Keeping Records - I Am Blessed

 Keeping records.  It has always been my thing.  The beauty of it for me is that most of the time, I can look at my records on training and pretty much tell where life is going.  Which brings me to this: It is as I think Aristotle wrote, "We are what we repeatedly do."  So, in records, I can see what I have repeatedly done and see pretty much who I am at the moment and whether I am headed for a better me or is life going down the toilet?  

Other people may have other methods of maintaining personal discipline in life, but this is my way of checking my weather.  Plus, records can be my own cheering section.  When I look back and see I had the best week in a couple of months, it seems I can hear the applause, though no one knows or cares except me.  Records are the medium for my own personal delusion, which has kept me sane, happy, and mostly on course through 40-plus years of this.

Also, records can be a source of gratitude.  When I look back and see all I have done, it is impossible for me not  to say, "Thank you, God.".  I am blessed.

Getting Stopped by the Officer

 

My wife and I were having so much fun that the policeman thought we were drunk.  Perhaps I was driving all over the road, but there wasn’t any traffic.  We were just having so much fun and laughter; lots of life, and some of my best jokes-in my opinion, of course.  The swirling bright lights behind our vehicle caused me to pull over, wondering what the problem was. 

Driver’s license, insurance card, then:  “Have you been drinking, sir?”  I laughed, but the officer failed to see the humor.  “Walk on this line from here to there.  Ok, now touch your toes.”

I was still a little giddy from the good time we had been having.  “Officer, ninety percent of the people in the world can’t touch their toes.  Does that mean that only ten percent of the population is sober at any one time?”  I laughed and tried to make light of, and enjoy my first ever field sobriety test.   I had not had alcohol in more years than I could remember, so I knew if I failed any kind of sobriety test, they would have to make it up on me.  I was sure. 

The officer soon loosened up a bit as it became quite apparent that we were really having a good time, really were, without alcohol or other substances.  We both could enjoy life to its fullest without help, except for the peace that comes from that surety that is Jesus Christ. 

“Watch where you are going and try not to wander all over the road when you're having a good time.”

 I can’t be sure, but I think he smiled just a little to himself.

“Thank you, officer.”

 

Arriving at the Begining Again

 When I began running, I couldn't do a quarter mile.  It started out of frustration  but ended up staying with me for i a lifetime 

I can remember so well that first angry morning.  Though I had done lots of physical work chopping wood, building a fence, digging septic lines, and other back-breaking jobs, I wasn't physically prepared for running.  I couldn't breathe.  Of course, I was in the throes of an asthma attack at the time but later, when I wasn't, breathing was still an issue.  I remember that first time I completed a whole quarter of a mile, hallelujah, and praise God when I finally did a whole mile. That was forth three years ago.

Now, after 32 marathons, 53 triathlons, and hundreds of events of various lengths and having logged mileage equivalent to over two times around the world at the equator, I found myself struggling again to run a quarter of a mile. 

An injury digging on my septic system was compounded by an injury in a bike wreck has me not moving that much the last four months.  Though I did some minimal indoor biking, my breathing is not doing well with running or trying to run that quarter mile, Just like before. Could it be that the more things change, the more they remain the same?  

Sometimes you have to go back to the beginning to find that not much has changed.  There is you, your drive, your persistence, your expectations from it, and there is still your frustrations. And the frustrations from forty-three years ago show up in life today.  

So the decision is always the same with every setback;  Is the ending or a beginning?  Am I to " arrive at the beginning and know it again for the first time?

This time it will be different, but it will be built upon the same.  Faith, hope,  and gratitude to God that I still can. 

Is It Enough?

 Maybe it is because I am so aware that I don't have that much longer to live?  Perhaps, I don't want to spend precious and depleting time getting over some injury?  Perhaps it's something like Thoreau wrote about when he left Walden.  He says something to the effect that he left the woods for a good reason, as he went there and had other lives to live and had spent enough time on this one. My goodness, but I have spent a lot of time on this one.  Is it enough?

This is where the rubber meets the road:  Is it enough?  At times like this year, mostly recovering from injuries, it certainly seems so.  Surely, after all I  have done in endurance sports, I don't have anything to prove - or do I? 

Perhaps I just need to prove I still can.  Perhaps proving I still can that helps hold the life door shut and not let feeling old get in.  Maybe there are things to yet prove.  Perhaps there are mountains,  though different mountains now, to climb? 

