We Run and Ride

Forrest Gump lives

Posted on August 2, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

We must suppose that most people have seen the famous scene in the movie Forrest Gump in which the lead character as a child runs out of his awkward leg braces. To runners, that scene typically has special significance. Surely it is one of the most liberating scenes in all of moviehood. Here’s the perpetually constrained child running free from his own limitations.

That is the central theme of the movie, as Forrest Gump transcends all the limitations imposed on him by the world. His intellect is admittedly suspect, yet his judgment often is not.

He uses his running at first to get where he wants to go. But first, he must escape the rocks and anger of his bully tormentors. They threaten and strike him with stones, then chase him down the country lane on their bikes. But Forrest, having earned his strength through toil in the braces, leaves them all behind.

I remember crying the first time I saw that scene. It plays to all the empathy I feel in life for those who struggle and somehow break free. Our society has seen fit to celebrate the efforts of paralympic athletes for these same reasons. So many people cope and manage with disabilities in life. Often their conditions are wrought through no choice of their own. But even for those who suffer accidents of their own making, the will to overcome the challenges of physical or mental disability is a redeeming grace.

And the right thing to do in life is to empathize and encourage those who face such obstacles, and to love them. That’s what the character Jenny did for Forrest Gump. Admittedly she struggled with loving him as the world worked so hard to divide them from each other. Ultimately she came to understand their love was the one real thing in the world, and she bore a child from that love. And when Forrest learns of the existence of the child, and see that the small boy will not face the same challenges he has been forced to face in life; of intellect, and disability, he is almost crushed with confusion and joy.

The mocking souls

One of the easy foils in comedy is to suggest that someone could compete better in the Special Olympics than the actual Olympics. Such efforts of compassion and joy toward the needy or disadvantaged also are easily mocked by those possessed of fragile ego and weak spirit.

Mainstream attempts to empathize with the cause of Special Olympics athletes produce odd compromises. None other than Johnny Knoxville of MTV and Jackass fame starred in a movie titled The Ringer, which featured Special Olympics as a foil in the scheme of the main character to pay off his debts. I was working closely with contacts at Special Olympics when the movie was being made and shown. Most of the hard-working professionals and volunteers at the organization simply gulped hard and hoped it was not too offensive. That question remains to this day, for the movie featured actual special needs actors in key roles, and created some empathy in the process. But the premise was goofy. Such are the tradeoffs in building public image and managing a brand.

History of Special Olympics

Last year I was in attendance at a Chicago City Council meeting when a prominent Chicago alderman that had served along with the “original” Mayor Richard Daley describe how the Special Olympics once had to fight for the right to use the term “Olympics.”

When the organizers led by Eunice Shriver Kennedy first formed Special Olympics in Chicago, they were told to cease using the Olympic name by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) led by Avery Brundage, who happened to own some rental property in the City of Chicago. When Brundage sent a cease and desist letter to Special Olympics, the committee turned to Mayor Daley for help. Daley made a call to Brundage and said, “Hello Avery,” (we paraphrase here) “We’ve got these people in Chicago starting this nice little program called Special Olympics. And we hear you’re telling them they can’t use the word ‘olympics’ in their name. Well, we’d really like to let them use the name, wouldn’t we? And we’d hate to have our inspectors sent down to check your property for any problems…”

That’s a true story as related by Alderman Ed Burke. I sat there listening to him relate the story on the day last summer that a team of Special Olympic athletes was recognized during a City Council meeting. Burke laughed about the fact that the Chicago Way has always been effective in getting things done. And yes, it was a threat of sorts that helped Special Olympics overcome the conservative ways of one Avery Brundage, proving that while some threats are driven by evil, others can lead to social justice.

Millions served

Special Olympics now serves millions of athletes worldwide, and even promotes life skills, public speaking and other training for special needs people.

I have attended the winter and summer State Games here in Illinois, and when 5000 athletes converge at Illinois State Univerity in Normal, Illinois each summer, it is a moving sight. An unlike the actual Olympics, the Special Olympics state competitions take place every year. There are even national and international competitions. Just like the Summer and Winter Games of the Olympic movement.

Getting the story straight

At one point in my position as marketing manager for a large newspaper, I collaborated with Special Olympics to strike a deal to use subscription sales to raise money for the organization. The salespeople going door-to-door were given a script to use that led with the clear statement, “I am from the (newspaper name) and we’re selling subscriptions that benefit the Special Olympics.”

The aggressive sales crew leaders saw advantage in flipping that sentence around. Their salespeople began by stating, “Hi, we’re from Special Olympics…” But then they unwittingly called on the home of the regional director of Illinois Special Olympics. I new the guy as a friend by that point, and he gave me a call at home the very next day asking for an explanation about the breach in contract. Obviously, I apologized profusely for the abuse of trust. The next day I confronted the circulation department for their error. After a mumbled apology from the circulation manager, I warned them the program was at high risk if it happened again.

Worthwhile cause

A worthwhile cause like Special Olympics is worth advocating and worth defending in its creation and administration. Giving all those people opportunities to perform is critical to our role as stewards and respect for other human beings. Volunteers for Special Olympics will tell you that they get much more back in gratitude and joy than they put in.

And until you’ve actually attended a State Games and witnessed 5000 athletes at the track, and double or triple the number of volunteers assisting in track and field events, you cannot know the importance of that call made by Richard J. Daley to Avery Brundige all those years ago.

It’s a vicious truth that defending disadvantaged people takes absolute persistence. There are always mean kids running around in life. And there are equally mean adults ready to throw rhetorical rocks and mean words, who are all too willing and able to run over the Forrest Gumps of the world.

There but for the Grace of God…

The ugly truth behind the scene in which Forrest Gump is depicted running away from bullies down the lane to his house is the idea that somehow we’re supposed to think, “There but for the Grace of God go I…”

Yet even that supposedly empathetic phrase holds a strain of cruelty. For it is a judgmental manner of looking at life. It presupposes that the person or persons toward whom it is aimed are somehow inferior by way of their disadvantage. That kind of thinking is too easily applied to other life conditions such as race, gender, orientation or nationality.

But we can return to that scene of flight in which Forrest Gump outruns all those conventional brands of thinking. He goes on to succeed through blunt honesty and refusal to accept the low expectations of his supposed fate. Even his friend Lieutenant Dan, who suffers loss of both legs during the Vietnam War, struggles to understand this lesson. “I was supposed to die!” he screams at Gump. But the liberal honesty of Forrest Gump refuses to accept that nihilistic view of life as well.

That’s why I almost cry every time I watch that scene with Forrest Gump running out of leg braces. We all have our disabilities, and we all have our real or virtual leg braces. And you must keep on running lest they hold you back from what you truly want to experience in life.

Run, Forrest, Run!

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, competition, running, Uncategorized | Tagged forrest gump, run forrest run, running out of leg braces, Special Olympics, tom hanks | Leave a comment

The enduring values of women and the sickness in some men

Posted on August 1, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

I have no exciting race or training news to share because this weekend I was sick. I’ve been sick before. And I’ll be sick again.

This time was diarrhea, nausea and sweat-soaked chills. But rather than complain about it, I visited briefly with my fiance on Saturday night and let her go home. If I was contagious in some way, I did not want her to get sick as well. Then I hunkered down for the miserable night to come.

We’ve all been there. No one gets through life without a touch of flu, a bad cold or something worse. Some of us tolerate it better than others. But there’s also a line of thought out there that men are terrible at being sick. And for many men, that may be true. It’s certainly not true for all men, but it’s true enough to become a social meme of some sort.

What we also know is that some men have a sickness of another sort. Many can be highly critical of women for shallow reasons. There are a few terrible jokes out there about women and their menstrual cycle, for example:

“What’s the difference between a woman with her period and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”

Now there are likely some women who might actually find that joke funny. They genuinely might feel like terrorizing people during their period, or even hold a few people hostage to find some peace in this world when cramps and malaise take over.

But to their infinite credit, most of the women I know suffer their monthly period with largely silent grace. You don’t usually hear about it. They simply gather their purse, head to the ladies room and take care of business. Then they get back to their desks and back to work before the average man has time to conduct their latest Fantasy Football trade.

Yet the legend of women’s bitchiness during menstruation persists.

Perseverance

Having your period is not the same thing as being sick. In fact, it’s a more persistent kind of illness, if you want to call it that. Because you only get sick by chance, but a monthly period comes around according to the natural schedule. It happens from the time a woman is 11-13 years old and continues often into the 50s.

Now I’m obviously a man, and I have never experienced a single menstruation cycle in life. But I have lived with women who do, and seen the products of that experience, and it’s no easy thing. The cycle alone comes around at least 444 times in life, except during times of pregnancy or through stress conditions such as cessation of menstruation from too much exercise. That condition is rather ironically called amenorrhea. Can we hear an “amen” about that?

But I once dated a serious runner whose period stopped during periods of intense training. She also developed a stress fracture below her knee. The two conditions were likely related. And I was present at the track workout when the bone in her leg actually cracked and broke. You could hear the sound when it happened. She was an intense women, to say the least, perseverant to a flaw, you might say. I’d warned her a number of times to back off and give the leg a rest. She would have none of that, and had set a PR of 36:00 for the 10K as a result. Yet she reached her breaking point sooner rather than later.

She is not the only woman that I have known to push herself to the breaking point. These are not weak creatures we are talking about. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Another type of suffering

After 40 or so years of bleeding out the vagina once a month, women experience menopause. Take note of the root word “men” in the words amenorrhea and menopause. Both have to do with women’s menstrual cycles and yet men are women into the mix. How interesting.

