Lock, Frock and Mock(ing bird)

Weirdest workout finding:I was running along and found, within twenty feet of each other, three items.  Help me form the scenario with them from the previous Saturday night. 

Found:  One pair of broken flip flops, one dead bird, one ...what appeared to be... long black dread lock severed from a person's head. 

Exactly.  I was confounded by those three items. 

Have you ever seen odd items while running?

They were found close to the local hospital.

The Perfect Body

When I was young,I dreamed of the perfect body, living in a machine of flesh that was picture perfect, turning heads, making waves.  I set out to do this.  I honed my understanding of the discipline and knowledge of how to get that quest fulfilled.  I watched what I ate.  I ate a lot of chicken, because, protein to a muscly, lean ripped body, was paramount.  I went to the gym religiously.  I dreamed focused, OBSESSED about this body.  I had mediocre results.  It cost a lot.  To achieve such a body that you see on magazine and movies, there is a need to sacrifice, mirror gaze, self-flagellate, starve and become a machine.  In essence, you train until you become what you train for.  This is all fine and dandy, and given that you may have been blessed as some of my friends were (like one!) with the genes to have great muscled results;  this is a dangling carrot on a stick.   I however was a hard gainer with a stubborn jelly belly. Problem is, that as a man of God on his way to becoming more like Jesus, and being shown who I am from Hi s perspective, it become glaringly apparent that I am not an Adonis in the commercial sense.  NOPE. In fact about .000004% of men are.  Movie stars and models who sport a six pack, barrel chests and horseshoes tris are professionally obligated to regiment their lives around their appearance.  I have not been called to that, nor am I easily attaining to this.  

SO where did this leave me?  How do I achieve the perfect body?  Well, it took some healing.  I needed my heart to hear over and over:  "You have the perfect body."  God repeating himself to my heart, putting confidence in my own created flesh to understand that as a man created by him intentionally, I was perfectly made.  I can be who I was created to be in excellence by discovering what is healthfully giving me life and I found that bodybuilding, fine in its own discipline, would continue to suck the life, the time, the energy from me with results that would never satisfy.  I would never measure up, never be that man on the cover, cuz that is not who I was created to be.  

At my work I saw the contentment in a man who was 20, wheelchair bound, and needed daily support to live his life.  He was perfectly made and never thought about how he didn't measure up.  He passed away from a disease that ate away his muscle.  Was he less loved, less of a man than me?  Not at all.  He was perfectly made.

What I discovered was that I was already what I was designed to be, and that running fit me perfectly.  Metaphorically, allegorically, poetically, spiritually, physically, maritally, I am born to run.  It calls to me like the gym never has.  Nothing wrong with the gym, but getting out on the road, lacing up my shoes, kissing my bride goodbye as she continues to sleep and looking in the mirror with satisfaction for a body that CAN run, is blessed to run, gives me more than I could ever have dreamed.  I love how strong, how intense I feel when running.  I lov eknowing that pushing myself is a strength that God talks to me through, like when I sing, paly guitar, even pray, it comes to me naturally because its who I am.  I have the perfect bod.  Check me out.  Take me in, drink in my freakin' essence.  BAM.  Chad is here.  Thank you Creator.

Its The Little Choices

I have notedthat with my training, and with anything that has a larger goal to it, its the so-called tiny decisions that make success or failure a reality.

With training, its the decisions to go out in the early morning, its the choice of snack, its the small micro decisions, which include how you talk about yourself, whether I am taking care of my sleep, what I snack on.  It takes a thousand micro decisions to achieve a monumental task. Discipline is a thousand assigned decisions focused on a larger goal.

My smaller decisions have included poorer ones lately, but my goals have been largely unfocussed with no races in sight until the fall and work keeping me so busy and focused.  

Goodbye, Dear Ipod, Hello New Friend

She ran with me, drove long distances with me, sat in traffic jams with me, sang to me, read to me, made me laugh, made me cry.  My friend, my ipod.  She worked until her dying days.  Some cold winter runs, she would go as long as she could but she would fall asleep half way out.  Bless her.  In her glory days, she would last for hours singing to me, talking into my ears.  Reading me stories of Harry Potter, of Hobbits, and of messages I needed to hear.

She is going to a better place.

On another note.  There is a new lady in my life.  Her name is Nano.  She has less memory (16 Gb versus the 30 of her predecessor), but overall will make me happy.  She will have a good life, and she will be with me for many a day. 

Goodbye dear friend, hello sweet new thang!

Music Schmuzic

Who needs all that noise anyhow? Lately, I have been without anything to listen to. Having spent an inordinate amount of time on the road, traveling, relying on my music to keep my mind alert, as I trek to work I have neglected to use anything whilst running. With so much alone time, I need to feel like I have different modes of travel: music, silence, talkative, whatever.  Silence while running keeps my mind wandering, focusing on my pace and my breathing. My mind more immediately goes to prayer and to sorting things in my day out.  It also keeps me alert to my surroundings. 
I often have a song in my head repeating itself. Why is Lady Gaga there so much? It must be the tempo of my foot falls.
My daughter's ipod has been misplaced as well, and my ipod is not reliable. Do I miss it? Not lately, but I will.
I have a tendency to get into a familiar routine and when it works, I will wear it obsessively into the ground until I know it inside and out. Occasionally I need a refreshing from this, keeps things interesting.
Lately I have forged a new route, I call it the black sage route and it is 15 k plus some change. Im going the opposite dirention to the normal 10 k or 13 k routes I have in my repertoire, but with my longer commute, it keeps my mileage up to a decent amount.
Do any other runners do the OCD thing and then change it up like me?