Forgiveness

Sitting in church this morning I had a something come into my mind suddenly. I had an impression that I would be given the opportunity to grant forgiveness to someone for something where forgiveness is not common. Forgiveness that wouldn't make sense to most.

I am frightened by this thought.

I decided to watch The Passion of the Christ tonight after my family went to bed. It's Easter week and I have wanted to watch this movie again for years, but have neglected to grant myself the time to do so. So I did.

Through His unimaginable pain, through His humiliation, His exhaustion ... Jesus forgave. He forgave those who spit in His face, who flogged Him, mocked Him, stripped Him naked, nailed Him to the cross ... who took His life.

He forgave.

Who am I not to forgive, too?

Give us Peace

Father,

I pray that you will set aside a special place in Heaven for all of the little ones that were killed today in Connecticut. Comfort them and give them peace. Surround them with so much joy that there is nowhere else they would rather be.

Father, be with the friends and families of all that were lost. Surround them with Your love and give them peace that surpasses understanding.

Father, be with Your people and help us to see how good always wins over evil. Help us to take control of our lives and live them for You. Help us to be Your witnesses in a lost world. I pray that others will see hope in the way we live.

Amen.

Perspective

My last post was pretty self-reflective and I wasn't feeling very good about where my priorities were. Maybe those thoughts were an indication that I am conflicted with myself and ready to make some more changes. Regardless, I do think that I have made and continue to make some positive changes in my life.

Oddly enough, less than a day after I was sitting behind my computer coming to terms with myself, Lisa posted the following on facebook:

I don't brag on Brad enough. Yesterday when I was leaving for my girls night, I left him playing Christmas music on the piano for the girls while they danced. This morning he took the them on a walk then went to meet his little brother (Big Brothers/ Big Sisters) and took him to lunch. He let me take a long nap this afternoon and is running a relay leg of the Dallas Marathon tomorrow morning. He throws the best tea parties and has been known to play a My Little Pony game with Claire for hours. Thanks Brad, the girls and I love you very much!

I forgot to mention that he took the girls to Target the other night and let them pick out $300 worth of toys for kids at local hospitals.

That was pretty cool to read! There I was the night before ripping myself to shreds, and now I get this other perspective from someone that I love.

The truth is, I think that God has been working on me pretty hard over the last 5 years. I know that I'm not where He wants me to be, but I am making progress. Baby steps.

Up Late Wasting Time

I don't know why I do it. I get on to my kids for doing it, but I'm no better than they are. I stay up late for no reason at all doing nothing at all ... just because I don't want to go to sleep.

I guess my mind just gets going sometimes and I don't want to turn it off. I was just sitting here thinking about how I was thinking about how your priorities shift when you have kids a couple of days ago. I've never been a very good time manager because my mind just doesn't work that way.

I like to do things at a whim rather than plan and schedule them out. I suppose that works fine when you don't have a million things competing to claim a spot as a top priority. Maybe what I'm bothered by is that I don't take enough time to process what should be a priority and I operate on a whim doing things that aren't very important.

I could (and frankly do) waste hours and hours on the computer, on the iPad, watching TV, etc. which add practically no value to my life or the lives of the people around me. What's up with that? I guess it's an American culture thing and greatly a function of how I grew up, but it bothers me.

Isn't there something better that I should be doing with my time? Should I be playing more games with my kids? Should I be planning dates with my wife? Should I be volunteering? Shouldn't I be doing anything but rotting my brain away on these trivial pursuits of entertainment?

The answer has to be yes.

Life is so short and I can't help but think that I am wasting a huge portion of it on things that just don't matter. Don't we all do that? Why? Because it's easy?

I know that I was not put on this Earth so that The Jersey Shore would have an audience. So why do I do it?

I do look for other things to fill the dead space. Music, a book, exercise, but many are self-serving. I keep coming back to the thought that I'm selfish. That don't have the heart of a servant. I want that, but I resist it because it conflicts with my perception of how other's view me (that's a convicting thing to type).

