Volume 34: Because I Can....

 

Eric Liddell, 1924 Paris Olympics

    Chariots of Fire.  I've never watched that movie in its entirety until this week.  I am definitely not Olympic (or Ironman World Championship) material.  But all week, I thought about how Eric Liddell lived his life on the track and beyond. More on that towards the end of this week's blog.  With the end of this week upon me, I've completed three weeks out of 20 of my training for Ironman Florida.  November seems so far away, yet in a couple of weeks, I am already 1/4 of the way through my training block.  Read on, fair follower....

Weekly Stats:

• Swim (3x)
• 3.03 miles (5,325 yards)
• 1:54:06
• Bike (4x)
• 84.52 miles
• 4:26:06
• Run (3x)
• 16.37 miles
• 2:55:03
• Strength (2x)
• 41:42
• Yoga (4x)
• 1:42:07
• Other 
• 46:06
• TOTALS:
• 17 workout sessions
• 105.32 total miles
• 12:25:30

Training Notes:

    Well, I'm back up to over 12 hours of work this week.  It feels like I'm not doing as much, but once the week ends, it all adds up.  I've noticed that my miles and times are racking up quicker than they did at the beginning of my half Ironman plan.  Which makes sense since I have to double what I did 5 weeks ago in the next 17 weeks.  That 17 week mark was what my entire plan was for Eagleman.  I have the whole Ironman Florida plan mapped out, and I can see all the big days down the road, but it still seems surreal that I'll actually be doing several 2-mile swims, 6-hour bike rides, and 3-hour runs.  AND NOT GET A MEDAL OR T-SHIRT FOR THOSE EFFORTS!  But the finish line in Panama City Beach will be glorious because of those sessions....

    I think the feeling of not doing as much is more the fact that I'm not having to get up at 4:20 everyday (yet) since I can swim in the afternoon in the outdoor pool and get a lunch run or strength session in if I need to. The days are spread out a little more during the summer, but that only lasts one more month.  Then it's back to the full super tight school schedule.  I DO need to work on my nutrition again.  I've let that slide a bit since getting back. It sure doesn't help that this week we had three straight days of BBQ get togethers with plenty of sweets!  And since my days are regulated by a class schedule, I've found myself snacking throughout.  

   

    This week I got an open water swim in at Shawnee Mission Park, but the GPS on my watch wasn't connecting really well, so it was showing me swimming very short distance which translated to very slow pace.  I used Google maps to measure distance and had to adjust for something a little more accurate.  I stressed over the slow pace for a while, but in the end know that my training is fine.  Why do I still doubt myself when I proved I can swim just fine a month ago in choppy river water with 2000 of my newest best friends all at once?  This calm lake is nothing!

    I had a hill repeat run workout on the schedule--I used the treadmill at school to run 9% incline repeats.  I can honestly say that was one of the worst workouts yet since February.  Just didn't enjoy it.  Maybe a combination of the treadmill and the hills and the pace.  Fortunately, I don't have a lot of them on the calendar.  Today, I did a pre-church 90-minute Zone 2 HR run.  Man, the heat and humidity sap the pace and raise the heart rate!  I have to really slow down to keep my HR in range, and I have to keep reminding myself that it's ALL about the HR training, not the pace.  The pace will be there at the end.  I proved that to myself in Maryland.  

    On Saturday, I took my bike to Shawnee Mission Park, where next Sunday's olympic-distance triathlon will be held. My race is 27 miles on the bike which is 6 loops around the park road. I did 7 loops for this ride, and each loop took me just under 15 minutes, about 4.4 miles each.  In each loop my watch showed near 420' of elevation gain.  My total for the hour and 45 minutes was 2700+ feet of gain. After doing Eagleman, where my total elevation gain was only 299' over 56 miles, this race is going to be WAY different!  In a nutshell, in 31.5 miles (56% of my half Ironman distance), I climbed 927% more than I did 5 weeks ago!  And I felt it. My average speed still was 18.1MPH at the end of my 6th lap, so I'm happy with that.  This is one of the harder triathlons around with the hilly course. Don't ever say that Kansas is flat!!  One side story....I stopped at the end of my 3rd lap to change

my helmet visor out for sunglasses (raining and sweat).  As I started back up out of the parking lot, I was still in my big front ring, a low rear gear, and was starting uphill.  As soon as I started pushing down on my right pedal, I didn't go anywhere. Except....down.  Yup, tipped over right there in the parking lot going a whopping 0.0 MPH! I actually got hurt more this time that when I slipped off the road a few months ago and have a small scrape on the outside (and inside) of my knee. Not a matter of if, but when.  I'll take the small things, always praying for safety on the roads and no major issues.  The pic is a reenactment--I'm sure the people watching me were wondering what in the world I was doing laying down under my bike.  Nobody saw the actual tip over. I don't think they did, at least! Rounded out the workouts with a couple of strength sessions, and yoga. 

