Boot to Booyah!!

I look back on last year, and most of it was one disappointment after another. The season had started with the Go St. Louis Half Marathon in April, only for my IT band to be injured which hindered my running for the remainder of the year. The pain persisted for months when it moved from my left knee up to my hip, and running even moderately for more than 30 minutes invited the very real possibility of crawling back home in agony.

Then late last year an easy run with a friend in early October produced a stress fracture on my right foot's 3^rd metatarsal. Man! It hurt just to walk, and I was "boot-bound" for nearly 10 weeks, no running whatsoever. Seriously?! said my heart. Time to re-look at everything, said my head.

Which is precisely what I did: I changed my running shoes, raised my bike saddle a bit, swam my brains out, and began incorporating yoga consistently – the P90X stuff, hardly meditative. I couldn't even get through the first 20 minutes at first, and this by far revealed the most about my weaknesses that were likely the root causes of my injuries. Patience and persistence paid off in the months that followed. Yoga made the biggest difference, as holding many of the poses couldn't help but result in increased leg, hip, and core strength. The hip healed and so did the foot, and I gratefully laced up my running shoes for the first time in months for an easy run in January this year.

I ran pain free and was thrilled to be back in the saddle; however, I didn't fully appreciate the coming "harvest" from the sowing I had been doing the last 6 months. It started with a 5K race in the city a few weeks later where I blew away a 10 year old personal best by over 2 minutes, a huge margin for a 5K, and on the same course no less. I had a hard time believing the 9-to-10-minute-per-mile girl was solidly in the 8's, and on the nearer side of 7-something even!

This year's triathlon season was more of the same, knocking down one record after another, despite a brutally hot summer. From May through November I biked at least once a week at Babler State Park (where the hills are long and top out at 16% grade), and ran the gut busting hills at Innsbrook Resort as often as I could after open water swimming with friends. Not all my races were blowout finish times, but it was clear the days of sub-par running and biking were behind me.

After a banner tri season, I turned my attention to the monkey that's been on my back for 10 years – the half marathon and finishing it in under 2 hours. To me this is an important goal, especially when looking at it as part and parcel of the Half-Ironman event, where the run is 13.1 miles, half the distance of a full marathon. In nearly every Half-Ironman I've done, the negativity and self criticism has set in immediately on the run, mostly because I haven't gotten under the 2-hour mark in a standalone half marathon event, and the thought of slogging through a run after burning my legs on a 56-mile ride repeatedly put me in a very negative mental state; the run was "over" in my mind before I had even begun.

The only way to break through the glass ceiling was to face it head on. If there was ever a time I was going to reach this goal, it had to be now. So my coach put me out on the track late this summer, where every two weeks I would run a challenging (read "lung busting" :)) set of intervals that were designed to make me think about pace, form, and mechanics. The track does not lie; I worked my butt off and got a firsthand look at what my real capabilities were.

I signed up for the St. Louis Half Marathon just 2 weeks before the race. The course is not flat and not easy. There are 2 punishing hills at Miles 5 and 7, plus nearly the entire last 3 miles are climbs of up to 12% grade. I ran the race course 4 weeks prior to the event and while I nailed my goal pace within the training run, it was still an extremely hard effort. I wasn't entirely confident I could hold the same pace the entire distance. Would the self criticism in the pit of suffering return to do battle again?

My coach said to me "Embrace the pain." And a great quote from Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own also rang true: "Of course it's hard; it's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." Up until now the voice of self criticism had drowned out the fact that suffering is expected. Suffering doesn't mean I haven't trained enough or that I don't have it in me to tough it out. It's a subtle but important difference in the mind.

Fast forward to race day, November 7^th. The weather was beautiful: 45F, sunny and breezy. I had slept 9 hours each night the last 2 nights – plenty rested; I had my race belt with 3 gels - 1 extra in case I lost one; I knew exactly where the aid stations were; I knew the course and warmed up well; I had eaten my familiar prerace meal of oatmeal, yogurt, small bagel with PB, and a little coffee; and finally, although I was a bit nervous, deep down a quiet confidence spoke to me: it's a done deal :).