I'm distant. I have this sort-of sickness where I don't want to feel influenced by the praise of others so I often resist doing things that I am compelled to do because it might please them even though I want to do it. Isn't that ridiculous? It is. It's ridiculous.

Why does the thought of someone else changing their perception of me make me so uncomfortable?

The Tale of the MF'er and the Trash Can Lady

This afternoon I said goodbye to an old friend ... one month after saying goodbye to another old friend. On the drive home, I had some time to reflect on how very different the experience of each death was.

Our 12 year old lab, Sadie, was ready to go. Her physical problems, compounded with her loss of her pup, Athena, one month ago, sent her into a downward spiral this past week. She wouldn't eat. She was incontenent. She could no longer walk. She was ready to go.

Athena, a pup from Sadie's only litter, was still a ball of energy. She was almost 10 years old when she was hit last month, but she still had the energy of a 2 year old. She may have lived forever had it not been for that black Yukon driving down Bowen Avenue.

I drove up just after she was hit and loaded her into the back of my car. I drove her to two nearby veterenary clinics and was told by both that they didn't have a doctor. Huh? You are a vet ... but you don't have a doctor? Right ...

I was especially frustrated because I had left my phone at the house, so I was off the grid. The receptionist at the 2nd vet clinic informed me of an emergency clinic on the other side of town, so I hopped back into the car and headed across town.

I'm pretty sure that we hit every stoplight on the way (which was fairly maddening), but we finally made it. After I told them that I had a hurt dog in the car, a couple of guys ran out with a cart to get her to the doctor. Shortly thereafter, the doctor and I agreed that it was best to put her down. I petted her while she passed.

This was a very expensive trip to the vet, but the experience was as good as could be expected under the circumstances. The people acted with urgency and they were compassionate. We even recieved a hand written sympathy card in the mail a couple of days later.

Today's experience was much different.

I didn't want to spend the money to take Sadie to a private vet, so I decided to take her to the City of Arlington Animal Services clinic. I loaded her in to the back of my car and we headed across town. Only this time I wasn't in a hurry.

I turned the radio off and rolled down all of the windows. I hope that Sadie enjoyed feeling the breeze and listening to all of the traffic sounds. I did.

It was actually a pleasant drive, although it felt inappropriate for me to be tracking our progress to our destination on my GPS. I turned it off after I thought about it. We arrived and I looked for the entrance that I had been directed to use.

I didn't see it the first time so I circled around. After more carefully observing the signs, I found where we needed to be. Just as I arrived, a car backed out of a parking space just in front of the door. As the car drove off, I proceeded into the space, a space that the driver of a car coming from the other direction felt entitled to.

I had the right of way, so I took the space as the other driver blared his horn at me. Both of our windows were down, so he took the opportunity to call me a MF'er in as dirty a tone that he could muster as he passed. He and his passenger stared me down so fiercely that if I took one more breath, it would be one too many as far as they were concerned. People are dissapointing.

I filled out paper work. I paid. Sadie waited in the car.

After paying, I walked to the back of the car and rubbed Sadie's ears until the staff was ready for us. I told the lady that Sadie could no longer walk, so she would need to bring a cart to wheel her in. This appeared to be no problem, but she returned with one of these:

I told her that I was not putting Sadie in a trash can. She responded that I was welcome to get a refund and take Sadie to a private vet. People are disappointing.

I let her comment slide without petty response and asked for her to make a path to the table.I would carry all 90+ pounds of her by myself if I needed to. But I'm not putting my dog in a trash can.

She took the trash can back inside and brought out a cart like this:

This was more like what I expected, so we placed Sadie on the cart. I was not allowed to be with her, and was hardly given a moment to say goodbye at the threshold of the door. I petted Sadie quickly, told her that she was a good dog, and told her to tell Athena hi.