    I'll be ready for Sunday and the Shawnee Mission Triathlon. Last year storms caused them to cancel the bike portion, so it was a swim/run race.  This year the weather looks good so far, and I feel good (yet always nervous) about toeing the start line at the beach.  This race is 1500 meter swim, 27 mile bike and 6.2 mile run.  I'm shooting for sub-3 hours with the hills.  Don't think I'll be able to pull off another PR, but I've surprised myself recently.  Just don't think the hills will allow that for this race.  Technically, it'll be a PR for this course as I've never done the full olympic-distance. All the details will be next week in my race recap!  

Daily Life:

For God is working in you, giving you the desire 

and the power to do what pleases Him.

Philippians 2:13 (NLT)   

    When I was a kid, I played the piano. Not very well, but I tried. I think I liked it most because I got candy at the end out of the big bowl thing next to the piano and if I got to practice early at the teacher's house, she had tortoises in her backyard that I could go out and search for.  The weird things I remember....  At one of my recitals, I chose Chariots of Fire as my music.  At the time (maybe around 1985/1986), I now realize the movie was fairly new at that time. I've never sat and watched the entire movie, so thank you YouTube!  It was a great movie.  Eric Liddell, a Scottish athlete, won a gold medal for Great Britain in the 1924 Paris Olympics in the 400 meters after he refused to run in the 100 meter race as the preliminaries were on a Sunday.  He held the Sabbath as an absolute and stuck to his conviction that he would not race on Sundays.  He had a great line in the movie that I love and have heard  before.  "I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure."  Well, that was a movie line, not something he actually said.  

I dare you to not hum the Chariots of Fire theme song in your head.....

    I've had many people over the months ask me "why". Why am I doing this. Not in a criticizing way, but genuine curiosity.  I wrote about this all the way back in Week 2.  Here is what I put down on paper for my why:  "because God has given me a body to move, to be able to do this, and He has given me the desire.  I want to honor Him with my body.  Taking care of it, training it, and using it to its highest potential".  Throughout this week, I thought about my why several times.  Sometimes it was "WHY am I doing this?!" (back to the hill repeats on the treadmill!) I've found over the years that as I am running in the early morning and seeing another sunrise, sometimes a sunset over the water on a paddleboard, or biking along the fields in Kansas or along the coast in San Diego, these are the times I feel physically closest to God. I can see His great creation and that affects me more than anything else. In these past 4 months very specifically, I feel gratefulness that I am able to physically do what I desire to do in this crazy thing called Ironman.  

    I was created to move, and I can feel His pleasure when I train hard to make the most out of the abilities God has given me.  So even though it was a made-up line for the movie, I really took that to heart.  Eric Liddell ended up being a missionary to China and died in occupied China after WWII.  He may not have said that "famous" line, but he lived it.  And I want to live this out as well.  Everyone has different gifts, abilities, and desires.  If we don't strive to be the best version of what God intended for us to be, we won't be fulfilled.  We'll always be looking for things to fill in the holes.  But if each one of us uses those to the best of our ability and strive to improve on those talents, I believe God is pleased. And in turn, we can be fully satisfied that we are doing what we were created for.  A real quote by Eric Liddell sums it up for me.  I'm striving for a finish and a medal on the red carpet of the finish chute in Florida in November.  But accepting Christ, pleasing God, and following His will gives me the ultimate finish and medal.  

“It has been a wonderful experience to compete in the Olympic Games and to bring home a gold medal. But since I have been a young lad, I have had my eyes on a different prize. You see, each one of us is in a greater race than any I have run in Paris, and this race ends when God gives out the medals."--Eric Liddell

Final Thoughts:

    Time is just ticking by.  It's been 5 weeks since Matthew & Macey got married, and 4 weeks since my race at Eagleman. We're already in July. School starts in August. I have a short weekend trip with Ethan in month before he moves into the dorms at MNU.  A long weekend at the end of September volunteering at Ironman Chattanooga and cheering on my training buddy, Chad Koerner, as he beats me to the finish line since his race is a month before mine.  Then it'll be my turn in November.  I'm just going day-to-day and workout-to-workout just like a did from February to June.  Still have my 70.3 race wristband on to remind me what it took to finish strong.  On to week 4!  

    Thank you, as always, for following my journey.  It's a long one....for sure.  As I start really thinking about Shawnee Mission Triathlon next week, all I can do is:

Keep Fit, Stay THE Course, and Keep Moving Forward

CPC

7/6/25

Olathe, KS

2,818 hours, 36 minutes until Ironman Florida