The gun went off and so did we. The first mile was nearly all uphill! But honestly it was a perfect way to really get the blood going and get down to business. I ran conservatively at first, just like the plan, and when I passed Mile 1 I was spot on. Mile 2 was another bit of climbing but downhill on the backside. By Mile 3 I was cruising and feeling good. I looked at my watch and was running sub-9:00 pace. Okay, sparky, back it off a bit; there are some hills coming, and you're gonna have to dig. Mile 4 was thankfully flat. I didn't look at my watch again until Mile 6 and my time was 52 minutes – good grief! That itself was a personal best. Just hold this pace and it's in the bag! At Mile 10 the bottoms of my feet began to feel a bit numb, and I took some GU and hydrated at the aid station. At every water/Gatorade stop I slowed down just enough to grab the cup, thank the volunteer, drink it down, and push on. I was working hard but felt great.

The last 3 miles of this course are nearly all uphill, what the organizers call the "signature" of the course, where the real separation of the pack happens. I was ready and had left some juice in the legs for just this reason. At Mile 11 I let 'er rip straight up a 12% grade hill, glad I wasn't wearing my heart rate monitor :). I crossed Mile 12 at 1:48 and couldn't help but smile. Going home girl! Warrior! At Mile 13 there was one more short climb (gahh!! :)), and I emptied out the legs.

"Congratulations – you are a member of the Sub-2-Hour Club!" shouted the announcer as I triumphantly sailed across the Finish line at 1:58. Tears of joy streamed down my face as I hugged Steve and bawled my eyes out. It had been an arduous hard road to this moment, but it was surely worth it.

Sitting here writing this, it's occurred to me that had I not been plagued with injuries last year, I might not have scrutinized everything in my training. I certainly wouldn't have taken the opportunity to make some much needed changes that today have brought rewards and satisfaction I couldn't begin to imagine this time last year. I've come to more humbly appreciate that in every trial there is a great opportunity for real growth and improvement. I pray that we as a culture recover the lost art of patience and perseverance and take trials for what they are – an invitation to blessing. It's what made our nation great.

Romans 5:3-5 (English Standard Version) ³More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

From Barge to Yacht

On my way to a personal record in the 200 Backstroke event at the 2010 Ozark Championship

My swim coach is some kind of wonderful. Two years ago if my triathlon coach hadn't shoved me out the door and into a Masters swim group, I might never have crossed paths with Hap, who gets up at o'dark-thirty several times a week to be at the pool and herd a bunch of driven (sometimes whiny J) athletes across the 4,000 yard goal line. The fact it's in excruciating multiples of 25 yards doesn't seem to faze him one bit. He hands out the swim sets like he's handing out candy; at least he expects us to receive them as if they were J. In our lane we often stand there, slack-jawed, and I can't tell if it's because it's only 5:15AM or we're in shock over the interval times he's given us to complete. You want us to do WHAT in HOW MANY MINUTES??

Inevitably we almost always end up finishing within the given interval. It's funny how he knows exactly where the "challenge" line is, which means he also knows where my "sandbagging" line is. I rarely get a pass to loaf. Putting on the Puppy Eyes alone doesn't work. I had to have raced or trained with serious intensity the weekend before to get a reprieve from the intervals du jour. Otherwise it's Go Big or Go Home, as my tri coach Jen likes to say J.

I'm holding my own in the water and to be honest it hasn't come easy; it's been a lot of hard work, and I'm still learning. However, as Tom Hanks said in A League of Their Own, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." A good friend and former Junior Olympic swimmer once told me there aren't many good swimmers. It simply takes a lot of time, patience, and perseverance; and in today's microwave society, 2 extra seconds at the stoplight is too long, never mind 2 (or more) years in the pool.

The key to swimming is learning how to swim. The key to swimming fast is learning how to stop moving through the water like a barge and more like a yacht. A barge can carry a large load, but it's never meant for speed. A yacht is sleek and its rudder is tapered to a point beneath the water's surface; it's meant not only for comfort but also for remarkable speed, especially given its size.

This principle is key when wanting to go fast for longer periods, actually anything more than 50 yards. The muscles wear out rather quickly when they're consuming precious oxygen at a rate greater than the lungs are bringing it in; it is imperative to move through the water as efficiently as possible. This is not to say strength and power aren't important, they are, but using the water to your advantage brings big gains that cannot be had by simply muscling your way from one end of the pool to the other. You must be more on your side, ie, like a yacht, than on your stomach like a barge. This reduces drag and also has the added benefit of being able to "unwind" like a loaded spring when snapping the legs and hips, and initiating the roll from one hip to the other, thus producing forward propulsion from the power core of the body, not from using your arms to pull your way through the water. Think of the power generated by Albert Pujols when he slugs a home run over center field. The rotation begins at his feet and gathers momentum as he prepares to snap his hips, finally culminating in his arms/bat coming around to connect with the ball. If he stood still and simply swung his arms, there is no way he could put the same force behind the bat when it hits the ball. The same is true of swimming fast.