Menopause screws with a woman’s body in all new ways. A woman’s body can experience shifts in weight, hormone distribution, and form. For female athletes, going through menopause and beyond may require more work to achieve or maintain what just a few years before was relatively easy. All when fatigue tends to nag and come on sooner. It’s not an easy journey, by all reports. And yet women find a way to persevere through that too.

Guy things

We can only imagine what the world would be like if it were men who had a monthly menstruation cycle. Would their ability to tolerate other forms of pain and illness be any better? Yes, it happens that the prostate gland in men can expand, and our nut sack sags as we get older. Our once proud pectorals get soft around the edges and hair can recede. Testosterone can give out and with it sexual prowess. But for that the male-driven Pharmacological industry has invented erection pills such as Viagra or Cialis to prop men up until they’re either too old to care or too tired to copulate.

As a test of the ability for men to endure some of the same pain that women go through life, someone tested made a device that gives men the same sort of pain that women experience in childbirth. These devices were affixed to the abdomen of men to simulate labor pain. Most of the men tapped out after a cycle or two. The lesson learned in that experiment? Being a woman is not nearly as easy at it looks.

I stood by the side of my wife during the birth of my two children. We had enrolled in a child birthing class called Lamaze, which taught us nothing more than to have her blow on my finger through each round of contractions. This we did that every three minutes for fifteen and a half hours of her labor. The finger-blowing thing kept us in contact but I don’t think it did one damn thing to help her through the pain. Our 9 lb son son was locked in there until mention was made of going in through Cesaerean section. Then my wife pushed him out after some meds and a desperation to have that baby. Now.

Tough enough?

Could I have done the same thing? I don’t know one way or the other. I’m pretty tough as an athlete and know how to endure many kinds of pain and discomfort. I can largely handle illness even if left alone to deal with it. That doesn’t account for the afternoon that I got food poisoning at a party and wound up with vertigo so bad that I veered off course on the way to the car and ran head-on into a tree. I could have used some help at that moment. But that wasn’t a “guy thing.” That was a poisoned gut. It has happened at several times in life, and in several ways.

So I have no opinion about whether men could tolerate labor pains or not. But given that I consider men and women as equals on most counts, I supposed men could if they had to. Give birth. Seahorses do it.

A different kind of endurance

But I still give women credit for having a different kind of endurance. And most women clearly have it. I think some men are threatened by that type of strength. Jokes about women are a defensive response to that fear.

In fact, we see that secretly held fear in the denigration of women in all categories of life. Along with accusations of bitchiness, we hear claims that women are “too emotional” to hold positions of leadership or public office. We even hear women blamed for sole responsibility in unwanted pregnancies when a man was clearly complicit in the act of conception. We see women ostracized by society and even accused of causing their own rape, as if that were possible or desirable.

We see women denied roles in some sects of the church or synagogue, or at mosques. These prejudices are largely based on long-held gender fears. In these cases, we depend on patriarchal old rules that have nothing to do with how modern society operates. The Catholic Church is much the worse for it, yet even the scandals coming to light about priests and sexual abuse have wrought no real change in that organization. The church remains stuck in its ways in its attitude towards women.

But many women of the church choose to ignore patriarchal dictums about birth control and other nonsensical rules made by men. Women are tough enough to put up with the falsehoods perpetrated on them by men and still have a remarkable influence on society. Healthcare laws have shifted toward the needs of women in some ways, with Family Leave acts giving women protections to give birth and be with their children while still remaining employed.

Stop and consider the fact that women did not even have the right to vote until 1920. But as the Internet reveals, there were obvious prejudices still at work in the intervening years. “Although women were granted the right to vote in 1920, women did not turn out to the polls in the same numbers as men until 1980.”

Contradictory attitudes

The history of women’s rights in America is full of contradictions. On one hand, the nation tries to celebrate women, but too often it is through an entirely sexualized lens. We flaunt bare-breasted photos of women while forcing nursing mothers to cover their very useful breasts while nursing infants. We legislate against women’s access to birth control while lamenting children born out of wedlock or subject to abortion. Yet both of these social patterns are the culmination of a layered set of social disadvantages imposed on women. These include contradictory attitudes about gender, sexuality and social equality, a fact publicly demonstrated in the sexual harassment claims filed against former Fox News leader Roger Ailes. It’s quite obvious that the man’s notion of “fair and balanced” toward female employees and associates was Missing In Action if not Dead On Arrival in the hiring and firing practices of America’s most bigoted and biased news outlet.

Isolation

The dichotomies of “playing the game” to advance the roles of women in the work and political world while maintaining principles in the face of corrupt attitudes toward women exacts a heavy price. If women go along with sexual harassment to “get along,” then they wind up complicit in the act. But if they resist unwanted advances of discrimination they can be branded insubordinate or labeled a bitch.

I once helped a female associate find a lawyer to file who could file a claim on her behalf to fight the most egregious forms of sexual harassment experienced from her male boss. In fact, the practice of harassing women was rampant throughout the firm, but it could only be tackled one person at a time. She won her claim, took the money and left the company to better circumstances. But there were many other claims that would be filed as well. It took ages for the company to change, along with changes in ownership and management style to fix the problem.

But these types of circumstances still have an isolating effect on women, particularly those placed in crisis by marital, cultural or social circumstances. Women are too often made to feel ashamed for seeking the very help and assistance they need most to prevent unwanted pregnancies or domestic abuse. Even the Christian church has been known to tell women to go crawling back to abusive husbands, or to avoid birth control at any cost. These problems are as common among the wealthy as the poor. The domestic abuse patterns among NFL players and UFC fighters, to name a few, is clear evidence that women are often the targets for the redirected aggression among men in competitive occupations. But isn’t all of society competitive? It surely is.

Fighting back

So it’s no wonder that women might choose to fight back with a little humor about how their husbands or boyfriends act like babies when they’re sick. Probably many do, because men can be spoiled brats in how they think, or push for attention and domination even when they are in positions of power or advantage. Even holy scriptures such as the Bible and the Quran canonize wrongheaded beliefs about women. These range in subtlety from laws about women being “unclean” during menstruation to the cynical tale of the temptation of Adam by Eve that led to Original Sin.

Talk about shirking the blame! Clearly, there are fears of power and sexuality written all over scripture, and the Muslim faith and most other forms of organized religion are no exception. To the supposed victors go the spoils, and most of religious literature has been written by and for the benefit of men.

There are noble exceptions. The Bible shows the independence and intelligence of women in many respects. Yet information about the role of women in discipleship to Jesus may well have been suppressed. The world has been slow to consider the notion that Jesus may even have been married or to have known the company of women. The insistence that his mother Mary was a “virgin” is a sick little product of the same patriarchal society that defined women as property of their husbands.So the tale of the Virgin Mary was as much an economic as a moral breach in the social order. That pattern continues to this day.

We no longer believe that in the United States, yet our churches preach it every Sunday in the creeds recited during services. This is a conflict of interest and an insult to women. It amounts to approval of discrimination against women in all fashions of society.

War against women

These ancient patriarchal tendencies are taking center stage as America’s leading misogynist, Donald Trump, proves time and again that he is a man possessed of a sick mind toward women who also likes to whine about the pain of his mistreatment. He acts just like a spoiled husband who can’t take care of himself when he gets sick. Only he’s always sick.

And he’s using this platform of whining and complaining about his mistreatment to appeal to a similarly selfish and whiny audience of people trapped in their own versions of shallowness and self-pity.

So it is no coincidence that Donald Trump represents the worst in attitudes about women. There is evidence he has long been associated with a serial sexual abuser and had this to say about him: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

He’s also traded in several wives, one who says she felt violated during sex, and openly brands women a “piece of ass.” But only if he considers them pretty, because he ridicules those whose looks he finds wanting.

He is thus following the flow of the War Against Women waged for years by the Republican Party, a coalition of single interest lobbies mashed together in a Conservative Alliance that freely mixes hatred,money, politics and religion. It’s a sickness of mind, but all the Republican Party has found to do is whine about the very afflictions it has caused the nation and blame Democrats for making them sick in the first place.

And why do I write about all this in a blog about running and riding? Because I train with many women that I respect and care about. We talk about their lives and their goals. And I cannot imagine that electing Donald Trump to be President of the United States will maintain even the achievements of women in society to this point. In fact, I am sadly confident that America will regress to a time when it was more acceptable to discriminate against women, minorities, gays and virtually anything else the haters of society choose to target in their selfish dissatisfaction. And if you agree, you should share this blog with others. Because not enough people are pointing out the gross fact that this election is indeed about morality. And there is no moral equivalence between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This is not a choice between two evils. This is a choice between evil and a woman that has proven herself capable and trustworthy in her public and private life.

Into the maw

Into this massive maw of hatred for women and the considerations that have long suffered to claim, walks a woman who has endured much pain in her life. Granted, it has included the difficulty in forgiving a husband adulterer. But what women on earth has not been forced at some point to forgive a man? That’s what Christian women are technically supposed to do, at least first out of the box. Yes, she responded vengefully in some respects, but that’s a woman’s right as well. When attacked, we all have a right to fight back. Just remember, she turned the other cheek first.

She has put up with the long-term conservative campaign to dishonor her politically. Yet she remains standing for women’s rights and a real voice for the first time in the nation’s history. If elected, she will be forced to suffer even more. Just as President Obama suffered manifest racial prejudice, Hillary Clinton will be required to fend off misogynistic, gender-baiting commentary from the fearful cabal who resents everything she stands for. Because they have no real character and honor, they must attack those that have suffered to achieve the values they do have. This is the same pattern as domestic abusers who in their insecurity project their rage onto the ones that reveal the truth about them. Hence we find the popularity and methodology of Donald Trump.