The trash can lady assured me that she would be nice to her. Forgive me for being a skeptic.

There was quite a bit of traffic on the way home which gave me some time to reflect. The outcome of both trips to the vet was the same. However, I felt more at peace after Athena's passing. Odd considering the anxiety surrounding her event.

It all boiled down to people. I was not a MF'er when I brought Athena into the clinic. She was not garbage. She was worth the opportunity to properly say goodbye.

Wouldn't it be nice if we all showed more empathy, more compassion for each other? It sure would make for a more pleasant drive home.

2009 White Rock Recap

I know that this is old news (see previous blog entry), but I finished my second marathon on December 13, 2009. I haven't really analysed my race yet, so I'll use this entry to do so.

The measure that everyone cares about is finish time. Honestly, my goal throughout training was to finish under 4:00:00, but I knew that I would be happy with any time under 4:15:00 after last years debacle.

I started my 18 week training program on August 12. The program that I chose (the Novice 2 program from the Hal Higdon website) required me to run four times per week, with one day of cross-training. I was never able to motivate myself to cross-train, so I basically just ran four times per week.

The structure of the weekly runs was short run on Tuesday, intermediate run on Wednesday, short run on Thursday, long run on Sunday. The first week distances were 3 mi, 5 mi, 3 mi, and 8mi. The longest week distances were 5mi, 8mi, 5mi, 18mi. The longest scheduled long run was 20mi.

Early on the training went well, and I was making all of my scheduled runs. However, at about week 10, my body started to break down a little bit and I missed at least one run per week until week 14.

The longest run that I actually completed while training for this race was 19 miles in week 13. I was sick and missed all of my runs during week 15. I was VERY concerned about missing this week because the 20 miler was scheduled for week 15.

I decided not to try to make up the 20 mile run when I was up and running again because race day was only three weeks away, and I didn't want to push my body too far when I should have been tapering. I made all of my week 16 - week 18 runs and felt like I was in good condition for the race.

Including the distance run in the marathon, I ran a total of 391.2 miles.

On race day, Lisa and her parents dropped me off at the AAC at around 7AM. This left me plenty of time to take care of all the pre-race "stuff" before the gun sounded at 8AM. It's really important for me to not feel rushed on race day and I didn't, so this was perfect.

I headed out of the AAC at around 7:45, left my bag at the baggage check, and navigated my way to my starting corral. The temperature was about 48 degrees at the start of the race, which is almost perfect. Studies have shown that the "optimum" temperature to run a marathon is 54 degrees.

Like I said in the opening, what I really wanted to accomplish was a sub-4:00:00 marathon, which is 9:09 per mile pace. My strategy was to run easy for the first three miles at around 9:30 pace. My pace for the rest of the race would be dependent on how I felt after mile 3.

It took me about 3 minutes to reach the starting line after the gun sounded. The start of a race with 20,000 participants is a little crazy. Last year I wasted a lot of energy at the start zig-zagging through people. I was resolved not to make the same mistake this year, so I was patient and waited for lanes to open.

It was funny to me that less than a half-mile into the race, some people were already so winded that they had to stop and walk. I suspect that they might not have put enough time into training! Some of the runners did not appreciate having to dodge walkers that early in the race.

According to my Garmin GPS watch, this is how my race unfolded:

Mile 1 - 9:37
Mile 2 - 9:08
Mile 3 - 9:01
Mile 4 - 9:14
Mile 5 - 9:10
Mile 6 - 9:16
Mile 7 - 9:27
Mile 8 - 8:40
Mile 9 - 8:33
Mile 10 - 8:57
Mile 11 - 8:52
Mile 12 - 8:53
Mile 13 - 9:29
Mile 14 - 8:48
Mile 15 - 9:09
Mile 16 - 8:51
Mile 17 - 8:57
Mile 18 - 9:04
Mile 19 - 8:56
Mile 20 - 9:44
Mile 21 - 11:14
Mile 22 - 9:44
Mile 23 - 10:43
Mile 24 - 11:08
Mile 25 - 10:41
Mile 26 - 11:50
3795 calories burned (doubt it!)