Swimming is a worthy sport for several reasons. The first is that a person can swim literally until the day he/she dies. In contrast to running or even walking, swimming has such little impact from the forces of gravity that one can still get a good workout due to the large number of muscle groups involved, despite the condition of many joints. This is heaven for weary knees and ankles, even weak hips.

Second, swimming is the only sport where you actually feel better coming out of the water than when getting in. The sense of cool water moving around you can be therapeutic and refreshing, thus further enhancing the overall feeling of satisfaction. This is usually not the case with other sports such as biking or running, where the workout almost always results in fatigued muscles.

Third, swimming promotes strength as well as elasticity in muscle fibers, which translates to less vulnerability to injury throughout a person's entire life. When properly taught, the body learns to stretch out in the water and use muscles in a way that causes them to work together to produce correct stroke technique. This can only be done by the brain telling the body exactly which muscle fibers to recruit for a given movement at any given time. The heavy involvement of brain activity keeps neurons fresh and firing, and may actually promote healthy cognitive functions well into the sunset years of life.

I'm still a student of swimming and will likely be one for the rest of my life. It's ok though. The rewards have been more than worth the price. Yes, people look at me screwy when I tell them the alarm goes off at 4:08 AM, and I'm in the water by 5:15. But I've made a lot of new friends, I'm more fit than ever, and I'm home from swim practice as most people are reading the paper and enjoying their first cup of java for the day. More importantly, the discipline of working toward a not-so-immediate reward spills over into other areas of my life and is always waiting with the gift of that lesson to be learned: many things in this life (and the next J) are definitely worth waiting and working for.

Let the Games Begin! – Maxtrax Duathlon Race Report

Thunder, rain… I read Saturday's forecast with some trepidation…but not too much J. I've been in much worse, such as finishing an entire triathlon in rain so hard it was coming at me sideways and I couldn't look straight ahead while on the bike. This was small potatoes in comparison.

I needn't have worried – the forecast turned beautiful for race day and it was spectacular indeed, 50F and sunny by gun time.

This is the beginning of my 6^th year racing triathlons. With no prior athletic background in any of the three disciplines of swimming, biking, or running, I had brazenly taken on the sport in 2004 when I watched the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii and wept over many of the athletes' stories. Pro or amateur, their unflinching determination to reach a goal was indeed something I could relate to in my life thus far. Suffice it to say 25 years ago I was an odds-on favorite to be a loser in a gutter somewhere, pissed at the world. That the pendulum has swung entirely the other way is due to the influence of many wonderful people in my life, particularly my husband who is the greatest man I've ever known, my family, and of course God Himself, who struck my brain with the proverbial lightning bolt 16 years ago and made me realize there's more to life than meets my finite and limited view of things. But that's another post J.

Last year racing was tough. By this time I was already suffering from a tendon injury near my left knee, and there was more to follow that took the trials of training from adversarial to positively ludicrous. I ended the season with a stress fracture in my right foot that made me relook at EVERYTHING I was doing to pursue this passion. I had no choice but to retreat to the basics and focus on getting stronger, period. Over the winter I incorporated additional swimming, core work, as well as yoga, and not the "meditative" stuff either. This was extreme, and it stretched and strengthened every muscle fiber in my body as well as my thinking. I had badly underestimated the power of yoga and its potential to elongate the body's elasticity.

I also changed my running shoes and raised the saddle on my bike which helped ease the compression on the tendons that run on the outside of the upper leg. After I healed up, the track became my new friend as I retooled my running technique and learned to land on my forefoot (instead of my heel), drive my arms to enhance forward propulsion, and toe off in much the same way a plane does when taking off from the runway. It sure didn't come about overnight and I'm still learning, but I'm miles away from where I was as a 10:00/mile runner.

Five months into consistent and patient effort, I reached a new milestone in my swimming and moved on to the next faster lane at Masters practice. Even I was bewildered at how much farther I could stretch an arm forward to "grab" more water. The days of swimming 3,300 yards were behind me as 4,000+ yards became a regular occurrence at Monday morning swim practice.