We've Changed But the Incline of the Hill Hasn't - Push On

 

 

Everyone who has run or biked a sizable hill knows the feeling.  At first, it isn’t too bad. Momentum carries you into the first part of the incline.  “This hill ain’t so bad!”

That is sort of how it is with youth.  Things come easy.  If we are blessed the hill goes on for us, they keep coming at us.    Into the hill, the legs start to strain and the breathing is getting more labored.  The arms are having to pump harder to help out.  Now you see upon looking up that the hill seems so much longer and steeper than it did before—and harder. Yes, it gets harder almost with each step. So at this stage of life the gloves start coming off for the youth.

It goes on and on, pedal stroke upon pedal stroke and we seem to be barely moving.  Dig down.  This is where the rubber meets the road.   We are youth growing up, becoming men and women in the real world. 

Then, it seems, as we begin to approach the top of the hill, we reach the steepest part.  This could be middle age, facing your frailties and now diminished ability.  You have changed but The hill hasn’t.  It stands as tall, as steep, and as resolute as when you were much younger.  

Now, it gets really tough.  Dig down. Don’t walk.  It hurts!  Don’t quit!  Keep going no matter how slowly. Then there is a more level spot as the hill gives up before we do and we breathe deeply to recover our wind and smile as best we can at the beauty of  it all. It was a very good day.  I was  a very good life.

 

Trusting in My Landmark

 Being a triathlete again seems so far away.   I look across this great sea of issues, and I can't see the other side that well. 

It reminds me of when I fished on this lake ten miles wide in my small boat.  To get back across the lake, the object was to find a landmark on the other side and focus my travel back on that landmark.  Sometimes it was cloudy.  Sometimes it was hazy.  Sometimes it was raining.  Sometimes the waves pitched the boat about, but I had to strain and be sure to focus and travel in the direction of my landmark.

The water has been rough lately, and there have been rains and storms.  My little boat seems so ill-equipped for this voyage. My landmark is God.  And, I know I must pursue that landmark across this lake of severe disappointment.  

So today, I put the bow of my boat into the waves and head toward the landmark.  He will be there to guide me, whatever the weather.  Today, let me put fear aside and trust in my landmark to guide me across.

Fire Inside

 We have to be challenged.  We need to be confronted.   If life appears easy, maybe we are probably missing something.    Sometimes when things get too bland, ordinary, and routine, there is a hunger within that can't quite be explained, described, or exorcised.  We can find ourselves going nitnoid about things that really don't matter, maybe because we don't have anything in our easy lives that does matter. Perhaps we are programmed to regularly need some kind of quest, an adventure.  

Yeah, you can get the new car, the latest hot gadget,  and know all the attributes of your phone and iPad, and be so smart and informed, but that is not nearly enough. Sure, it's fun, satisfying, and pleasurable at the moment, but it is not sustaining.  Its like eating candy to satisfy your hunger.  You feel good and full, and have energy and focus, until the sugar spike ends.   

Could we be hungry for more solid food that feeds our true selves?  Could we be hungry for less certain outcomes?  Real adventure?  

When tapping on an icon on yet another screen doesn't do it for us, where do we go to fill that empty spot?   What do we do when multimedia is just not enough to fill the empty spot we can't describe?  What do we take to cure the growl in the stomach of our souls for the real food we were made to eat?  

Growth is restless for something else, perhaps something a little more wild and uncertain? Growth happens on the edges of the comfort zone.

Have we muddied the waters between here and there, between where we are and what we could be, between what we are doing and what we could be pursuing, between who we are and the person we could be pursuant to be?  Are we squelching that passion to chase an uncertain outcome?   Down deep, I think most do, but some suppress it more successfully.  

Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."  That was in the 19th century. I can't imagine the amount of desperation lived out now.  

Actively envisioning doing another triathlon, yet only half-heartedly planning  it, still quickened my pulse so that I wondered where I had been living all this time   . Life is good.  God has been good to me. I am grateful.

 However, I am not ashamed to say, something is still missing, and I think it is some instinctive lure toward adventure, an activity maybe a little larger than myself, beyond my strength,  involving a degree of risk.   Maybe that is why some people climb mountains, have affairs, drive fast,  take arduous long bike rides, go to theme parks and take risky rides, and so on.  Maybe there's something in the DNA of some of us that calls us to the edge of ourselves and beyond. 

  

Looking at the races, envisioning the event and everything included, fills me with a fervor for life and the kind of Hope that, for me, only God is capable of creating.