The Long Run of a Life Lived for Christ

It's the last day of the year and people all around the world are expecting the turning of the earth to reveal something new. Something that the 364 days before it didn't have time to show them. Sorry to disappoint, but it's not that simple.

In the beatitudes, Christ tells us that the poor, hungry, weeping, hated, excluded, reviled, and spurned will one day inherit a kingdom, be satisfied, laugh, and receive a great reward in heaven. All that is good...in the long term. As a mortal on this earth, lack of means, food, love and acceptance are all very hard things to bear. In the near term, those things hurt. Just like running. 

The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win. -

  Sir Roger Bannister

Long distance running is a game of pain and patience. In the near term, each step offers no more instant reward than the last and is often no more comfortable than the last. No one step truly makes a difference in the near term.What matters in the long term is all of the steps taken over time - the long, drawn out haul down the road, track or trail.What matters is having the patience to push through any near term pain because of the promised benefit after a long period of toil. Just like faith.

Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light. - John Milton

For Christians and runners especially, the best things in life don't come around in a snap. Running and grace both require patience. 

So in this new year, try to think about changing yourself over the long haul. Try taking some of the painful steps that will pay off in the long run. And, just because I love the sport, try lacing up and hitting the road.

Tailwinds in 2013!

God as a coach - A failed experiment?

Back in August, I wrote a post about Ryan Hall's performance in the 2012 Olympic marathon and what it meant in light of his special training method. At the time, Ryan was practicing faith based coaching; where a runner relies on his or her God to direct their physical training.

As you might have seen, Ryan recently announced that he will begin training under a new, mortal, flesh and blood coach. Ryan's new coach, Renato Canova, seems quite impressive, and I am certainly a fan of his rumored emphasis on hill work.

Although this isn't the first time Ryan has trained under a human coach, I'm excited to see what Canova brings out in him. I can't help but wonder, however, how Ryan will adjust to this change in his professional running life. Here's some of what he had to say about the change:

While this is certainly a new chapter in my career I don't feel like it's a huge departure from how I have operated in the past. - MSN Innovation For Endurance - 

Not a huge departure? Ryan used to be solely coached by God and now has a human coach? How is that not a big departure. Doesn't this mean he has given up on God to direct his running? Doesn't this mean that God failed Ryan as a coach? No, I don't think that's what this means at all.

I believe Proverbs 3:6 can be of good use here. The passage says "in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." If we are to truly enjoy life to the fullest as only God can provide, we must allow Him control over all aspects of our lives. I believe that is what Ryan Hall was doing when he placed his professional life fully in God's control. How did that work out? In terms of Olympic victories, not so great. But, what about spiritual victories? How can anyone but Ryan himself judge how many spiritual victories were won during this period of his life?

Maybe that was the whole point of his faith-based coaching experience? Maybe God wanted to train Ryan's faith instead of his running. Maybe now that Ryan's faith has been strengthened to the level God desired, God has put a fantastic running coach in Ryan's path so that his running can reach the highest of levels.

This is what I like to call "the head fake" - where someone asks you to do one thing in order to teach you something else. By submitting his running to God, Ryan probably learned volumes about faith and God's provision. One would have assumed that by submitting his running to God, He would have blessed Ryan's running. That just isn't God's style. He isn't that predictable.

So, before we all start cynically quipping "Ha, that God-coached thing sure didn't work very well did it?", we should ask ourselves, did we really expect God to train Ryan Hall in running when He had the perfect chance to train him in matters of Godliness?"

Running Training - Starting a Run-Streak

A friend of mine challenged me to start a #RunStreak - an unbroken number of days where one runs a certain amount. We have self-selected 1 mile to be our minimum daily quota. I've made it 1 week so far, but it hasn't been easy. Cold mornings are never fun.

I've been running for over 10 years and logged countless hours on the road. If pressed to answer, I'd say I've unknowingly achieved a run streak of 1 month or so. Having never set a goal to run every day, it's never been important to me. 

This challenge did get me thinking about a few things. First, who is really good at running every day?

Apparently avid runner Mark Covert has this thing down, and I mean to the ground. Answer 1  - check!

