her as far as places to take her, experiences, school, college and it makes me think I need a better job and that I have a lot of exciting things to look forward to.
Right now I am really excited because she's getting bigger and her head is getting close to the 18.5" diameter mark. Once she's there I can buy her a bike helmet and we can start riding the bikes as a family again. The wife and I used to ride to Sonic during happy hour and get drinks and soon we can start doing that again.
I am already looking forward to Christmas because the baby will be about the age to get her first bike. It will be a run-bike so she can practice the control without also having to learn to pedal at the same time and hopefully skip the whole training wheel thing. I am SOOO excited about both of those events. A couple of hundred more days to go!
Crazy to think that I started counting down to her birth at 210 days and over 400 days later she's moving and playing on her own.
I think of all the things I want to do for her as far as places to take her, experiences, school, college and it makes me think I need a better job and that I have a lot of exciting things to look forward to.
Right now I am really excited because she's getting bigger and her head is getting close to the 18.5" diameter mark. Once she's there I can buy her a bike helmet and we can start riding the bikes as a family again. The wife and I used to ride to Sonic during happy hour and get drinks and soon we can start doing that again.
I am already looking forward to Christmas because the baby will be about the age to get her first bike. It will be a run-bike so she can practice the control without also having to learn to pedal at the same time and hopefully skip the whole training wheel thing. I am SOOO excited about both of those events. A couple of hundred more days to go!
Monday, January 18, 2010
The Power of the Holy Spirit
I started blogging about starting my training for the Buffalo Springs Half-Ironman today, and how proud of my wife I am for how serious she's taken to her training for the Austin Zooma half-marathon; however, I saw a quote today that really hit me hard. Someone on a blog about Haiti posted a comment in a response to a comment about Pat Robertson's view of why an earthquake hit Haiti. It simply said, "I would take Haiti's Voodoo over America's Christianity any day."
Whether good or evil, people easily recognize things that are supernatural. Unfortunately, in America, Christians live so passively that people mostly see the evil around us. Rarely, do they see the power of Christ majesty. I think it helps people to become cynical of "organized religion." They then, lump Christians together with all other powerless religions because we don't live our lives with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Today I am going to start praying, for life changing power from the Holy Spirit to be evident. Change in my life and change in the lives of people around me. I want to be apart of lives being changed.
Whether good or evil, people easily recognize things that are supernatural. Unfortunately, in America, Christians live so passively that people mostly see the evil around us. Rarely, do they see the power of Christ majesty. I think it helps people to become cynical of "organized religion." They then, lump Christians together with all other powerless religions because we don't live our lives with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Today I am going to start praying, for life changing power from the Holy Spirit to be evident. Change in my life and change in the lives of people around me. I want to be apart of lives being changed.
Monday, January 11, 2010
BANDERA 50k: It wasn't as hard as I thought!
IT WAS HARDER!!
Ok so if you go all the way back to the beginning of this blog, it started out as a training log to complement my cousin's training blog. We were comparing styles of training against each other to see how they might prepare us for a 100k race.
Well after an injury and much protesting by myself we decided, and thankfully so, to do the 50k instead of the 100k and here is a report from Saturday's Bandera 50k.
First we woke up at 4:30am to eat, get dressed and drive to the race location. 4:30am is an hour that most people never see unless they can't sleep or have a sick kid. The temperature outside was around 10 degrees according weather records for the area. 10 degrees!!! The really crazy thing is I looked it up AND some people in shorts!!
So we start the race at 7:30 a few minutes after the dawn and it gets light really fast but since we're in the valley there is no warmth from the sun. It is cold but my beard is holding steady and my warm clothes were perfect. The thing that made the real difference were the toe warmers. it is no fun to run with cold toes and the toe warmers were absolutely perfect.