So this past Saturday I was pumped with fair excitement. It was the first opportunity to put my new skills to the test in an early-season duathlon.

I'm no newbie when it comes to triathlon, but the first race of the season always has a "blowing the dust off" feel to it. I had rehearsed my transitions, even my setup, and it still felt like I was forgetting something, though I actually wasn't.

We all lined up at the Start and the gun finally went off. Amazingly I was hanging with the pack and still feeling pretty good. When I could see the Mile 1 marker just up ahead I stole a peek at my watch and nearly soiled myself when I saw the first number was 7…what the?? No way, I thought; this must be mismarked.

I was wong J. On the way back I looked at my watch again after Mile 2 and was only a few seconds off from the first mile. Sure I was working hard, but…crikey! Well, alrighty then – let the games begin!

I took all of 1 minute in transition to fling the shoes off, put the bike shoes and helmet on, and fly onto my steed. The bike course was windy and hilly, but I was alternating between watching the road and watching the speed on my computer. Giddy up girl! It was exhilarating to fly down a hill at 30mph, pedal strongly and consistently up the next, and pass guys on the bike.

I flew back into transition to rack my wheels and pull on my running shoes one last time. This year I have Yankz, also known as speed laces; say goodbye to bending over and tying laces, these cool dudes make it possible to slip on running shoes like slippers.

And off I went in the hunt for more of the same speed. I was a tad slower this time but knowing I had a Personal Best in the bag spurred me on that much more.

The last hill coming to the Finish was a killer, but I absolutely left everything on the course and sprinted one last time to cross the line for a total time that was 2 minutes faster than last year – huge for a "short course" race.

I barely noticed the drive home – I am grateful beyond words to God, my family, and my coach. I realize not every race or workout is going to be top shelf, but I sure know the kind of potential that lives in a person when the heart and mind are in the right place.

Let the games begin! J

God is Holy

"Holy cow!" I said as we got to the top of the 11-mile trail and took in the jaw dropping vistas of the Alaska Range mountains. It was our first time to the state; it hasn't been our last J. Both of us being fans of the Great Outdoors, it's impossible to miss the evidence of God's power and majesty contained in these silent yet enduring giants of His creation.

Yet there is one trait of God that supersedes even His power, majesty, and His Name as Creator. Above all of these other magnificent ways to describe His character, the fact He is holy outweighs the others by a measure of significance. Most of God's traits such as loving, gracious, and just, are described by way of demonstration of these traits, ie, God shows this attribute by having an object (mankind) to which He directs it. Example: the Bible says in Romans 5:8 that "…God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." There is a person or object toward which His love (and grace and justice) is directed. Indeed it would be difficult to comprehend a concept such as love if we didn't have someone to direct it towards.

God's holiness, however, is more abstract and it is difficult to give it proper attention in a short article. However, some key points can be made that will hopefully strengthen your understanding of this wonderful and supreme attribute of our Maker, and ultimately strengthen your knowing Him.

What does "holy" mean? We often use the word in rather common expressions, such as the one above, or even in more crass terms (we won't go there, but you get my drift). I find the latter expression rather interesting – we routinely think the crude is in some way mitigated by prefacing it with the sacred.

Wikipedia's description of holy is "…sacred, pure, without blemish…" but these are actually secondary meanings at best. Holy comes from an ancient word which means to cut or to
separate or to be above and beyond the rest. In contemporary language we could say it means a cut above the rest. When we talk of God's love we can say it is holy because it is a cut above or beyond human love. But when we apply holy to God Himself, we are saying He is separate, a cut above. God is higher than the world – He transcends it in His consuming majesty and power. More importantly, ascribing holy to God also points to the infinite distance that separates Him from us.

Why is this important? The reason is that God is inescapable – there is no place we can hide from Him. Not only does he penetrate every aspect of our lives, He penetrates it in His majestic holiness. No amount of passionate belief or fiery disbelief changes the fact that God exists. Therefore we must seek to understand what the holy is. God has declared in Leviticus 11:44 "Be holy, because I am holy."

Holy is one word in the Bible that is used three times in succession - a literary tool in Hebrew writing and a sign of major emphasis. The Bible does not say God is love, love, love or wrath, wrath, wrath. The triplicate use of the word holy gives it special importance and weight. In ancient Hebrew culture, using a term twice in succession indicated intimacy between two people. In Exodus 3:4 when God called to Moses from the burning bush, He said "Moses, Moses…" However, in Isaiah Chapter 6, when the seraphim called to each other worshiping God, they sang "Holy, holy, holy!!" No other word is used this way in the Bible.

