Courage

  You never expect it.  It was almost dark when  I was coming around a curve  on my mountain bike about 12 miles an hour.  I couldn't see what, but something caught my front wheel, and off I flipped into the bushes.

For a week now I have had to put up with rib soreness, cuts and abrasions, and a swollen and discolored thumb.  There may be a broken rib.  I don't know.  I could go to the doctor for it, but my  idea is that he/she would only X-ray it, say it  and tell me it will be 6 weeks, and here are some pain pills if you need them.  For that I could pay a 150-200 deductible, but at least I would know, for whatever good that would do me.  It will still take 6 weeks. I have had broken ribs before. 

Again, endurance sports training is a lot like life:  the pursuit of excellence requires a lot of hard work, commitment and dedication.  And thrown in there you have to be able to get hurt and come back  You got to be able to take a punch, because life will hit hard sometimes  Looking back over my training log history, I find it is replete with seemingly one injury after another over the years.  And so is life.  We grow when we face what we are  confronted  with,  and what we can overcome.  

 It would seem the key to personal, physical, and spiritual growth is courage. Courage to confront against the odds; courage to keep on when pain screams loudly and all seems lost; courage to ignore the voices of naysayers and doomsday prophets; courage to admit mistakes, to see that the course wasn't  going in the  "direction of your dreams," and turn away from it.  And, it requires courage to have faith; faith in yourself, faith in  your training, faith in your fellow man, and most of all faith in God.