I'm Back

So, I've been slacking in terms of both blogging and running. Both streaks are finally being broken.

In the last 2 weeks, I've managed to drag my sorry butt out of bed before 5:30 and run before work 5 times. The first few days weren't pretty, but I got through them.

The weekend forecast told me my plans for a long-ish Saturday run would be thwarted. God smiled on me and gave Lexington, KY the warmest day it has had in months. I ran 6 hilly miles - the longest I've been on the road for more than a month.

Getting back to my favorite sport is like returning to my home town. After the feeling that the old has become new again, I start settling back in to the rhythm of things. I remember what it feels like to be what I consider to be "me" again. And that is a most welcomed feeling!

The Path Less Traveled

I love trail running. It excites me in a way that road running or track simply cannot. Trail running asks you to make your way back to the place you started following a single path that is always changing. Something about that appeals to me.

I've been reading more about the idea of a path or a way recently. An an Asian Studies major at Furman University (Go Paladins!) I studied many Eastern philosophical ideas that included concepts of a way. Most notably, the Dao De Jing speaks of how all things in the universe are connected to the Dao (way). It also heavily discusses the idea of Way-making.

As I understand it from the Dao De Jing, Way-making is something like living a just or righteous life. A life lived in the Way is a life lived in accordance with the laws of the universe. One of the central ideas is that one should have respect for everything (and I mean everything) in the world because all things are interconnect and depended on one another. There is no secret to Way-making; no step-by-step guide or score card to prove your Way-making worth. It's an intangible ideal at which to grasp.

There is a similar idea in the Christian faith largely based on the idea of righteousness. Christians are called to seek God's will in every decision in their pursuit for righteous action. Many people stress over major life decisions in fear that making the wrong choice will permanently move them off the righteous track and place them on the non-righteous or less-than-optimal righteous track. In this mindset, Christian Way-making, if you will, depends on each and every decision you make being the most righteous one available.

Pastor Ken Wytsma (a new favorite of mine) has taught on decision making and the will of God through Proverbs. After listening to his sermons, I realized that the commonly held belief  that righteous living can rest on any one decision, even a major one, seems at odds with the way God operates. Ken's teaching helped me see that God's view of righteousness is most likely more about staying on a righteous path than taking every single righteous step possible. Just like in trail running, the point is to get to the end, not to take every correct step as you move down the path. Trying to do that would be insane! Yet, that's pretty much what we are trying to do in stressing about every decision we have to make.

Christ's sacrifice paid for all of our sins, forever. His sacrifice protects us from God's wrath no matter how many missteps we made in our trek towards righteousness.The only turn we have to ensure that we make is to repent (Repent is a translation of shuwb; a Hebrew word meaning "to turn back") towards Christ. Once that turn is surely made, if you stay on a courses headed towards Christ, no one step can derail you.

Stop stressing, enjoy the views around you and focus on getting home in one piece.

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?"

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.

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.

Running to a God Place in Times of Challenge

Below are nothing but the thoughts of a runner/tri'er who, when facing a recent challenge, thought up something he found insightful. This someone happens to be Phillip James Martin (writer of this blog and the sentence you just read). The thoughts are as follows:

If God is taking me some place unknown, then it must be a good place. He might not make it an easy place, but it will be a place made for my holiness.

Don't be scared when He decides to move you. He doesn't give great walls or giant warriors to those without the strength to bring them down.

Fear isn't the whole story anyway. The real story isn't about those who fear, but about the ones who fear and walk into the fire anyway. It's not those who can't fail that succeed, but those who trust in Him to succeed through their failures that take the day.

It's not about the unknown, or the challenge, or the fear, but the faith it takes to walk through them all.