Real women. Real purpose

I run and ride and with all manner of women athletes. Some of them beat me at the exact same activities that I enjoy doing. That does not make them better people than me any more than it makes me a better person than the women I can outrun, or ride, or outswim.

What it does prove is that women the exact same power to endure, to think and to persevere. In some ways, that ability may exceed even that of men.

Men of honor know this is true. But men and women with conflicted notions about their religion, politics and personal role in the world cannot come to grips with the idea that women are equal to men.

It’s a form of sickness you see, and a great many men have a tendency to whine about that.

Posted in evangelical Christianity, training, Uncategorized | Tagged Donald Trump, sickness of some men, the enduring values of women | Leave a comment

We all need support and not denial

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

At a barbecue event for a non-profit organization for whom I volunteer, I met a fellow board member who works as a psychologist for youth. We talked about her work and I thanked her for what she does.

As a kid, I could have used a bit of counseling myself. I think especially of my senior year in high school. I was the top runner on our high school team, and had won a series of dual meets and one invitational when my mother was checked into the hospital for surgery. She had problems stemming from the breach birth of my younger brother, who weighed in, as I recall, at something over 11 lbs. My mother was 5’3″. That breach-born son would grow to be 6’6″ and play Division I basketball.

She would thankfully live to see those days, but when my younger brother and I visited that dark and silent hospital bed with our mother attached to tubes and barfing into a tray, we did not know what to think about it all. It felt like she was going to die.

No one talked with us about those feelings. My dad told us she’d be okay, but words of that nature don’t erase the measure of feeling you have when the woman that raised you is so close to death.

The next few races in cross country did not go as well as the first few meets. I was distracted, to say the least. So all I did was take it out as hard as I could and hope to hang on. But the top runners from other schools waited me out and I kept getting second place. Week after week this occurred.

I was already a distracted kid. In fact I’m pretty certain my brain was subject to a form of ADD. One of my fellow teammates also struggled with schoolwork. I’d get A’s in some subjects that interested me, and D’s in classes like algebra or economics. I needed help making the connection between formulas and facts.

English was what I loved, and to some degree, science. But again, when it came to the logical order of genetics that was a study section in Advanced Biology, I could not hack it. Then I missed a test due to a cross country meet and had to make up the test. The instructor, a much-loved biology teacher who happened to be a birding buddy as well, placed me out in the hallway to take the makeup test. I’d thought that scene out ahead of time and had made a crib sheet to help me get the answers. But mid-way through the test, the teacher walked out in the hallway and caught me in the act of checking my crib sheet that was tucked so carefully under my thigh.

“Well,” he intoned. “If it isn’t the Furtive Nutscratcher.”

Busted.

The fact of the matter was simple. I was running full tilt in life just trying to keep up. The pressures of being the top runner combined with the incident of illness with my mother had me struggling to cope. I could have used some counseling. Someone to sit down with me and explain that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed.

Hopefully more kids these days are getting counseling when they need it. Yet mental health management still lags in America, where our culture seems to value whaling away at our competitive pursuits rather than figuring out what might be holding us back.

Later in life, I would be faced with the illness of my wife, who in her late forties was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. When my high school coach found out that she was ill, he called to offer support. “Your whole life has been a preparation for this,” he presciently stated. And he was right. Only the lessons in how to manage under pressure were learned without much support or understanding of the psychology behind the strife.

All through my 20s, I recognized there was some sort of deep-seated anxiety at work in my mind. There was anger too, stemming in part from childhood instances of near-abuse in disciplinary situations with my father. He’d lost his own mother to complications of cancer surgery when he was only seven years old. His own father then got placed in treatment for profound depression after losing his wife and his farm during the Depression.

Think about that sentence for a moment. There’s a link between the Depression and depression. It is possible for whole nations to go into a state of depression. It is both psychological and economic. In fact, one very much leads to another. When people went into anxiety over the markets, they entire economic system collapsed. It took years to heal the effects of that largely emotional crash. People suffered through the Depression in multiple ways.

And then came World War II, which demanded that Americans shed their fears in many respects, and express their rage at a world that is unjust and crazed.

Fearmongers like Franklin Graham try to depress people into compliance

The sad thing about life is that there are just and unjust fears that rule our collective psychology. Some people know how to manipulate those fears into power. They can create these fears out of real circumstances or from whole cloth. The goal is to scare the Dickens out of people, and get them to go along with whatever scheme, religion or political viewpoint is concocted to extort others for money, votes or power of populism.

Seeing clearly through the darkness

People who experience depression on a regular basis, or who know anxiety in person, are ironically less susceptible sometimes to popularly manufactured fears. Those of us that have faced depression and learn how to live life with purpose despite emotional pain are not easily fooled by those who seek to manipulate us. This is a difficult life to lead in many respects. Our own perceptions demand perpetual examination and honesty, the better to understand the real situation, and whether there are genuine reasons for fear, or simply those that are the ghosts of anxiety.

The insights wrought from deep and personal emotional discoveries can cause problems in the workplace, or in politics, where the demand to “go along to get along” is so strong, and so public. Who can forget the emotionally wrenching period when John Lennon emerged from the Beatles to record music that tore the world apart at the seams. Here are the lyrics from Working Class Hero:

As soon as you’re born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool,
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be.

When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you’re so clever and you’re classless and free,
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

There’s room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the fool on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero, well just follow me

Lennon struggled with depression and substance abuse. He immersed himself in a life of heroin use, then chronicled that manic period and withdrawal with his song Cold Turkey.

Oh I’ll be a good boy
Please make me well
I promise you anything
Get me out of this hell

There’s a lesson in these deep immersions and the doped up manner in which we’re all too often told to exist. Lennon was no perfect human being. But he was one to admit his flaws, and call others to do the same. Contrast this with political leaders who deny their flaws, and ask others to do the same. That is called dishonesty, which leads to hypocrisy, and so often leads too often to the fascist need to take over the political process in order to impose those wrongheaded worldviews on others.

And all Lennon ever pleaded was, Give Peace a Chance.

The destruction of addiction

The one thing psychologists look for in opening rounds of treatment with adults is whether they are somehow self-medicating. This is the tarsnake of addiction.

And if not that, what sorts of other behaviors are covering up the deeper problems? There can be addictions to food or sex, anger and rage and other self-indulgent distractions. All amount to self-destructive tendencies, and all are signs of deep emotional disturbance within an individual, “coping strategies” that are not helping people “cope” at all. They can be empowering in some sense of vengeance, revenge or sense of control. But just like our Concealed Carry gun laws, they habitually disguise fear and aggression as forms of self defense.

People are still animals. And like a bird on a limb frightened for its young in the nest when an intruder draws near, we engage in everyday activities such as bill-wiping to pretend that everything is okay and that we’ve only just had a really good meal. But it’s really just nervous habits showing the inner torment within. “Nothing happening here!” The bird wiping its bill wants us to think. “All is fine!”

Overcoming animal instincts

But people often sense the story is different. We see signs of trouble with our friends, and if we are true friends, we ask if there is any way that we can help.

Yet some people make a habit of turning the other way. It turns out the task and burden of accepting that there is trouble in life is simply too much trouble. One thinks of the tale of the Good Samaritan in the Bible. When the priests and other nobles walk past the wounded, dying man in the roadside, ditch the Samaritan stops and rescues the man, pays for his medical treatment and lodging. The Samaritan does not turn away like the other hypocritical religious types who claim to know the ways of God by heart, but take no action to fulfill them.

This is the “I’ve got mine” mentality that is so rampant these days in America. That selfishness has become a collective and social disease. To make matters worse, people go looking for affirmation of this brand of disengagement, and find it everywhere. They go looking for people that have chosen the same path, and there are plenty of them. So it appears “normal” when in fact selfishness, greed and anger are the hallmarks of a deeply neurotic present age. And people who wallow in this world become insular, and anyone that questions the privilege or ignorance is branded the enemy.

American anxiety and depression

America is in a state of anxiety and there is a massive shifting of blame from personal accountability to accusatory politics. Without recognizing the real source of their pain and even the actions that led to their own dissatisfaction, people find comfort and power in projecting their anger onto those they perceive or are told to perceive as the enemy. They’ve chained themselves to a source of negativity and shut out all sources of information that contradict their worldview.

The current brand of Depression that America is facing is wrought from denial. The economy is not the sole source of this pain, but is instead reflective of the denial people have chosen as their form of political self-medication. It is clear where the economic pain came to fruition. That was the years of 2007-2009 when the economy crashed. America was sunk in two wars and the mental malaise wrought by all these things was pervasive throughout society. The emotional effects of these events were the direct product of a political philosophy, not mere coincidence.

But rather than come to grips and accept the direct relationship between events and emotions, a huge chunk of America has depended instead on denial and blame as a form of self-medication in the face of addiction to a political philosophy that has repeatedly and resoundingly failed.

Denial is a reliable yet ultimately destructive tool of conscience for those addicted to a destructive worldview. It is highly common for people in positions of emotional exposure to deny, deny and deny the true source of their pain. One can turn to the lyrics of the Amy Winehouse song “Rehab” to illustrate this point:

They tried to make me go to rehab
I said, no, no, no
Yes, I been black
But when I come back, you’ll know, know, know
I ain’t got the time
And if my daddy thinks I’m fine
He’s tried to make me go to rehab
I won’t go, go, go

Amy Winehouse later died from the effects of her addiction to drugs. Her denial resulted in her demise.