Everything was great until about mile 10, supposedly the first 10 were the hardest, however since I was wiped out and hadn't trained consistently for this race the next 20 miles were the hardest for me. People hear that you're running 31 miles and they think the mileage made this race hard. The truth is, if you were to put all the hills back to back and the race was only 5 miles, then it would have been just about as difficult.
At the 12 mile mark I finally convinced my cousin to leave me behind and salvage whatever time she could. She managed to finish in 7:17. I walked/limped and almost crawled to the 15.5mi aid station. There I promptly announced, "I'm done!" continued to a chair and sat down. The volunteers graciously told me to just sit there and think about it. I announced several times I was done. They convinced me to eat a grilled cheese sandwich and I drank two glasses of coke. As I was sitting there thinking, it occurred to me that one day I might have to tell my daughter that she couldn't just quit something because it was hard. And if I wanted to teach her that lesson, I'd have to make sure I believed in what I was saying and had lived it myself. I had also been reading about the power of the Holy Spirit and how has American Christians we don't place a lot of value or believe there is a lot of power in the Holy Spirit. So I prayed, that I would have the strength and ability to finish this race and that I knew it was impossible for me to finish the exact same distance I had just finished by myself. I ran the next 11 miles.
It was nothing short of a miracle in my book, it really completely changed how I felt about marathons and the half-ironman races. I was really surprised because I had tried electrolytes, I had eaten carbs and I had taken water. I had tried to keep my physical needs met and so when I couldn't go further I just figured it was my lack of training or actually just my lack of just plain exercising. 15 1/2 miles was the best I could do. I had only put in about 30 miles of training so it makes perfect sense that I couldn't do this. So that's why, as goofy as it sounds, I really thought it was the Holy Spirit trying to show me that there is power, beyond what I'm capable of. I'm sure scientists and myself could rationalize it away, as electrolyte imbalance or calorie deficiency. But I had taken some of that in and it was more than just "getting my second wind." I did something I was sure I couldn't do. Something I would have bet money on that I couldn't finish.
I think I will always cherish this race because I found my breaking point before half of the race was over and had to rely on my belief that through the Holy Spirit it could be finished.
Ok so if you go all the way back to the beginning of this blog, it started out as a training log to complement my cousin's training blog. We were comparing styles of training against each other to see how they might prepare us for a 100k race.
Well after an injury and much protesting by myself we decided, and thankfully so, to do the 50k instead of the 100k and here is a report from Saturday's Bandera 50k.
First we woke up at 4:30am to eat, get dressed and drive to the race location. 4:30am is an hour that most people never see unless they can't sleep or have a sick kid. The temperature outside was around 10 degrees according weather records for the area. 10 degrees!!! The really crazy thing is I looked it up AND some people in shorts!!
So we start the race at 7:30 a few minutes after the dawn and it gets light really fast but since we're in the valley there is no warmth from the sun. It is cold but my beard is holding steady and my warm clothes were perfect. The thing that made the real difference were the toe warmers. it is no fun to run with cold toes and the toe warmers were absolutely perfect.
Everything was great until about mile 10, supposedly the first 10 were the hardest, however since I was wiped out and hadn't trained consistently for this race the next 20 miles were the hardest for me. People hear that you're running 31 miles and they think the mileage made this race hard. The truth is, if you were to put all the hills back to back and the race was only 5 miles, then it would have been just about as difficult.
At the 12 mile mark I finally convinced my cousin to leave me behind and salvage whatever time she could. She managed to finish in 7:17. I walked/limped and almost crawled to the 15.5mi aid station. There I promptly announced, "I'm done!" continued to a chair and sat down. The volunteers graciously told me to just sit there and think about it. I announced several times I was done. They convinced me to eat a grilled cheese sandwich and I drank two glasses of coke. As I was sitting there thinking, it occurred to me that one day I might have to tell my daughter that she couldn't just quit something because it was hard. And if I wanted to teach her that lesson, I'd have to make sure I believed in what I was saying and had lived it myself. I had also been reading about the power of the Holy Spirit and how has American Christians we don't place a lot of value or believe there is a lot of power in the Holy Spirit. So I prayed, that I would have the strength and ability to finish this race and that I knew it was impossible for me to finish the exact same distance I had just finished by myself. I ran the next 11 miles.
