A Whole New World

Monday-10 miles
Tuesday-60 min.
Wednesday-off
Thursday-20 min.
Friday-40 min.
Saturday-80 min.

Today I ran 10 miles for the first time in my life.  WOW!!  I didn't know my legs could feel like that.  After about five miles I tasted the grease from lunch, at seven miles it all fell apart.  At eight miles I almost quit, but I dug deep and kept going.  At 8.25 miles there is a hill that lasts 1/2 a mile!  As I was running up it two turtles and a sloth passed me and did not have a lot of nice things to say.  I got to the top of that hill and made it to the 9 mile mark and it was smooth sailing from there.  Okay, so maybe it wasn't quite as smooth as one would like.  The tenth mile.  Unless you've really experienced this, it is hard to explain.  My legs felt tingly and then hot.  It was hard to walk straight and everything inside me hurt.  This is the litmus test.  After experiencing this, do I really want to run a marathon?  I believe the answer would have to be yes.

Hard Run/Schedule

Tuesday-4 miles
Wednesday-60 min. run
Thursday-5 miles
Friday-6 mile
Saturday-off
I originally was going to be off on Wednesday and run on Monday but the thunderstorms that came through put a damper on that.  This really stretches me for where I am at.
Shifting thoughts-
Today was brutal.  I only ran the 4 miles but when I started my legs hurt a little.  I thought it would go away as I ran but it continued.  I had a nice breeze at my back on my two miles heading out.  On the way back it was torture.  The wind, about 15 mph, was in my face and my legs hurt.  For the last mile my body wanted to quit.  I kept thinking that the nice part about running is that there is rest tonight and there is tomorrow.  I thought of everything I could to keep me running and it worked.  My last two miles were slow but hey, it's something.  I did recruit someone to possibly run the marathon with me in October.  He is a guy I work with and hopefully it pans out and we can train together.  Just think about that, a training partner!  That's an exciting thought.  One thought that is even better, my wife is smoking hot!!

Listening While Running

Tonight I went on a 20 min. run.  I've been doing less than this but Holy Spirit told me to go slower and stretch my distance and time some.  He told me to not be concerned with speed right now, but to focus on getting some distance under my belt.  Also, He told me that if I'm going to be running then I need to take it more serious.  I need to let Him train me and to run at His expectations and not mine.  Looks like things are going to be picking up.  I will be posting my workout routines for the week on Monday and will let myself be treated like I'm being trained.  I look forward to October.

Running Again

Today I got the chance to start running again.  For the last month I have been focused on track with my guys and today was my first day post-practice.  I only ran ten minutes, which equaled a little more than 1.3 miles and it was tiring.  I am out of shape but am looking forward to getting back into shape.  Kind of a boring post but it is exciting to get back on track.

Tempo Run

Today we ran a four mile tempo run.  It was a good hard run and a great lesson for one of my runners.  The kid has all the gifting and ability to run good, unfortunately he is weak mentally.  When things get tough he quits.  When the run starts to hurt he backs off.  How often do we do this in life?  Things get hard in life and we back off to preserve ourselves.  In the end we end up forfeiting our gifts and abilities because it got tough.  This is challenging because there are so many areas in life and we have to keep fighting.  We must not resort to the easy way out.  We must fight until we get to heaven, then we will have the ability to rest.

Double whammy

Two neat things happened this last week.  The first was my first run with my daughter Elizabeth.  I tried to download a video on here but apparently I'm retarded and can't do it.  We ran about a half mile and it was great.  The second was a conversation I had with my father.  I was talking to him about my desire to run a marathon, which is another blog all together, and he said that if he was close he would run with me.  My father has not run I years and the prospect of him running with me greatly excited me.  I made a deal with him that if he would like to I would find a run in Springfield, Mo. and Elizabeth and I would come down and run it with him.  How awesome is that!  Grandpa, son and granddaughter all running in a race together.

A Runner

This might sound odd considering I have a blog about running.  Well, at least I have a place on the internet that I write on every once in a while.  But I have never considered myself as a runner.  I have always ran, but never said, "I'm a runner."  And then there was a bulletin by Kathy Nickerson that called me a runner.  I guess.?  This brings me to my point.
It's kind of one of those times when you hear God beckoning for you to come closer and discover Him more and in the process you bump into who you are in Him just a little more.  I have had a dream repeated a couple of nights and in the dream I have something nice and I like it, it's just not what I really want.  It's not quite what my heart is set on.  Obviously nothing in this world ever brings that total satisfaction, but it is a dream of my soul longing to be with God.  I enjoy my life, but there is that one Thing that I really want.  I want Him.  Oh how my soul longs for Him.  I want to prophecy with great faith.  I want my finances to be directly in line with Him.  I want to pray and feel heaven come down and saturate my soul and flesh.  I want my mind to be so set on Him that nothing can take me away.
This morning in prayer I realized that it's not a life called to run or to do any job, it's a life called to be in Him and be content with Him.  I can live and work anywhere He desires and as long as I am satisfied with Him it's alright.  When the running stops, the work no longer is there, and everything fades what is left?  If there is emptiness then we've missed it.  But, if there is an abundance of Him and satisfaction in Him then we got it right.

Good Times

This last Saturday I ran in a 5k with my two track boys.  I was quite an interesting run.  It was called a color run and there was two places n the course where they would throw food dye on you while you ran past.  The idea is to create a coroful experience while running and for it to be fun.  Personally it annoyed me and I thought it was just kind of dumb.  But, I am a Scrooge when it comes to those sort of things.  When I enter a run I want to run.  It's not to play, it is to compete and see how good to bad I do.  This race didn't even have an official time!  I timed myself and came up with a 20.22, which is my PR by over a minute.  The guys did really well and I was real proud of the way they handled themselves during the whole process.  Here is where the good time comes in.  I want to run a marathon.  Everybody tends to think I'm crazy and I don't know if I will find someone to run with me or not.  If anyone knows someone that desires to do this then please have them contact me.  Tomorrow I have some more interesting stuff to discuss but we will stop here today.

Track update

Well, track started last week and I have two guys running distance with me.  One cool thing that has happened is we might possibly host a cross country meet at the end of this month.  It would be a 5k run over the river and through the woods around our lake.  I'm pretty excited about this and I think my guys are as well.  We do have a run this next weekend and I think my guys will post some pretty good times.  They have been running and seem to be at a good point right now.  I am actually running  faster than I thought I would be after taking some time off and hopefully I can do well this next weekend as well.  Yesterday we ran on the mud road and were covered in mud, it was kind of fun but also cold and wet.  Today we started to run but realized that the wind and snow at the same time made it a bad day to run so we cut it short at two miles.  Hopefully this snow will melt and we can get some dry time and start to stretch their legs out for some six and even eight mile runs here in the next couple of weeks.  Stay tuned for more details.

Track

Track starts this week.  I told Elizabeth that she will be able to start running when it gets warm enough and she was greatly excited about this.  We have four road races planned for this year and I am real excited about these.  I think that my distance guys are pretty excited about these as well.