America needs to go to rehab

And this illustration holds true on a broader level as well. America needs to go to rehab for its addiction to imperial notions of its self-worth. Our history as a nation rather sucks if you study it with any rational measure of conscience. As Michelle Obama aptly pointed out in her DNC speech, we built the “white house” as it were on the back of slaves. She was using a literal house to illustrate a broader context.

We also committed genocide against the people that had lived on the North American continent for 10,000 years before European settlers arrived. We call these people Native Americans now, rather than Indians, which was a misnomer accredited by the ignorance of the white settlers who figured they’d gotten much farther around the globe than they realy had. We both imprisoned and slaughtered these people in competition for resources.

America has in many ways made the very earth and water upon which we depend for life into prisoners of our consumptive habits.The Nestle Corporation executive who claimed in some sense that “water is not a right” and might do better as a privatized commodity communicates this brand of corporate ownership.

Those who question the sustainability of these mindsets and the pursuant psychology of “I’ve got mine” thinking, are ridiculed by the same selfish interests, both political and commercial, who profit from exploitation of natural resources. This is the exact same dynamic as a drug user defending a drug dealer.

Fatheads

It’s clear that America has gotten fat in the head from its consumptive habits. America therefore needs to get out and exercise, and breath the fresh air of open consideration.

Those of us who run, ride and swim may not be perfect in our approach to doing this, and we even may be a bit obsessive, narcissistic and selfish at times, but we do know the benefits of perpetually shaking off our denial to find out what lies beneath.

We try not to lie to ourselves as a matter of course. But there is still the problem of acting out or lives in a state of denial. We do this when we get injured or sick and keep training. We do this when relationships break up because we spend too much time training, or shift our attentions to others as a result of common interests.

Understand, some of this is inevitable. Many times our actions are the results of genuine dissatisfaction and a form of self-fulfilling prophecy takes place. People in bad marriages may find love somewhere else before making the request for a divorce. It’s known to happen in triathlon circles. But ultimately this is more an example of acceptance rather than denial. It can be hard to break off a relationship that does not work. This is true whether you are married or not. Some people find themselves in a repeating cycle of bad relationships. Only through fortune or acknowledgement (not denial) do people move into new emotional territory.

But the harm that can be caused by avoiding or denying broken relationships is real. That’s why it is important to move past the denial and acknowledge either the self-indulgence or the need to move away from it. Only then can we move into healthier circumstances.

Kings of Denial

The tendency to cling to bad relationships or choose someone of an even more powerful manifestation of our worst relationship tendencies is all to real. We see it in the children of alcholics. We see it in patterns of sexual or child abuse. We see it in serial marriages and we hear it expressed in the despotic denial of these personal tendencies in people who are in chronic denial of their own flaws. One thinks of Rush Limbaugh lecturing women about their morality when he has torn through four marriages. And one thinks of Rush who lectures people about personal responsibility while addicted to Oxycontin. Hypocrites and zealots make a grand practice of accusing others of the things they most hate in themselves.

And that brings us to the King of All Deniers, one Donald Trump. It’s a genuinely depressing prospect that he could be elected President. Here is a man who lives his life in a perpetual state of denial. He makes ugly statements and denies he ever said them. He expresses prejudice and denies he meant it. He invites Russia to hack America and calls it a joke. This is denial writ in grandiose terms. And yet some people think he can’t be denied.

Trump the Addict

Donald Trump is addicted to his sense of self. His worldview of “I’ve Got Mine” is appealing to all those who either already think that way or want the Gravy Train he keeps promising them. It’s a denial of the fact that it was the economic trade, military and domestic policies of the party he now represents that got us into trouble, and which Obama worked eight long years to correct. But the damage was so bad it could not be fixed overnight. And the GOP loves to blame him for that, and deny their Congressional obfuscation, racial prejudice and financial responsibility in the process. How convenient. Now they’re doing the same thing to Hillary Clinton, branding her a liar when the new chief of their own party has been proven to be lying 91% of the time in everything he says.

Even the National Review, one of the leading voices for conservatism in America, accuses Donald Trump of being a total liar.

And yet people buy his lies because they are in complete denial of what’s really happening in America. They can’t accept blame for their own bad habits in voting for Bush twice, and going along with the lies that led to the war in Iraq and the debt and death and torture those lies produced. That is the legacy people so want to deny in voting for Donald Trump, who has disavowed the Bush policies and the corrective measures taken by Obama to set the country back on track. To Trump’s supporters, denial is the closest thing they can find to liberation from responsiblity. They’re hoping like heck he can save them from the private hell of their own denial. Rather than go to rehab, Trump supporters are mainlining the political heroin of angry, racist, fascist politics.

So that’s where we stand. America is denying its own problems by support for that man and an authoritarian running mate who seems to ooze quiet hate. It’s a profile in sociopathic force.

And what about Hillary?

And for those who say they could never vote for Hillary, I have a few words for you too. At least she’s dealt with life, and learned to forgive. She held her marriage together in the face of things that would crush the best of rest. That’s true character. The accusations against her have been many and frequent over the last 30 years, but none of them has proven of any consequence or merit. In an attempt to equate the mistake of security in Benghazi, much has been made of the event, and millions have been spent investigating her actions. And no fault was found over multiple years of engagement. Meanwhile, the same party that investigages Hillary Clinton for the loss of four lives refuses to admit that the $3T war in Iraq cost the lives of 4,000 American soldiers and maimed tens of thousands more. This is denial of the highest (or lowest) order. And it deserves to be smacked down. Hard.

And by no coincidence, Donald Trump denies that he has ever been moved to apologize to anyone. All this in the fact of multiple lawsuits, refusal to pay vendors and a legacy built on the horrific brand of management he advocates in proudly proclaiming, “You’re fired!”

Don’t you get it yet? Trump symbolizes the people that fired American manufacturing employees and moved their operations overseas. All those jobs that used to depend on a sector of the economy that represented 49% of America’s GDP are now held in China and Korea and other Asian nations from which America now buys what it consumes. Trump promises to bring all that work back home. What a joke. And yet those same disenfranchised workers see him as their hero.

Donald Trump has no personal or professional loyalty at all. He has exchanged women in his life like they were pretty pieces of cattle, and talks about women as if they were hunks of meat. His business dealings are the stuff of bad fiction, burning one after another vendor and going bankrupt four times. And his dismissive brand of economic and racial prejudice shines like the dark heart of the devil himself. And the hateful segment of society that still believes slavery would be a virtue and that whites are superior loves him even though he’s orange. And a big, fucking phony at that.

It all comes home to roost

And you can deny all of that, but it will say more about you than you might ever care to admit. Some of us recognize that brand of thinking for what it truly is, weakness of soul and adoption of a brand of fear that you simply refuse to admit.

But you can change. It can start today when you got out for your run, ride or swim. Take time to consider what you’re doing. You’re taking responsibility for your own health and your own thoughts. By engaging in endurance sports, you’re not turning yourself over to the anxiety, fear or depression that society throws at you, or that you’re wired to endure. You’ve chosen a lifestyle that is affirmative, progressive and focused on liberating yourself from bad or lazy habits of mind. You’re looking to the future, not letting the past define or defend you.

So do yourself a favor right now: First read the italic statement below, and see if you agree with it in principle. Then, cut and paste the following definition into your browser and see what comes up. Because there has been a considerable and depressing amount of brainwashing that has gone about issues of mindset these last 20 years, and an accordant denial of the truth behind what really makes society great.

If you open your mind, that is progress. That’s what progressive believe in. And yes, there is some forms of intolerance and denial on that Left as well. But it’s not based on denying facts about our origins, or denying the science of evolution, or climate change, no the source of prosperity in our politics. Even Donald Trump says the economy does better under Democrats.

So cut and paste this into your browers, and start to make the connection between real freedom and liberality:

favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.

Surprising, isn’t it, that the very things we are often told are evil are the things that stand the most chance of liberating our souls and spirits?

Now go out and run, ride or swim and think about all that. Because your very life and happiness depend on not living a life in denial of the truth and in understanding the true source of fulfillment in the human spirit and its liberality. That’s true when it comes disguised as a woman, a black man, a Muslim or a gay person. Because the person shrouded next to in a wetsuit and a swimcap and goggles and about to embark in an open water swim somehow looks exactly the same as you .

We all have to swim together in the end.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, competition, Tarsnakes, triathlete, triathlon, triathlons, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Jeopardy of two-a-day workouts

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

jeopardy High school and college cross country seasons are coming up in mid-August. That’s when summer officially shuts down for the scholastic and collegiate set. It’s Back to School and for cross country kids, it’s back to serious training.

Some teams even conduct tw0-a-day practices. I recently heard that the Illinois High School Association (ISHA) has banned two-a-day practices for football. I don’t know if that same rule applies to sports like cross country.

The fitness one can build during tw0-a-day weeks is considerable. You’re basically running through a consistently tired state. Morning workouts typically consisted of 4-6 mile runs. Evening workouts might be longer, from 8-10 miles. And so it went for several weeks on end. By September, the first races were scheduled.

That’s why so many coaches do encourage summer running. It makes the early season intensity less of a shock.

Our high school cross country program at St. Charles served as something of a magnet for area runners. Our early season practices often saw competitors from Burlington or Batavia joining our team for runs. This dramatically altered the feel of some practices, which almost turned into early season races. But that was the psychology of the day. What doesn’t kill you will toughen you up. Make you faster. Help you race better.