It was nothing short of a miracle in my book, it really completely changed how I felt about marathons and the half-ironman races. I was really surprised because I had tried electrolytes, I had eaten carbs and I had taken water. I had tried to keep my physical needs met and so when I couldn't go further I just figured it was my lack of training or actually just my lack of just plain exercising. 15 1/2 miles was the best I could do. I had only put in about 30 miles of training so it makes perfect sense that I couldn't do this. So that's why, as goofy as it sounds, I really thought it was the Holy Spirit trying to show me that there is power, beyond what I'm capable of. I'm sure scientists and myself could rationalize it away, as electrolyte imbalance or calorie deficiency. But I had taken some of that in and it was more than just "getting my second wind." I did something I was sure I couldn't do. Something I would have bet money on that I couldn't finish.
I think I will always cherish this race because I found my breaking point before half of the race was over and had to rely on my belief that through the Holy Spirit it could be finished.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Twenty-Ten
Twenty-ten, I really wanted the mob mentality to adopt "oh-ten" because it's different.
Different is the word I want to embrace for this year. This year is going to be different. This year we have a baby for the entire year. This year we're going to sell our house and live some where different. I hopefully will have a different job! I want to be challenged in a different way spiritually. I want to be different in the way I impact people.
I, like many people, have chosen to live life among people who don't have a relationship with Christ in hopes that they see Christ in me by the way I live my life. I didn't want to be weird enough to turn them off to Christ but the idea was to impact them by showing them Christ's love. What ended up happening is, I wasn't different enough to make them realize I wasn't just a "nice guy." I didn't impact them enough to show them Christ has something bigger than being an American or voting Republican or Democrat.
This next part is going to sound weird but I can't stop it and as hard as I've tried, have never been able to stop it. I have grown up knowing I was designed to make an impact in the world. If you say that to people, they instantly think you want to be rich, famous, a celebrity, or crazy and some people think you're immature and vain. All my life I've listened to people tell me some of those things. I believed the ones I wanted to believe and decided to seek after them. When I accepted Christ, I realized that impacting the world had nothing to do with impacting the world the way most people think. I figured out that I could be those things or not be those things yet still make an impact in the world.
I have been involved in things big and small that make an impact, but right now I go to work, I go to church, I go home and do it over and over and over again. I might make an impact occasionally but not how I was designed. My job does not fit my personality but it does fit my skill-set. My job does not let me impact the world for Christ that fills the desire of my heart. In the church, I'm not involved in a way that makes a real impact in myself or others that meets the needs of my soul. My home, my stuff, my hobbies keep the money I have been allotted from impacting others they way my heart desires. The weight of this pressure from not doing what I was designed to do keeps me from being the person, husband and father I desire to be.
So this year is going to be different. I want a different job, one that allows me to impact people daily. Impact them in a way that makes them ask, "WHY?!" Church, job, prayer, reading, worship, money, things and relationships are going to change. Twenty-ten is going to be different, it has to be different because we're not on the right track. We're not doing what we were called to do; impact the world for Christ is my desire.
Different is the word I want to embrace for this year. This year is going to be different. This year we have a baby for the entire year. This year we're going to sell our house and live some where different. I hopefully will have a different job! I want to be challenged in a different way spiritually. I want to be different in the way I impact people.
I, like many people, have chosen to live life among people who don't have a relationship with Christ in hopes that they see Christ in me by the way I live my life. I didn't want to be weird enough to turn them off to Christ but the idea was to impact them by showing them Christ's love. What ended up happening is, I wasn't different enough to make them realize I wasn't just a "nice guy." I didn't impact them enough to show them Christ has something bigger than being an American or voting Republican or Democrat.