In Matthew 6:9-10, Jesus instructs the disciples how to pray by giving us The Lord's Prayer. Notice the introduction "...hallowed [holy] be Your Name..." (emphasis mine). This is not a personal address; it is a petition. Every time we pray that prayer we are asking God that His holiness penetrate our hearts and minds, and that we come to understand that only He can make us holy. Without His direct intervention we are not holy, and in our culture where we pay homage to the god of independence that is indeed difficult to acknowledge. God doesn't have a standard; He is the standard and without Jesus' perfect life and subsequent death in our place on the Cross, we would be forever lost.

In the Bible no one who came into direct contact with God and His holiness came away unaffected. Not Moses, not Isaiah, or even Peter when he realized Jesus is God. In fact all of them became intensely aware of the great divide that exists between our sinful nature and the transcendent perfection of a holy God. Yet this is the amazing message of the Christian Gospel: that a holy and perfect God, infinitely separate from us, would look upon us in our brokenness, and instead of giving us what would be fair, which is His perfect justice that renders us guilty and sentenced to an eternity separate from Him (and everything about Him), He stooped down and became a human being in the form of Jesus, lived the perfect life we should've lived and died the death we deserved, substituting Himself in our place, and rendering a verdict of Not Guilty and eternal fellowship with Him for those who truly believe this in their hearts. All this because "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him would not die but have eternal life." (John 3:16). The result is a life filled today with unfiltered gratitude and devotion to a God who truly is worthy of our worship.

How about you? Have you ever thought about what "holiness" means or is it an abstract concept? Are you now intrigued by God's holiness and His gracious sovereign reach to initiate a personal and intimate relationship with you?

Cook on High For 3 Years

On New Year's Day NBC Universal broadcasted previous years of the Hawaii Ironman World Championship all day long. When I tuned in, the 2001 championship was on, and it took me less than 30 seconds to begin weeping for the athletes -- their stories, hopes, fears, adversities, causes, pressures. I could relate to the feeling of deciding to "climb the mountain" and what it takes to persevere and empty yourself out in the process. It was exactly 5 years ago I had watched the 2004 World Championship and decided right then and there that I could climb said mountain. Three years later, on my 43^rd birthday, I finished my first Ironman – a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run, all in succession and within 17 hours total. Steve and I both cried our eyes out when I held my arms high, pointing towards heaven, as I stepped across the Finish strong and with a smile J. Nine months of training had come down to this race and despite the grueling efforts of the day, it was a blast.

Little did I know the real work had only begun. Of all 3 sports in triathlon, swimming is by far the most technical. Sure, Michael Phelps made it look easy when he raked in 8 gold medals at the 2008 Olympics. Though it can be argued he is really a fish in human skin, even Phelps has been training for years to get to where he is.

If it's true of the greats, then it certainly follows for the rest of us mortals: the pursuit of excellence is hard work and requires unflinching, unfailing determination to reach. People will spend their two most precious commodities -- time and money -- in the hunt for this sometimes elusive virtue. Indeed, one look at a person's calendar and checkbook will speak volumes about where his/her heart truly lives.

I'm no different than anyone else. Certain things carry weight with me and this is one of them. I have no illusions about admitting when and where I need help, and becoming a good swimmer is one of those areas. I love to compete and coming out of an open water swim with the bike and run portions of the race still ahead makes it absolutely necessary to be as efficient in the water as possible.

I didn't swim competitively in grade school, high school, or college, so it's not like riding a bicycle where foundational skills were built at a very young age and can be picked up again with relative ease. Sure I had swim lessons when I was a kid, but that taught me how to survive in the water, and muscle my way from one end of the pool to the other; I learned nothing about how to move through the water like a yacht.

In January 2007 my triathlon coach gave me a baseline test to do in the water so she could measure my current swim abilities and give me workouts that would fit my goals. The swim test consisted of a 500 yard warmup (about 20 laps in a 25 yard pool), and then (10) 100 yard intervals, all-out effort, with precisely 10 seconds rest between each 100 yards. The total time (minus 90 seconds for rest time) divided by 10 would be my average time per 100, or what is also called T-pace (Threshold Pace). T-pace is a useful metric in many sports to determine the threshold at which effort shifts from aerobic to anaerobic states. The goal is to raise T-pace speed while delaying the shift as long as possible, hence producing increased performance at the same or lower efforts.

