The Joy and the Pain

At some point you're gonna have to learn to enjoy the suffering. As these old sayings go, "Nothing worth while is easy... If it were easy everyone would be doing it... What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." The burning in your chest when you try to breath after finishing your very first 5-mile run doesn't mean you dying... It means you're finally living. And the funny thing is, that feeling eventually goes away. And that means you're getting stronger.

This is a concept that every successful triathlete is familiar with as well as every saint who has a rich and rewarding walk with Christ.

The Bible tells us that if we are to be transformed into something pure, righteous, and holy, then we are to be refined with a purifying fire. So... don't look at your life and let fear overwhelm you when you consider your future, don't stress about the things you can't change, and don't check out at the first sign of adversity. Lace up your shoes a bit tighter and listen to the voice of your trainer who promises he's not going to push you past your limits.

So whether in life or in your triathlon training, you should look at the pain as part of the process of becoming an endurance athlete. Like I said, this is not a new concept. Just check out this passage of scripture written thousands of years ago.

The book of James, Chapter 1, verses 2-3. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.

That brings me to this week's training. I finally got an MRI on my neck after being hit by that car back in June. I'm trying to figure out why I keep getting headaches and why my hands keep falling asleep when I ride my bike. After seeing the films, the doctor is referring me to the same neurosurgeon that did my lower back surgery this time last year stating, "near spinal chord contact". I know... kinda makes me nervous. I should be finding out this next week if I got something bad going on in my neck. So... no swimming this week, for obvious reasons. I've run about an hour every day and felt pretty good doing it. By the end of the week my knees were giving me some indication that they wanted a rest, so I took Thursday and Friday off. Today (Saturday) I went on a 4 1/2 hour bike ride and have been trying to shake the tingling feeling out of my hand for the past 4-5 hours, and since then my quads and I aren't on speaking terms... they say they no longer want to be my friends. This Ironman is truly going to be one of the most difficult things I've ever done. OH JOY!!!!!