Tough enough

It could be tough enough doing two-a-day workouts. But if one of those runners from other schools showed up for an afternoon workout without having already done the morning run, it simply wasn’t fair to expect to keep up. The difficult truth of endurance sports is that you will quite often get put in situations like that. Just last weekend while training with the Experience Triathlon group ride, I could feel the previous day’s bike ride in my legs as we went out. Coming back, it was tough to hang on. And ultimately, I could not keep up. The right thing to do in that circumstance is to draw what you can from the workout, and not beat yourself up for not being able to compete when your legs or body are tired from a workout others might not have done before the current one.

That takes confidence as an athlete. It also takes a touch of humility. Those are things you first learn in sports like high school cross country, when your body is still figuring out its limits and capacities. Yet any athlete that takes up an enduracne sport eventually faces the same type of tests.

During periods of multiple workouts per day, fatigue can be both immediate and chronic. There is the fatigue of that specific workout, and fatigue built up from multiple workouts. Every Ironman triathlete knows the drag of soreness and exhaustion that deep training creates in the leadup to the race. Multiple daily workouts involving swims, runs and bikes plus weight work can wear you down.

But as we all know, they also build you up. That’s why the frequency is so important. It trains your internal engine and your vital limbs to deal with the stress. That’s why disabled athletes can be so inspiring to us all. They accomplish the same levels of training without the same physical balance or capabilities as the rest of us. I regularly see the one-armed cyclist that won the Olympic Gold Medal for America in the 2012 Paralympic Games. He rides at the local crits on a regular basis and I have never come close to keeping up with him. He’s a CAT 3 rider even with one arm. He does all the miles the rest of us do, and even changes his tires with one hand. Try that sometime.

The answer to fatigue

Doing two-a-day workouts when you’ve never done them before can make you feel as if you are doing nothing else but training. You call on your body to answer, and all it says to you is, “I’m tired.” The same thing happens to your mind. So you stop asking questions altogether. You just go do the training. Perhaps that what Nike meant with its slogan, “Just Do It.” But you have to consider the Saucony campaign as well, which marketed its shoes with one word: “Whoa.”

In high school, that sensation of fatigue could literally be dizzying. Cross country season always starts in the heat of late summer. You sweat so much your salt intake can’t keep up.

And then there’s the Jeopardy of workout frequency. By the time you got home and did the chores your mother asked, such as mowing the lawn, it would often be time to head back for the afternoon workout.

I recall that on the very first day of cross country training as a callow freshman at little Kaneland High School in the cornfields, I was made to walk home from the first six-mile workout I’d ever done because my mother had just started teaching that same day at an elementary school 15 miles in the other direction from our high school. So I trudged home three miles on exhausted legs and collapsed into bed. Then a friend’s mother brought me back to school for another workout. But I made it. I didn’t die.

I’ll take Jock Itch for $50 please….

There were other lessons to learn from two-a-days as well. If you were unwise, your jock and shorts might still be wet with sweat from the morning workout when you put them on in the afternoon. This was disgusting of course, but if you forgot to take your gear home to wash it, that was the only alternative.

And yes, some people came down with a massive case of jock itch. Coaches would bark at us to stay clean and be disciplined but tired runners are often prone to forgetfulness. At least we didn’t smell as bad as the football players with their pads and helmets and pimpled skin from tw0-a-days in the heat of August.

Triathletes learn early to change equipment frequently and wash it regularly. That irritated pimple on your butt can turn into a saddle sore if you’re not careful. Even an ingrown pubic hair can turn into something that takes you out of action. All this on top of aching feet, compromised ligaments in your legs and hips, and shoulders sore from thousands of yards of swim training. They don’t call them brick runs for nothing.

Then we combine the three sports to boot. Brick runs test your fatigued legs after a hard bike ride. You start out wobbly and unsure. In essence, you’re doing three-a-days.

But even pure road cyclists will sometimes break up workouts into two sessions. More than once I’ve done a morning ride and joined a group ride that night.

Sometimes these risks have weird, transcendant payoffs. Your body is so warmed up from all the work it simply flows through time on its own. I recall an afternoon when a friend and I ran eight miles out in the country to his cousin’s house for a day at the pool. That eight miles felt long in the morning heat. But the relaxation of spending the day in the company of two young women our age, one that had just that summer sprouted a pair of breasts previously unknown in her chestal region, was more than enough compensation for our first workout of the day. We returned to cross country practice that afternoon inspired and relaxed. We both ran out of our minds. And laughed about it.

It’s a rite of passage, two-a-day workouts. No matter what stage in life you engage in them, fatigue is the answer to the question, “What if I do even more?” It’s the Jeopardy of endurance events, a category all its own.

Posted in triathlete, triathlon, triathlons, Uncategorized | Tagged doing brick runs, jeopardy, jeopardy show, two-a-day workouts, working out twice a day | 1 Comment

Birthday wishes and dreams

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

Today is my birthday. But I’ll admit: July is a wonderful time to get a year older. The garden is in full bloom. The sun is shining. The birds are coming south…

What, you might say? Birds don’t migrate in July, do they? And I am here to tell you, they most certainly do. Shorebirds specifically. Birds in this category typically finish their breeding business in June in the far north of the continent. Then they’re free to wander south at their leisure, feeding in fluddles and marshes along the way. Many of them change plumage as they go, shifting from speckled breeding plumage to plain patterns of gray-brown and white.

Yet they are still an interesting sight to see, and a marker of mid-summer. I’ll be out cycling in July and see a flooded field with a band of shorebirds in various sizes and remember that the seasons are indeed passing whether we like to admit it or not. July can seem like such a refuge from reality with its heat, thunderstorms and lazy birds largely finished with breeding. But the new year’s crop The set of three young Cooper’s hawks that fledged from the nest in the top of a tree next door are whistling and chasing their parents around the big trees begging for food. They’ll be left on their own soon to hunt. It’s nature’s way.

But the new year’s crop has to learn its way. The set of three young Cooper’s hawks that fledged from the nest in the top of a tree next door are whistling and chasing their parents around the big trees begging for food. They’ll be left on their own soon to hunt. It’s nature’s way.

Rhythms

All these days. All these rhythms. Yet an entire fridge full of beer sits waiting for someone to consume it. I was on the wagon for weeks. No drinking when taking antibiotics. That’s the rule. Finally, the medicine worked for the case of C-Diff that I developed from having taken antibiotics for cellulitis. I don’t know how I got that, but you typically don’t get to choose your afflictions in this world. So you either cure them or learn to live with them. I did not want to have to learn to live with an afflication like C-Diff.

Despite those obstacles, it’s been a good summer so far for racing. I’ve got a few successful triathlons under my belt this summer and a planned Sprint Triathlon coming up in April in Naperville. If the spirit moves me there may be an Olympic to do in August, but I’m also using a weekend to get my Road Runners Club of America Coaching Certificate. That might mean a September Olympic. But we’ll see.

In August, there is also the Madison Open Water Swim to do. Sue signed me up and that means there’s a mile to cover in the water! Whether it is wetsuit legal or not should be interesting.

Birthday dreams

All these challenges and some nasty little afflictions can make you a philosophical about life. Compound that with a birthday and a few changes possible on the home front with my pending marriage to Sue and July is a month for contemplation indeed.

We all know that life doesn’t always go exactly as we plan it. But that can mean good as well as bad things happening. And yesterday while doing yardwork, I was shocked to discover that the hanging plant I’d given up for lost…was now sporting bright new red blooms. It was such a joy it took my breath away. That basket plant hangs above a blizzard of phlox and the last blooming lilies, which are so rich and unreal they defy all convention. And right now conventions are a good thing to defy.

The color of those plants is so rich one can stand there and almost feel unable to take it in. And don’t we wish that every moment in life was like that? Present. Mindful. Enriched by what we see. And full of good surprises.

Yet nature transforms our daily dreams into days, and days into months, and months into years. Suddenly we’re standing in the garden another year older. Wishing and wondering over what it all means.

Buying time

To me that is the reason why I run, ride and swim. To awaken the mind to moments and to make the most of them. The purity of the moment is made from the absence of time…that’s the verse I’ve often quoted from the book Ambiguous Adventure. It means that when we’re doing things we enjoy, time expands in our consciousness.

So I’m taking my scope, binoculars and digiscoping setup with me this afternoon on my way to some writing business. On the way out and back, I’ll drop by a few fluddles to take some photographs of shorebirds if I indeed happen to find some.

There are some reports of black-necked stilts south of Sugar Grove, which is right where I’m headed. They are a species of bird that has the longest legs in proportion to their body of any shorebird in North America. For that reason, they seem a fitting bird for a runner to appreciate. Or just a man who likes a fine pair of legs. And that’s me.

Posted in triathlete, triathlon, triathlons, Uncategorized | Tagged birthday wishes and dreams | 3 Comments

Testing your limits

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

Triathletes Endurance sports place a particular demand on the bodies and minds of participants. In fact, there’s a specific phrase that describes the process. “Testing the limits of endurance.”

What are limits? The answer is simple. Limits are the point at which our bodies cannot perform at the high rate we are asking. There are also mental limits, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Energy

Our bodies depend on all sorts of contributing factors during a performance in endurance events. Every single step, pedal stroke or swimming motion requires energy. Our energy supplies are dependent on storage and fuel that our bodies burn as we engage in distance training and races.

Remarkably, this is not a static process. We can train our bodies to burn fuel more efficiently. We can also encourage our bodies to process fuel even in the heat of competition. That’s why we eat, drink and chow down during longer events that burn off the fuel we store in our bodies.

Brainpower

All this requires a lot of thought. So the brain is involved in all this sustained performance. We daily test the limits of our endurance and our minds recognize these supposed limits. The trick in all endurance sports is thus to train the mind not to accept limits, but to push beyond discomfort caused by symptoms of burnt-off fuel. That would be fatigue, pain or exhaustion.