I went to the pool with some trepidation, knowing the effort would be difficult but ready to get her done. Man, I really had no idea; ignorance was heaven for a short moment. By the end of the 2^nd 100, I was in enough shock to barely note the time and move onto the next interval. By the 5^th 100, I thought I was going to pee myself in the water (permissible at 5 years of age, far less so at 42 J). Crikey, 5 MORE TO GO?? By the 8^th 100, I was thinking what Al Bundy would often say on Married With Children "God, you can't kill me now??" J

I survived…and ended up with a T-pace of 2m15s (2:15) per 100. Not bad but definitely room for improvement, especially in pursuit of Ironman. My coach said to find and get into a Masters swim program. I fought it for nearly a year. By the end of 2007 with only incremental improvements in my swim times, I finally said Uncle and found the Clayton-Shaw Park Masters, less than 15 minutes from my house.

Despite it being a pool, it was out of the frying pan and into the proverbial fire J. The swim coach gave me TONS of feedback on my stroke technique, which truly did require a lot of work. But in the end it didn't matter if I was the SLOWEST swimmer in the SLOWEST lane (I was J). I was in hot pursuit of excellence and I was there to WORK. I have never said "quit" to anything in my life. My immigrant parents, who were refugees from a war, taught me the precious twin traits of perseverance and discipline. I knew if I quit the only thing that waited for me on the other side was mediocrity, status quo, the ordinariness of life, just getting by. My life has been anything but ordinary and quitting was not an option. I hung in there despite the 5:15AM swim times, lung busting sets, and routine disappointments of "I SO wish I was faster." Little did I know that in addition to a solid swim stroke, I was also cultivating much-needed patience, a sadly diminishing trait in our culture of instant GETification.

Fast forward to January 7, 2010. It's that time of year again – swim/bike/run baseline tests to gauge fitness for the coming season. That day I stood at the pool's edge, well fueled, nervous for the test knowing the brutal effort that lay ahead, but also healthily confident I would do my utmost best. 2+ years of consistent Masters swimming had produced an athlete who was 10 lbs lighter, noticeably faster in the water, and was actually showing definition in her now-45-year-old arms, shoulders, pectoral and lateral muscles, not to mention two outlines along her abs. It was hard to believe the girl in the mirror that morning was actually me J.

The test was truly hard, but all through it I held on and remained focused on the task at hand. It's supposed to be hard; that's what makes it great. At the end I turned out a 1:39 per 100 T-pace, a wild improvement over my 2:15 three years ago. I went home tired and immensely thankful for the gift of health, but also for the willingness to work and be patient that good will come out of adversity. The lure of "getting by" is a bond that tempts (and sometimes enslaves) us all. Trials in life are brought to burn those bonds away and produce the fine edges of character that only come with endurance over time.

At Masters practice, I've moved on to the next faster lane and some days it's a struggle to keep up. But I have a new goal, which is the picture at the very top. (Actually my swim coach has said 1:30 by this summer, to which I've said "Are you high?" J) But it's really me who needs to adjust the "temperature" of my goals. Everyone needs a cause greater than themselves, one worth pursuing that will not only leave you physically and mentally fit, but also spill over into other aspects of your life and create lasting, eternal rewards.

Wrecked For Good

Reading on the beach in Alaska at midnight J.

I haven't posted in over a year, the last update being about the beginning of the previous season in January 2009 with a bike test. That time of year has come around again for the annual swim/bike/run baseline tests - the chance to come dreadfully close to hurling my guts up while maintaining as high an effort as possible in each of the three disciplines of triathlon. Though daunting, these tests form the basis of training goals each season and provide an accurate point of reference, but one that is meant to be left behind as performance gradually improves over the months.

To be honest, 2009 was a year fraught with challenges, all of them good (the only kind really, in my book). In January I finally bit the bullet and struck out on my own in my career field of telecommunications, launching my own company, Creation Telecom Services, LLC (http://creationtelecomservices.com/). Business landed immediately on our doorstep, both an upside and downside to hanging out my own shingle. It meant I had work to do and fun people to do it with, highly desirable especially in today's economic times. It also caught me off guard, as I had actually planned on calling ALL my former customers to let them know of my new role, and figured I would be doing so for at least the first 6 months of being in business. A consultant's currency is his/her relationships with clients and this is something I've had to cultivate like a rare rose; it takes time, consistency, perseverance, and patience. Neglecting any of these puts any business on the express route to its eventual demise.