After about a mile, I became aware that I needed to use the restroom, which is pretty typical. A lot of guys will just run over to the bushes, but I'm not really comfortable with that, so I decided to wait until I had access to a Porta-Potty. I ended up "holding it" until mile 13 (about 2 hours) before there was a stop that wasn't crowded!

I stayed at a comfortable pace through mile 7 and was probably about 10 seconds off of my goal pace. Looking at the elevation map (http://www.runtherock.com/race_info/pdfs/TheRockMap2009combinedCLIF.pdf), this makes sense as the course steadily climbs about 200 feet through the first seven miles.

The descent to White Rock Lake begins at mile 8 and my pace began to increase at that point. I felt really good all the way around the lake and was able to push my average pace down to 9:03 through mile 19. I was starting to get really excited at about mile 18 because I thought that I was going to be able to hold it together enough to beat four hours!

There was a light headwind around the back side of the lake that concerned me a little, but I felt good at the lake. I do remember being surprised at how long I was at the lake. I didn't think that I was EVER going to get out of there!

Careful what you wish for.

The climb out of the Lake starts during the 19th mile. It's pretty steep, and I probably should have run it easier. Marathoners talk about the first and second halves of the race. Miles 1-20 are the first half, and miles 21-26.2 are the last half. Let me tell you, the second half is tough!

Shortly after finishing the climb my right hamstring started to cramp, despite my deliberate efforts to stay hydrated with both water AND Gatorade, and my pace dropped significantly. This was pretty frustrating because cramps ruined last year's marathon, and I was afraid that I would fall apart at any minute.

That little voice that tells you to stop started talking to me during mile 21. It tells you that your cramps are too bad to keep running. It tells you that you should stop so that you don't do any permanent damage. It tells you that running 21 miles is impressive enough, so why keep going?

I wasn't listening ...

I thought about all of the runs in the dark, in the heat, in the cold. I thought about all of the Saturdays when I woke up at 5AM to run for 2-3 hours. I thought about all of the things that I would have rather been doing, but didn't. No way am I stopping! I am not a quitter.

I was really hurting at mile 22 and I needed some support. Lisa and her parents had already seen me at 5 different locations, but they were not sure that they would be able to catch me between mile 18 and the finish. Thankfully, they made the last stop and gave me the notivation that I needed to finish.

I just remember my father-in-law yelling out, "Just relax and enjoy it!" I took his advice and accepted that this would not be a sub-4:00:00 race, but it was a race that I could be proud of.

The last 4 miles of that race are tough mentally. There aren't many spectators because they are waiting at the finish line. There's no pretty lake to look at. You can see where the finish is and how slowly you are approaching!

The final bit of drama happened with one mile to go. There was one last aide station and, as I approched, I was deciding whether I wanted to stop. I had taken in so much sugar via Gatorade and gel packets that I was pretty nausious, but I decided at the last second not to miss the last chance to stay hydrated.

As I stopped, my right hamstring knotted into a ball. I tried to stretch it out twice, but both times that I stood back up, it went right back into a ball. I was worried that my day was over with only one mile to go.

Thankfully, it finally let go and I was back on my way. My lower back was starting to have shooting pains, my feet ached from pounding the concrete for over four hours, my thighs had little power, I was nausious, I was cramping every half-mile, but I felt great!

I finally made that last right turn and could see the finish. I decided to stop and stretch one more time about a quarter mile from the line. I didn't want to cramp and fall in front of everyone on the final stretch. I was able to hold it all together and jogged across the finish.

A couple of moments after recieving my finishers metal, I thought about what I had just done and got choked up a little bit. I had been so disappointed after last year's race that this moment was very special for me. It was the culmination of 46 total weeks of training.