This is the difficult part. Even the most talented athletes must learn to embrace and work through the pain. In a strange little twist of fate, our goals are often set just beyond the threshold of pain we train out bodies and minds to sustain.

Fuel

At some point, there is a limit. We can will ourselves to remarkable things, but there are still chemical processes deep within our bodies that slow the train or bring it to a stop. Those old coal-burning train engines are an apt symbol for how the body works. Workers shoveled coal into the furnace of the engine and the train puffed smoke as it churned down the train. That’s a direct “cause and effect” method of propelling an engine.

But if the body runs out of coal at some point, or the engine runs too hot to be sustained, everything slows or grinds to a halt.

Algorithms

That’s where the brain also comes into play. When we test our limits, there is a negotiation that goes on within the mind. Calculations occur. The rehearsals we do in training teach us how the edge of our limits must feel. Then we do a sort of algorithm that gets us to the finish line.

On Saturday, I rode 48 miles in gathering heat with a pair of friends. We didn’t hammer the whole way, but the ride averaged 18.1 mph and I was tired at the end.

Weekend test

On Sunday, I joined the Experience Triathlon group ride my fiance Sue was leading. Only she did not get to lead. A fast pair of cyclists took off from the start and the early pace was quick, climbing the mile-long rise onto Campton Hills at a fast tempo. And then the next climb was quick as well, over one of the tallest points in Kane County.

Then we fell onto the artery of a road that leads out to Maple Park. The lead group tore off at 25 mph. There was a second group at 23 mph, all crouched down on their aero bars and hammering away. Finally a group of us club for a while and then fell off to 20-22 mph.

My legs were tired from the previous day’s ride. I’d reached my limits in some respects. So I pedaled in alone to the Casey’s station 13 miles to the west of St. Charles.

Return trip

The group waited but was basically ready to leave by the time I took a few bites of my Mixed Berry Blaster PowerBar and sipped my NUUN. So we jumped back on our bikes and headed east again.

The wind was from the south mainly, with just enough touch of easterly direction to press the need for an angled draft. So using my road-riding skills, I tucked to the side of the group determined to stick for the ten mile launch on Beith Road back toward town. And we zipped along. All the triathletes were down in aero. I alternated between my hoods and the drops, and found a rhythm. And I stuck.

But when we got back onto the hills going east, the effects of that hammer snuck up on me. So I dropped off again and let them roll. Probably without the 48-miler the day before I’d have stuck. And as it was, I averaged 18.4 for the day, much of it on my own on the way out, while my fiance’s group did 19.2.

I’d tested the limits of my endurance. It’s what we do. And it’s important to do it consistently. In cycling, running and swimming, workouts must be designed both qualitatively and quantitatively to test the limits of our endurance. And stretch them.

Yet there are effective limits to this training too. Injury is typically the direct product of too much stress on a specific part of the body. So is illness such as colds brought on by chronic fatigue. The overtrained, overtested athlete will reach a point of collapse. Then rest is required, and the rebuilding process must occur from scratch.

Because the goals are simple. On race day, you want to be able to call on the body and have it respond. To competition. To conditions. To motivation. To success.

That’s why we test the limits of our endurance. So that some days, we can exceed them. And that’s pure joy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cycling, running, swimming, testing the limits of endurance, testing your limits | Leave a comment

Neither sweat or forget the small stuff

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

Run Cheerios Getting your training in during a tight schedule can be difficult. Feelings of guilt can build up if you miss a workout, or cut one short because you are pressed for time.

Some athletes work out unique solutions for time challenges relative to training. An avid cycling friend of mine took to bike commuting 60 miles round trip to his office and back. That foundation of nearly daily riding prepared him well for a planned trip to France, where along with a group of other talented riders, they tackled famous Tour climbs such as Alpe du Huez and Mont Vontoux.

You may not be able to commute by bike to work, but you should not neglect the value of a one hour ride when you can squeeze it in. That’s about the divide for endurance training on the bike. Lance Armstrong once stated that he did not go out on the bike for less than one hour. For all his negative press about doping, the man did know how to train.

There is also a strategy that suggests intensity is a great substitute for time. In other words, if you don’t have time for an hour ride, throw on your gear and ride hard for half an hour. I use the oversized block around a park to do mini-criteriums. With four turns and four long straightaways, the block crit is critical practice for actual bike racing. Riding half an hour at 20+ miles an hour is an excellent workout.

The same goes for running. So many runners pile up mileage that does not do them real good. On many occasions, it is far better to run four miles within a minute of race pace than it is to slog along for six or eight miles at whatever pace your body allows. When pinched for time, there’s really no gain in those three or four extra slow miles. They cost you time, and the returns are minimal.

The mental aspect of short training is critical as well. Getting some sort of workout in can still be a stress relieving bit of exercise. And while setting PRs come race day may be your goal, there is also the short-term benefit of mental health to consider. That’s why it pays not to sweat or forget the small stuff. It’s okay if you don’t hammer a big workout every day. Take what you can if life hands you time lemons.

There may even be times when it is best to punt. Yesterday with temperatures in the 90s and humidity over 90% as well, I just wasn’t feeling the urge to run once I stepped on the street and started jogging. The previous days had included three straight days of riding, a couple strong swims and a run to boot. My legs and body were tired, and my health is finally stabilizing after this anti-biotic-driven bout with C-Diff. So I turned around and got in the car, drove the mile to the health club and did some excellent lifting, which is much needed as well.

Now I grant you, Ironman training is a different animal indeed. That would be a different conversation entirely. Yet even Ironman athletes have to be sensitive to their limits, and sometimes take their luck as it’s handed to them.

Neither sweat or forget the small stuff. It pays to be flexible sometimes.

(OUCH) I JUST WATCHED PIERRE ROULLAND IN THE TOUR DE FRANCE SLIP ON THE ROAD AND CRASH INTO TEH DIRT AND GRAVEL OFF ROAD. THAT SUCKS.

Posted in cycling, Uncategorized | Tagged cycling, don't sweat the small stuff, Tour de France, training when pressed for time | 1 Comment

Lap swimming at the public pool

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

Cleveland.Wetsuit There were many summers in recent years that for me did not involve much swimming at the public pool. And having grown up living at the pool during my youth, it felt bittersweet one mid-August day to show up at a pool that was almost deserted. All but the last guards had departed for college. The tanned moms and their rugrats were even thin in ranks. I paddled around for an hour or so wondering where the summer went.

But this year is different. Our local swimming pool is just a mile from my house and even closer to my art studio. It’s still hard to find time to swim, but my membership paid in full is enough incentive to get over there and do it. I’m training to swim a few events in open water, and need time in the pool to get ready.

Foundations

Our local watering hole is known as Quarry Pool because that’s what the foundation is built upon, an old limestone quarry. The pool was built with government money back in the 30s when infrastructure investments put people to work. As a result, our nation got wonderful park facilities and roads through the mountains though public works projects. Those benefits remain to this day.

At the entrance to the pool, there’s even a long history of how and why the limestone quarried there was formed. The sign talks about the geological history of Illinois and how the limestone that built all kinds of structures in town was originally formed. Thus the history of our community in Batavia, Illinois, is inextricably tied to the land upon which it sits. The buildings that once housed windmill factories now still stand with proud faces made from the tint of the earth and rock below. That history keeps us grounded in many respects.

One could call the Quarry Pool quaint, for it is a throwback to times when public pools were not so sophisticated, or safe. Yet there are still zero depth sections of the pool where younger children can wander in. And there are very few public pools where large quantities of sand form the perimeter. It’s a rather honest place. Not too fancy. Just right.

Murky waters

The sand that forms the botrom of the pool does mean the water gets a bit murky by end of day. I you go swimming then, the water will not look crystal clear the way it does upstream at the Geneva or St. Charles public pools. But that makes it perfect to practice open water swimming for the lakes where I do triathlons.

Truth be told, the gritty side of the water is a reflection of the fact that Batavia’s always had a bit of working man’s flair to it. The pool is a reflection of that humble side. Significantly, it still has a very high diving platform. Generations of kids have faced the fear of jumping twenty feet down into the deep waters below. That rite of passage is not to be found any longer at public pools across the country. Too much risk and downside. That’s why diving boards and platforms across the land have been removed.

The high dive of youth

But in Batavia, you can still see an eight-year-old kid that has just passed the Swimming Test stand on top of that platform with trepidation and joy. From up there, the world looks small. The collection of moms across the pool lolling on beach chairs may not notice you, but with luck your own mother or father might be watching that first jump off the platform.

As the kids age, they form into bands of boys and girls reveling in their summer skin. The girls wear increasingly small swimsuits and the boys admire them. Yet among all that there are also likely boys that secretly admire the bodies of other boys, and girls who feel the same way about girls. Those summers in the middle school years can be confusing times for youth whose orientation is not heterosexual. Just imagine those who live with a transgender reality in their genes, and their jeans. The swimming pool is no easy place.

Baptisms

Yet at its most basic level, the public pool accepts them all. The water knows and demands no difference in who dives in. Yet society too often demands a baptism of choice against nature. You’re not normal if you take a dip in your own urgings.

The same goes for race, and Batavia’s public pool is at least an integrated place. We’re largely free from bans on skin color these days, and the population in the Fox Valley has diversified over the years. That means the shining brown bodies of black children and Latinos are an avid part of the population at Batavia’s pool. Yet there are noticeable absences. Where are the black girls and Latino girls? There are some young kids from that background but by the time middle school comes around, that segment of the population seems to disappear at the public pool.

