I'm A Sinner

“You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”

                                              - Eat Pray Love

Endurance sports are increasingly intriguing to me. I don’t have a resume like most athletes that stretches back to sprinting 100s in the pool using a diaper as a pull bouy. Never sitting still, I spent the days skating around the neighborhood playing hockey – just a pickup game here and there. King of the mountain was the favorite game during the winter (visit Buffalo in January and you’ll surely find this game going on. Find at least three kids hurling each other off a snow pile and into the street and you found it!) After living in Hawaii and meeting a runner, then working with a triathlete, and learning I loved following a strict schedule every day (check out Ben Franklin’s diary if you really want to follow a strict schedule to become successful). The dominoes eventually fell into place and triathlon became my thing (this whole story will be another post, yet, in short, it followed this path: meditation -> running -> almost drowning -> triathlon -> 15-20hrs avg/week of training ->health nut ->fiancé questioning my allegiance to her or the bike -> injury -> happy fiancé, sad triathlete -> lessened training hours -> happy triathlete, happy fiancé.)

Like meditation, endurance sports require hours of training one’s body and mind. What most people consider being ridiculous repetition, endurance athletes silently press onward to a finish line at the "thud! thud! thud!" of their feet (by the way, take out the Ipod and listen to your body! This walkman fad needs to go away. Carry a boombox and listen to Run DMC and I might be impressed). By mile 26, the gut and muscles scream in pain, but we push through, knowing that at the end of the finish line it will have all been worth it. Like Lance Armstrong often alludes to explain his motivation to dredge through weeks of intense torment, pain is only temporary while the memory of giving up can last a lifetime. Perhaps, this is the eighth deadly sin – a gluttonous form of behavior. The overindulgence in pain for pleasure. Masochistic even? If so, then I am a sinner.

By the way, below is Ben Franklin's daily schedule when he was a kid. He would have made a great triathlete.
 
 

http://jslr.tumblr.com/post/161907561/buzzandersen-benjamin-franklins-daily