This next part is going to sound weird but I can't stop it and as hard as I've tried, have never been able to stop it. I have grown up knowing I was designed to make an impact in the world. If you say that to people, they instantly think you want to be rich, famous, a celebrity, or crazy and some people think you're immature and vain. All my life I've listened to people tell me some of those things. I believed the ones I wanted to believe and decided to seek after them. When I accepted Christ, I realized that impacting the world had nothing to do with impacting the world the way most people think. I figured out that I could be those things or not be those things yet still make an impact in the world.
I have been involved in things big and small that make an impact, but right now I go to work, I go to church, I go home and do it over and over and over again. I might make an impact occasionally but not how I was designed. My job does not fit my personality but it does fit my skill-set. My job does not let me impact the world for Christ that fills the desire of my heart. In the church, I'm not involved in a way that makes a real impact in myself or others that meets the needs of my soul. My home, my stuff, my hobbies keep the money I have been allotted from impacting others they way my heart desires. The weight of this pressure from not doing what I was designed to do keeps me from being the person, husband and father I desire to be.
So this year is going to be different. I want a different job, one that allows me to impact people daily. Impact them in a way that makes them ask, "WHY?!" Church, job, prayer, reading, worship, money, things and relationships are going to change. Twenty-ten is going to be different, it has to be different because we're not on the right track. We're not doing what we were called to do; impact the world for Christ is my desire.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Atlanta, Georgia by morning
Ok so I just spent the last day driving to Atlanta Georgia, and after 16 hours away from home we made it to a hotel to sleep and then continue driving the remaining 2 hours.
I hate driving, I usually only drive as far as Amarillo. Then I either don't go or fly there. I used to love driving but after a while it just ends up becoming a mind-numbing experience. So you end up become one of two different types of people. The guys who "try to make good time" and get there as fast as possible or the Clark Griswold types who enjoy the locals, the sencery and their families. I'm more of the Griswold type, because I don't want to have the mind-numbing lets just push on through to the next stop. I usually stop twice on the way to D/FW, once for Kolaches in West and then in Hillsboro or Waxahacie(sp.)
What makes this trip interesting is my parents gave me a TomTom for Christmas. I thought I would never use it, but I love it. The information it gives you is great and fits right into my number crunch personality. That coupled with the fact that everyone traveling with me was pretty much sleeping 60% of the time. I became the other person... I made them take pictures from the car, I kept asking them if they thought they could hold it for another 30 minutes. Thankfully we're traveling with another group and they forced me to slow down and enjoy at least meals rather than just the snacks we had.
So today we'll finish our trip and start enjoying some great teaching and great worship at the Passion conference. I'm kind of sad that I'm not going to see my wife and baby but sometimes what's best isn't what you want. Hopefully the trip back will be faster!
I hate driving, I usually only drive as far as Amarillo. Then I either don't go or fly there. I used to love driving but after a while it just ends up becoming a mind-numbing experience. So you end up become one of two different types of people. The guys who "try to make good time" and get there as fast as possible or the Clark Griswold types who enjoy the locals, the sencery and their families. I'm more of the Griswold type, because I don't want to have the mind-numbing lets just push on through to the next stop. I usually stop twice on the way to D/FW, once for Kolaches in West and then in Hillsboro or Waxahacie(sp.)
What makes this trip interesting is my parents gave me a TomTom for Christmas. I thought I would never use it, but I love it. The information it gives you is great and fits right into my number crunch personality. That coupled with the fact that everyone traveling with me was pretty much sleeping 60% of the time. I became the other person... I made them take pictures from the car, I kept asking them if they thought they could hold it for another 30 minutes. Thankfully we're traveling with another group and they forced me to slow down and enjoy at least meals rather than just the snacks we had.
So today we'll finish our trip and start enjoying some great teaching and great worship at the Passion conference. I'm kind of sad that I'm not going to see my wife and baby but sometimes what's best isn't what you want. Hopefully the trip back will be faster!
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