I was proud.

Thank you to Lisa and Claire for letting me be so selfish in my training. Thank you to Lisa, Claire, Joe, Bette, and Joey for cheering me on. A special thanks to Joe for inspiring me to run in the first place, and for all of his hard work in planning that allowed me to have a cheering section at 8 points in the race!

More stats here:
http://www.runpix.info/dwr09/ge.php

Baby Steps

As of about 9PM last night, I was ready to abandon this blog. It had been such a long time since I had an urge to write anything that I didn’t see the point in marketing this site and longer. I even deleted the link from my facebook account.

Because of my style of writing, it takes me a long time to formulate what I want to say, and how I want to say it (I have already modified this particular sentence three times … four times … FIVE!). So long, in fact, that I typically decide that the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze and just keep my thoughts to myself. Well, Lisa has persuaded me to pick up the pen … er … keyboard again.

On December 13th, I finished my second marathon. I’m proud of my accomplishment, but if you had told me five years ago that I would run a marathon, I would have laughed in your face. Marathoners were superhuman, and I was fat.

I still remember stepping on the scale at a 24-hour Fitness in Houston and pushing the silver arrow all the way over to 38 while the black arrow pointed to 200. I couldn’t believe that I weighed 238 pounds, but I was still able to find ways to not hold myself accountable for my size. Let me recall a few:

• People tell me that I don’t LOOK that heavy.
• People in my family are overweight. It’s probably hereditary and there’s nothing that I can do about it.
• I eat pretty healthy. I usually order chicken when I eat out.

I was kidding myself and two things were my biggest catalyst for change:

1. I was so ashamed by the way that I looked that I would avoid catching my reflection in a mirror or window. If I was walking up to a glass door, I would intentionally direct my focus somewhere that I had no chance of seeing what I looked like.
2. I was SICK of being uncomfortable all the time.

The second catalyst produced the event that was my turning point. I was sitting at a red light at the intersection 249 and Gessner when I became aware that my belt was cutting into my stomach and it hurt. I was so fat that I hurt. That was the moment that I decided that I needed to make some changes.

Do you remember the movie What About Bob where Bill Murray is obsessive-compulsive and he’s seeking treatment from a psychiatrist played by Richard Dreyfuss? Well, Richard Dreyfuss’ character gives good advice. Baby steps.

I started going to the gym and watching what I ate … and I thought about it. What do I do that causes me to gain weight? Well … I don’t exercise enough and I eat too much.

I kept going to the gym and began to understand proper portion sizes. You mean … I don’t have to eat everything on my plate? Simple concept to understand. Not so simple to put into practice.

I don’t recall how long I had been taking my baby steps before the next catalytic event, but spectating at the Houston Marathon also had a significant impact on me.

Lisa’s dad, Joe, ran in his first marathon while we lived in Houston. I was excited to cheer him on and we were able to see him at four or five different locations throughout the race, but my favorite part of that day was sitting at the finish line and watching the racers cross the line.

Some sprinted across. Some limped. Some shouted out in excitement. Some grimaced in pain. Some were bloody. All were proud of themselves. All of them were, and I was proud for them. I thought to myself uncertainly, “Maybe some day I could run a half marathon”.

So I started training. Baby steps.

• I ran a 10k in February of 2007.
• Then I competed in a sprint distance triathlon in May of 2007.
• Then my first half marathon in December of 2007.
• Then an Olympic distance triathlon in June of 2008.
• Then my first marathon in December of 2008.
• Then another sprint triathlon in August of 2009.
• Then my second marathon in December of 2009.

I started small, but kept setting goals that were more and more ambitious. I took baby steps. There is no diet, no shortcut, no magic pill that will produce sustainable results that you will be proud of.

I ran a marathon and I’m not extraordinary for having done so. I simply took enough baby steps to achieve what I once thought was impossible. You can, too.