Another question this challenge brought up was about the value of running every day. What good could 1 mile do? If I've just finished a hard set of intervals the day before and my legs are totally shot, why lace up for such a pointless jog?

Rest is critical - no getting around it. It is one of the silent events in every sport. Like its brother nutrition, if you ignore it for long enough you either bonk hard or get hurt. 

But is 1 little mile going to kill my rest? Not in this bloggers opinion. So, is there something larger going on here? 

Aristotle once said "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit". Devotion, determination and discipline are what's being trained with that extra 1 mile. The "get out of bed" muscle inside your brain needs to be trained just like your quads do.

(To continue playing devil's advocate) But shouldn't you save that mental strength building to get you through your toughest workouts?

Which side will I end up on...we'll see.

Post your thoughts on my Twitter feed @paceandfaith .  

Race Day Gone Wrong

Very few people would be upset if they were told they didn't have to swim/bike/run 70.3 miles in the 100+ degree heat. I happen to be one of those people who would be, and was, upset.

                                        

 My first 1/2 Ironman was supposed to be held in the metropolitan Muncie, IN last July. The summer was already pretty hot and a heat wave was baking the better part of the country. My wife and I drove up to the expo the day before and never saw the thermometer drop below 100. Shortly after arriving at the convention center I found out that the race had been shortened to an Olympic-esk length (1 mi swim, 30 mi bike, 6.2 mi run) because of the heat. To save you from a really long rant, I'll just say there were many bummed out triathletes, and I was one of them."They've got heat in Kona, you know! Lava fields anybody?" - that's the kind of vitriolic taunts I wanted to shout at the race director.

My mood dropped faster than a tap dancer on ice. All of my motivation was lost, and any sense of calm I had fostered in the days prior went out the window. Try as I might, I couldn't get over it. Then things got a little worse. I found out that I left my helmet and bike pump at home. "Hello breakdown. I think we've met before".

Enter my Godly wife. Sitting on the sofa in our hotel room she put her arms around me and talked me through what I soon saw to be the lesson God had in store for me the whole time. She asked why I was so upset, and I explained that I had told so many people I was going to do a half-ironman, and now I wasn't allowed to. I had promised myself that I was going to finish this thing, and through no fault of my own, I had to break that promise. Slowly but surely she worked me towards the true source of my rage - PRIDE.

 I was afraid what other people, including myself, were going to say when I didn't finish a half-ironman. I was afraid of how I would feel. I was angry about not getting to do what I wanted to do. None of that had anything to do with God's intentions for the day. I and the world were the focus. Not God. Issue identified.

I started off race morning by listening to David Crowder's After All. One of my favorite lines says "Oh I've dreamed dreams of majesty as brilliant as a billion stars But they're never bright enough after all...You are Holy". I tearfully prayed for God to do what He needed to do throughout the race.

I started the race off with a strong swim, kept it steady of the bike and used my extra strength on the run to come in with a respectable 2 hr 29 min finish. (The pro's had a nice race of their own.) My real story, and my final lesson, was out on the swim.

After making the first of two turns, the swim course put the races parallel to the sunrise, so if you breathed on your right side you got a face full of rays. As I made the turn the sun's light was a reminder of the previous day's lesson. God's majesty is brighter than a billion stars and just staring into a single star had enough power to turn my head the other way. What could I hope to do to brighten a billion times that with a simple race regardless of the distance?

So what great glory did God achieve in that shorter than expected race? I don't know for sure, but all I can say is that my thoughts during the race were totally on Him, and that wouldn't have been the case if nothing had changed from my initial plan. That alone makes it worth it. That alone brings God more glory than any number of miles ever could.

I'm in Love with a Triathlete

This is going to be one of my shortest post ever, but I had to share this.

My lovely wife probably could have written something similar to this, so I had to swallow my pride and just laugh. Enjoy this little piece of triathlete humor from Competitor.com. 