Stay in your lanes

Into these waters one dives. The nation is wrestling with its own version of the public pool. Entire populations seeking justice are clamoring toward the deep ends of the Republican and Democratic conventions. Too often they are denied access by the lane ropes or even at the admission gate.

Indeed, all of us are swimming in rough waters, these days. But that’s exactly why I go to the public pool to swim laps. The waves created by dozens of kids jumping in and out of the lap lanes closely resemble the chaos at the start of a triathlon. In order to practice for those circumstances, you need a bit of disturbance in the water. It helps me practice sighting as I go, the better to avoid collisions and keep on course.

Lifeguards

Baywatch guards

As the laps go by, a lifeguard stands watch over the pool. Like so many other lifeguards in so many other summers, she is lovely beyond description. Through my swim goggles she appears above the water like a summer statue, lithe and tan. Her legs look extra long from pool level. Her face is cast straight ahead.

To her I am invisible, an old guy swimmer who seems to know what he’s doing. Her job is to keep watch for those who don’t.

At a certain age, men should become invisible to girls her age. We are fathers, not people of their age to whom they should be attracted. It is, therefore, the job for Men of a Certain Age to essentially ignore the bodies of the young women at the beach or pool.

Yet we all know that’s impossible. Call it the Baywatch Syndrome. The red suits worn by female lifeguards are clarion calls for attention. The girls must know this is true. And as the guard walked away to the next post while I bobbed in the water between swim laps, I could not help noticing that her form was so classic one ait almost made me laugh.

And let’s be honest: it’s the same gig among mother’s admiring the strong young shoulders of the male lifeguards at the pool. The glances may be more discreet, but they are still real imaginings. And largely harmless. We’re human. Get over it.

Warnings

A few years back, perhaps 25 or so, a friend called to warn me that the guards at our public pool that summer were particularly lovely. “Don’t do it,” he warned. “Don’t go there. You won’t survive.” We both laughed.

And he was absolutely right. The guards were stunning, all tanned and shaking blonde and brunette and red hair in the sun.

It’s an amusing fact that the public pool has its own perpetual brand of pornography on display. It doesn’t matter what the guards wear or do not wear. Human imagination is far more powerful than that. Lust ruled the beach and pool long before swimsuits shrank to nothing and buttocks were given the right to full public display. The sight of an ankle, then a calf, then a thigh was enough in the “old days” to send eyes reeling. What we see now is the progression of honesty, over time.

Self-expression

We have arrived at the point in social progress where it should not really matter what anyone wears to the beach or the pool. The rational thinkers among us have learned to acknowledge that the human body is what it is. Certainly, triathletes know this better than most. The act of swimming is a piece of in-your-face self-expression. Men swim with women and everyone is an equal in the water. The water cares not what type of body parts you have. The water swarms around you no matter what shape or size your body may be.

At an event called Madison Open Water Swim that equality is put on display like no other. There are extremely heavy swimmers whose bodies roll with fat. And guess what? That can actually be somewhat of an advantage in the water! buoyancy helps! It makes you realize Whale hips why some creatures in evolutionary history waded back into the water, and stayed. Indeed, dolphins and whales have traces of vestigial walking limbs and hips buried in their flesh. This is testimony to the fact that ancestral mammals living semi-aquatic lives found advantage spending more time in the water.

Perhaps there’s a lesson in that for all of us. When it comes to sink or swim in this world, we’re all the same. The water accepts us all. In that regard, the public pool seems a poignant reminder that for all the disturbance created by our seeming differences, at night the pool rests calm and reflects the night sky. It forgets the wrongs we place upon it. Forgives the thrashing breadth of our existence. Discerns there is no difference, in substance, between work and play. And accepts the human condition for what it is: so brief and temporary it is insane to think it otherwise.

Posted in swimming, Uncategorized | Tagged lap swimming, lap swimming at the public pool, public pool | 2 Comments

You can’t compete with that

Posted on July 20, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

We live in a competitive world. Nowhere is that competition more evident than on the Internet. That’s where people compete for attention in all kinds of ways. We compete for Followers. For Likes. For Views.

There are some people who possess natural advantages when it comes to competing on the Internet. They are beautiful by nature, blessed with high cheek bones and a reasonably shaped ass. They have nice boobs or a set of magical eyes that they show off in daily images. And people follow them like goslings follow a mother goose. It’s a preternatural tendency, you see. We’re natively attracted to good biology. And you can’t compete with that.

Then there are photos of people who sculpt their biology. We follow them to admire their achievements in personal appearance. Their bodies are quite often strong or shiny. They wear little outfits, both men and women, to better display their prized appearance. And when we regard these people in all their glory, a little voice in the head says, “You can’t compete with that.”

Then along come the performers as well. Their Instagram or Twitter profiles document their amazing physical capacities. They do fast times and win races. They have sponsors and share products on their feed that they want you to buy. Because the more you buy, the more stuff they get to Share. It’s a rolling snowball of commercialism mixed with personal aggrandizement. And you know you can’t compete with that.

Nature’s way

It seems like we all aspire to some kind of adoration. It’s wired into our genetics. Even hummingbirds in the tropics know that looking awesome and showing off pays dividends. The more glimmery and flashy you can look, the more potential mates you might attract.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this really. It’s what we do with it that brings us harm, for it can lead to the risk of perpetual narcissism, which can lead to petty judgement and shallow assessment of self- worth. Each of these risks is genuine. Because the more you compare yourself to others, the more likely it is that you will be lumped in with all the other people competing for that kind of attention. And that’s where problems start.

Nice asses

So for example, if you want to be known for having a nice ass, and show it off to gain attention, you’re going to have to compete with all the others showing off their nice asses. Suddenly you wind up in a meme with dozens of other nice, nameless and faceless asses. Then the rhetorical assplay begins. Because you wind up compromising when confronted by another kind of ass, and wind up saying: “Well, he (or she) is kind of an ass. But they’re a nice kind of ass.”

Little schemes and big deceptions

The world falls for little schemes like this all the time. And big ones, too. What else explains the Eternal Ass of one Kim Kardashian? And when even her ass was not big enough for the world to admire, she had it photoshopped even bigger. And she “broke the Internet,” as it were, just by showing her big, naked ass. And tits. Those work too.

And so the tendencies we flaunt in ourselves with selfies and other imagined bits of beauty can be manifested on grand scales if we let them. It can be all too easy to admire those who behave like the biggest asses of all. After all, they excel at being asses. How could they not be better somehow than the rest of us? The media makes a ton of money holding up these people as examples of the paramount idea in society. And it is a mass deception.

It holds true that entire nations can be victimized by those willing to be the biggest asses of all. These are the people who turn primping and priming into a trade, and then into positions of power. Hitler comes to mind. Or Stalin. Napolean. King Herod. The list is long. In each case, the scenario wrought by their egos becomes so twisted it is hard to recognize, appreciate or enjoy real values because we don’t know what they look like anymore.

Success is not fleeting

And don’t be fooled: that brand of success in this world is not so fleeting. People who gain power do not give it up easily. And those who lust for attention for power do not always have our best interests in mind. Studies have shown that many CEOs show psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies. This is a problem, but society is not really equipped to address it. Our competitive system of commerce rewards those who generate profits. We admire the rich even when the Bible tells us that “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

And yet we find so-called Christian leaders lining up to advocate wealth and power-hungry politicians. It is proof that our so-called moral leaders are often the most frail and depraved creatures of all. Too often we find they are guarding vain secrets of a sexual nature. Their shame drives them to public zealousness, and society pays the price for their fears. It can be hard to compete with that when the wealthy make themselves out to be the guardians of God. Jesus warned us wisely that would always be the case. But the meek find it hard to find the strength to speak truth to power.

So we have to be careful to whom we ascribe our admiration. Consider this quote from the Forbes article link above, about one Al Dunlap, the business mogul whom America came to admire for his ability to turn a profit no matter what.

“There was his reputation that he was a man who seemed to enjoy firing people, not to mention the stories from his first marriage — telling his first wife he wanted to know what human flesh tastes like, not going to his parents’ funerals. Then you realize that because of this dysfunctional capitalistic society we live in those things were positives. He was hailed and given high-powered jobs, and the more ruthlessly his administration behaved, the more his share price shot up.”

Lance Armstrong

Our admiration for these types of personalities might start with curiosity, but it quickly evolves into something else. We’re drawn like moths to light by their raw and obsessive behavior. This can be as true with pro athletes as with anyone else. The sordid tale of Lance Armstrong is one such example. While gifted with enormous physical talent and a work ethic to match, even these gifts were not enough to compete with the drug culture that had emerged in professional cycling. So Armstrong doubled down and became the best doper cycling had ever seen. He won the Tour de France seven times and leveraged these amazing feats into great wealth and power. But he had to lie and cheat to do it. He hurt people badly even as he made others filthy rich. It was his way or the highway. Cross Lance and you had to pay. And for a very long time, people in professional cycling could not compete with that.

Checking out

At times it seems the best thing you can do is check out from society and refuse to compete with the psychopaths. But even if you’re completely off the grid, disconnected from the painful world and all it throws at you, you’re still here. Just ask John the Baptist, who separated himself from the world by retreating to the wilderness. But upon re-entry his brand of wisdom was deemed a threat. His head wound up on a platter, lopped from his shoulder by demand of a pretty girl named Salome, who reputedly had a very nice ass and knew how to dance. And that, my friends, can turn out to be real power in this world.

So you can try to escape, but the competitive nature of the world always tracks you down.