Which brings me back around to the subject of triathlon. In addition to the business challenges we've faced this year, I've also been plagued with training injuries. It started with a small twinge in my knee in April's St. Louis Half Marathon that eventually progressed to full-on Illiotibial Band Syndrome (ITBS), a condition of the knee or hip that makes it nearly impossible to run for long without severe pain around the affected area. This sidelined my running for several weeks, but miraculously I was able to rest and hold onto enough fitness to score several Personal Records in a few races such as Memphis in May (finishing 2^nd in my Age Group on the bike and beating my own course record by nearly 20 minutes), and a local Olympic distance race where I averaged over 20mph on the bike and still finished 4^th in my Age Group despite some faster runners in the same category.

Some solid and consistent physical therapy eventually repaired my knee/hip, and I resumed running and training for a last local triathlon in October whose course I knew well. I kept the heroics to a minimum on the run and ended up finishing 3^rd in my Age Group, 2^nd on the bike. I was happy with my season, especially in light of my injuries. The training/racing/hurting chapter of 2009 came to a close…or so I thought.

One early fall day in October, I was out running with my friend Debbie who's a marathon superstar. We had biked a couple hours and decided to go for an easy 30 minute run afterward, nothing fancy. 20 minutes in I had to stop due to a sharp pain on the top of my right toes; it hurt just to walk back to the car.

The next day an X-ray at the podiatrist's office revealed a stress fracture on the 3^rd metatarsal, a small crack in the bone that could result in a complete break if not treated. Even my untrained eye could see the line on the film. Diagnosis: a boot-cast and NO running for at least 8 weeks. I laughed out loud and the doctor thought I was positively nuts. What now? What else could go awry? Is God trying to get my attention, and well, I'm just not getting it? Tough personal reflection swirled in my mind as I searched my heart. Eventually I came to the inevitable question: am I wrecked for good?

The truth is Yes I am, but not necessarily in the way one might think. A profound change happened to me 17 years ago when I recognized the real reason God entered our world as Jesus Christ. Throughout my life I have had no difficulty believing in God. It's hard to miss His mark in the innumerable stars that are visible from a clear sky in the mountains of Yellowstone, or the look in a child's eyes when she holds her hands up to her father to pick her up, or the searing loss of a loved one who departed this world too soon. Whether we love Him or outright hate Him, God exists; even our resentment and sorrow is ultimately directed at Him. There is simply too much evidence in nature as well as in our own hearts that cannot be disproven despite our best efforts to deny His presence.

The uncomfortable truth of the matter is that on my own there is nothing I can do to be good enough to satisfy God's perfect standard. I often hear people say (and used to say it myself) "I don't think God would send me to hell for doing my best." A seemingly modest statement, there is a critical flaw and it is the word my. We are fond of diminishing our brokenness by substituting our own standard of what's "good". It is tempting to think God is being harsh by requiring perfection, but in reality we all want what's fair; we scream for justice when we've been wronged. Are we willing to turn "fairness" and justice upon ourselves in the same way when we have been the wrongdoer?

Sin (let's just get that word on the table now) and evil are very real and our fallen world is proof of this. Our sins affect one another in the here and now, but ultimately all sin is against God, and God rightfully requires restitution (payment) in the same (familiar) way we do when we've been wronged. If we are infuriated at injustice, imagine God's righteous anger when He is wronged countless times in one day, and then multiply that by billions of people and thousands of years. Because we are already fallen beings, we are declared guilty in God's holy tribunal; we are already in the red. It is a debt we cannot repay and it's bad news all around. Our unwillingness to embrace this awful truth makes it no surprise that Christianity and everything associated with it is under attack.

There is good news however, and it's better than we could possibly imagine. The purpose of Jesus Christ stepping into our world was to be the perfect substitute for our sins. He lived a perfectly sinless life and willingly went to an excruciating criminal's death an innocent man. He died in my place, literally became my sin, and God poured out His justified wrath on His own Son, sparing and forgiving me for eternity in an unimaginable gesture of love and grace. The God of the universe did for me what I could not do for myself. For anyone who embraces this beautiful truth, this is Good News indeed. In fact the word gospel means Good News. Like the day I married Steve, my heart was changed forever and I will never be the same. I am "wrecked" for good J.