Triathlete Love: Lies My Triathlete Told Me

The Lean Training Plan

Dear Readers,
 Here's a little bit about me (Phillip Martin ). I work at an industrial design-build construction company and moderate a manufacturing news website that we created to help our manufacturing customers find information about their market. One of my duties as webmaster is to procure featured articles for publication on the site. Many of these articles focus on the topic of lean manufacturing.

Lean is a giant term that can be used to describe a process of doing or making something that is undertaken with a specific emphasis on the elimination of waste in order to maximize benefit. This really got started with Toyota and their Toyota Production System and has a myriad of special terms to make it sound extra fancy.

One item of lean that I've become particularly interested in from an endurance perspective is PDCA - Plan Do Check Act.

The expanded steps for PDCA have been described as follows:

1. Decide what's important
2. Set Goals
3. Organize
4. Execute Your Plan
5. Innovate As You Go
6. Step Back and Learn
7. Repeat

If you have ever (successfully) undertaken an endurance race, you know all about planning. You understand that it's more than just your body that gets you from the start to the finish. There was a training plan put in place months before you got to the start line that will get you through the race.

Due to my recent exposure to lean, I've started asking myself how would a Lean Guru plan for a distance race? This is what I came up with

1. Decide what's important - Goal Time? Win Age Group? Stay Injury Free? Don't Puke?
2. Set Goals - These goals have to enforce the important factors identified. (ex - Injury prevention might mean setting a goal of taking 1 day of active rest or complete rest a week)
3. Organize - What materials do you need to make this happen? Got a faster bike split in mind? New tires and an aero helmet might be a good investment. What's your schedule going to be like? How are you going to "do life" and train?
4. Execute Your Plan - Train - actually follow your predetermined plan.
5. Innovate As You Go - You made the plan, so you can change the plan if it's bogus. Intervals always give you knee pain? Lay off. Having trouble staying hydrated? Try a new fuel system.
6. Step Back and Learn - After the race is done, take a look back at your training log and see what actually happened. What workouts were you likely to skip? Where there any training sessions that were always followed by nagging pain? 
7. Repeat - Come back next time smarter and faster.

Hopefully this little plan helps someone as they plan their next event. 

Tailwinds! 

Love to Tri? Try to Love

The mother of all triathlons was last weekend and boy what a show! Kona nerds certainly got several surprises (I certainly didn't think Macca would be DNF). Men's winner Pete Jacobs put on a good show all the way through and deserved his win 100%.

In his post-race interview, Jacobs talked about one of the most important keys to his winning the race. Was it his sleek bike? No. The blistering intervals he did during training? Nope. The invisible dolphin he rode during the swim? Almost but not really. Love? You bet!

The Bible has tons to say about love. God sacrificed His son Jesus for love of His own creation. The disciples gave up their entire lives due to their love for Christ. Followers of Christ should give 10% (or more) of their income to His church because they love Him. The list goes on and on, but the Bible doesn't exactly talk about how love would help you face down a pack of hungry Ironman triathletes at the end of a marathon. So what's up with love?

Anyone who believes in God must agree that God is powerful. You don't create the universe without power. If we can also agree that God is love, then we can assume that their is power in love. By acting out of love we are acting in accordance with God's will. As the Bible tells us, those who are outside of God's will don't tend to make it very far, so love is in our best interest. To boot, Paul, John, George and Ringo also thought love was pretty important.

The power of positive thinking and positive visualization are nothing new in sports. By harnessing love rather than rage or hate (Ex -You gotta get mad to win!) during a race you not only save yourself the mental energy of thinking negative thoughts, but you also tap into something more spiritually powerful and ultimately more pleasing all around.

Unless you plan on making triathlon your job, your main goal is probably to have fun and enjoy yourself. Who's ever said "Let's get up really early, put on weird clothes, go run for a few hours and spend the entire time thinking negative thoughts - it'll be fun!"? That outlook certainly doesn't appeal to me, and I doubt it does to you either.

Want to have the best shot at winning your next race and maybe enjoying life a bit more altogether? Try love on for size. It's Christ tested, God approved.

I don't mean to speak for Pete Jacobs at all in writing this. I have no reason to believe his comments were motivated by faith. This is my attempt to use his popular comments as a jumping off point for my own discussion.