Jackson Browne said it best in his song Boulevard:

Down on the boulevard they take it hard
They look at life with such disregard
They say it can’t be won
The way the game is run
But if you choose to stay
You end up playing anyway

So beware. Society shoves the power of self-image at you at every turn. At some point, you will be forced to choose the lesser of two evils. Then it’s time to look at the options and decide who is behaving like the bigger ass. Because those are the people who literally don’t care about you, or anyone else in the world. They are in it for themselves and the power it confers upon them. It is the tarsnake of existence that we sometimes grow to admire those least deserving of our admiration.

So here’s a warning worth minding. History has shown those are the most dangerous people of all. You can’t compete with them because they will die before they give in or accept the fact that their version of reality needs to change. It’s true in religion and it’s true in politics. What out for the vain and selfish among us. They are the real killers. And you can’t compete with that.

But you can stop it. Stop giving them the attention and power they crave. Stop turning your will over to the shallow promises and hard words of those who refuse to compromise or respect the rights of other human beings. In other words, stop being so vain and complicit yourself. It does not become you, nor does it make you smarter, more honest or a better citizen in this world. In fact, quite the opposite.

Posted in competition, Uncategorized | Tagged cycling, religion and politics, running, self-image, triathlon, vanity, you can't compete with that | 1 Comment

Understanding 1 Corinthians 9:24 and what it means to “run the race and win the prize”

Posted on July 19, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

RECE11797-X2

There have been many blessings in my life. Yet I’ve also had a share of being down on my knees praying to God for answers. And I can tell you in earnest: all those prayers have been answered in one way or another. Sometimes, they have been the exact result of what I (or more often we) were praying for. At other times, those prayers have been answered in ways that instruct, inspire, challenge, or serve as a catharsis of spirit. All those are rewards of some kind.

It’s the simple truth that not all prayers get answered in the manner we might like. Often there is hard news that comes along with answered prayers. And let us be clear: I do not believe God is the author of all fate. For I cannot believe that our lives are the product of predestination. God is clearly not a control freak, as the group Modest Mouse once sang.

Evolution

That’s also why I admire and accept the theory of evolution. There is great beauty in the fact that life has diversified and thrived on this planet, and that human beings of all creatures have the capacity to study and appreciate it. That is our dominion and perhaps even leads to a role of stewardship over all the earth. That bit of biblical prophecy has certainly come true.

Yet it does not mean we control every aspect of life on this earth. Every once in a while, nature comes along to kick our ass. Hurricanes. Volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes. Drought. Floods. Lightning. Fire. Snow and ice. Some religious folks attach spiritual meaning to these natural disasters, calling them signs that God is displeased with the human race in some way. These are desperate attempts at playing God in hopes of winning converts. That is not a race well run.

There are always big wheels turning. It was only 10-14,000 years ago that mile high glaciers spread across the Midwest flattening the landscape here in Illinois. Now, thanks to anthropocentric climate change, the heating of the climate is headed in a dangerous direction. I don’t know why so many religious believers don’t get the fact that human arrogance is so capable of massive flaws like that. Did everyone suddenly forget the tale of the Tower of Babel and a hundred other bible tales when God became angry at humans trying to act like gods? But when you deny science on basis of your anachronistic faith ideals, it appears even the lessons one should learn about human nature from the bible are easily forgotten.

Deep evidence and a chorus of crickets

Personally, I revel in the age of the earth and its workings. Consider that 100 miles to the northwest of where I live, there are rich valleys formed of limestone and sandstone. These were laid down millions and millions of years ago when massive oceans covered the central plateau of the American continent. There are deep beds of shelly limestone and fossils right beneath our feet. We know the processes that led to this geological phenomenon and can trace the very roots of evolution in the fossilized creatures we find as we go deeper and back in time. One could call all this the Fingerprint of God. Who is not a control freak.

I now ride bikes and run on these hills and its a treat. I’ve stood still in the woods of Governor Dodge State Park in Dodgeville listening to the crickets in August. As I stand there issuing salty sweat and pumping blood through my veins that is nearly the same consistency as ocean saltwater, the sense of time changes. I realize those crickets will be singing the same songs long after I’m gone from this earth. Forty years ago I heard crickets singing in that same place. They are not the same crickets, but their genes have been passed down through generations just as it happens with human beings. It is this temporal quality that makes life so precious.

That same ephemeral quality makes running and riding through those hills all the more precious. I’ve been doing that for more than 40 years now. It makes me appreciate being alive.

Grace appreciated

What I know of the grace of God comes through these experiences. In my book The Genesis Fix: A Repair Manual for Faith in the Modern Age, I wrote that the principle relationship we should aspire to with God is that of grace appreciated. That is, contemplate and be grateful for the blessings and challenges of life, for these are the tests of our character. It is also ours to share what we can of this grace by being a blessing to others when possible, and to help them through challenges as they face them. That is grace appreciated in the sense of growth.

Which is how this thing we call the Kingdom of God is supposed to work. In Genesis, we read the words “be fruitful, and multiply.” And some people have interpreted that to mean that we should breed our way to dominance over the earth. But we can read it in the sense that multiplying grace is a question of extending the gift we’ve been given in character and grace to others. That is grace appreciated as well.

Encouragement

And when we stand on the sidelines to cheer on our fellow athletes, however talented or not they may be, we are giving a dose of our grace to them. We are wishing them well. Offering them encouragement.

It also goes the same for us when we train and compete. An encouraging word is not the reason we are able to do what we do. But it can inspire. Knowing that we are loved in some way is the greatest source of affirmation in this world. We strive to find that love with each other. Yet some people view love as a much greater force in the universe than simple human relationships. Love is real, we say, for it bonds families and brings people of all types together. We also see manifestations of this force in loving what we do for work and play as well. All you need is love, John Lennon once sang.

God playing favorites

Yet it’s hard to imagine that a loving God would play favorites in any of these endeavors. Hard to imagine that God would even assist an athlete to win over another person in competition. It doesn’t make any sense. It certainly isn’t manifested in any other respects in this world. The very real phenomenon of evolution plays no favorites. There is random violence and chance survival at every turn. And whether we like to admit this or not, that is the factual foundation for free will. We are free to make choices in this world. Free to choose to believe in a God or not. Free to follow the provisions and guidance of faith if we so choose. Free to exercise our will upon others for good or evil. Free to accept the gift of grace and love that can fill our souls and abide with us through times difficult or joyous.

All these options, and all of them tracing back to love.

Violent inventions

But there is hate in the world as well. And we see that circling back upon itself in a thousand ways, these days. Our violent inventions can be used for sport and for terror. They can uphold the law, but they can also trash it. They can help people imagine they are far more powerful than they really are, and let them act on those notions.

There are violent inventions of spirit as well. These are people to want to dominate the world. This is a very different notion from accepting the role of dominion over the earth, which is a loving relationship that gives back rather than takes. Yet people mistake domination for dominion all the time. American politics is now a textbook case of this struggle to understand our roles in that classic play. And yet people are drawn to violent leaders because their promises sound like dominion. Yet they deliver on something very different. It is a Faustian bargain.

The Olympics and God’s Chosen People

Soon we’ll be watching the Olympic Games. These were designed to celebrate the human spirit through physical and emotional achievement. We’ll see flags proudly raised and national anthems sung, for our tribal instincts have not changed in the 2000 years since God supposedly singled out his Chosen People. It seems as if we’re still selfishly fighting to determine that status for ourselves.

But what if the entire manner in which “God’s Chosen People” has been interpreted is wrong? Is it not true that the people God had chosen once demanded that he deliver them a king? God answered: “If you follow my rules, you will live peacefully and prosperously, and have no need of a king.” But the people insisted because people always do. And God gave them kings, the bible says. And all of them proved to be highly flawed and prone to all the things God warns us against, like pride, vanity, acquisitiveness, lust and more. God eventually even denied one of his eager servants, King David, the opportunity to build a temple in His honor. “You have too much blood on your hands,” he chastised the faulty fellow.

So it is not likely that God wants you to win the next race or to win your age group. And praying about such things is an exercise in vanity. Instead, your prayers should focus on gratitude for your health and ability, and be thankful you can compete, and do your best with a full heart knowing that you are loved either way.

And when you do that, it is likely you will find true gratitude for both your success and your failure rather than feeling bitter over small failings that in the spectrum of this world mean nothing.

1 Corinthians 9:24 says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

Notice that it does not say, “Run in that way and you will get the prize.” It implies instead that your striving is the reward along the way. But if you neglect that reward, life will not be so fulfilling. You will not have enjoyed the process. Nor will you have achieved your goal.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, cycling, running, Uncategorized | Tagged big wheels turning, earthquakes, evolution, floods, geology, giving thanks to god, god is not a control freak, grace appreciated, natural disasters, plate tectonics, praying before races, praying to God | Leave a comment

	Sunnier times and ra… on Tarsnakes
	Brett on Singing praises for Coach…
	Jim Nielsen on Singing praises for Coach…
	Jim Nielsen on Marty Supreme and Me
	Warren on Marty Supreme and Me

We Run and Ride

Forrest Gump lives

The enduring values of women and the sickness in some men

We all need support and not denial

The Jeopardy of two-a-day workouts

Birthday wishes and dreams

Testing your limits

Neither sweat or forget the small stuff

Lap swimming at the public pool

You can’t compete with that

Understanding 1 Corinthians 9:24 and what it means to “run the race and win the prize”

Follow Blog via Email

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Follow me on Twitter

Leave a comment!

Christopher Cudworth Fan Page

Follow Blog via Email

Blogs I Follow