A Season for All Things?

Until I change my mind, this may be my last blog posting for now.

When I started blogging on July 12, 2011, I had an idea in mind of what would happen.  I was hoping some of the entries would start a conversation.  I was hoping for a large base of readers.  Instead, it became, in essence, an on-line diary of sorts, read by very few.  That was not what I had in mind.

It takes time to blog.  The question becomes "Is it worth the investment?"  I have taken the position in the past that I write because it is fulfilling in its own right, regardless of whether anyone else gets anything out of it.  But when you labor over a work,  you enjoy knowing that someone is receiving benefit from that effort.  That is one of the things that hasn't happened in my experience in blogging, with the exception of comments from a few family members and friends which have kept me going for this long.  And if there is no benefit to the reader, then it is simply a selfish endeavor that takes time away from something of real value.

I don't fault anyone for this.  One's own importance is always exaggerated in one's own mind I think.  People don't live waiting for the next word out of a blogger's mouth.  We all live busy lives.

I shall certainly continue to write, but perhaps I should focus on other areas, and when the urge comes to compose, I will work on those things.

Or, perhaps I simply had a bad day, and will press on.  You never know what a moody person might do.

Brent


O.K.  Enough of that.  I have changed my mind.  After a good night's sleep, and the escape of one of Asher's crayfish, I realize that blogging may be an indispensable outlet to record important events of life.  And if I had a nickle for every time I had a pity party...

16 Miles

A few weeks ago, I bought a new pair of running shoes.  My old Mizunos were long past the point of needing replacing.  I used the same shoe shopping process I always use, asking for recommendations from the store, trying on 3 or 4 pair, then eliminating them one by one until I ended up with what seemed like the most comfortable ones, a pair of Brooks.

The first time I went out for a run in the new shoes, I noticed that my sock under the ball of my left foot seemed to be bunched up.  It wasn't.  It was the shoe putting more pressure on that area of my foot.  Hmmm.  I deducted that my old shoes were worn badly in that area, creating a low spot in the shoe.  The new shoes must be putting my foot back in the correct position, but my foot wasn't happy about that.

So I thought my feet just needed time to adjust.  It was my fault for waiting so long to replace my worn out shoes.  The discomfort did seem to get better, but would still come and go.

Saturday I set out on my long run, which has worked up to 16 miles.  I noticed the discomfort early in the run.  By mile 10, it was bad enough that I wondered if I could even finish the run.  So I asked The Lord in my typical way for help.  It went something like this:  "Lord, Here I am.  You know all about this situation.  My foot hurts.  I sure would appreciate it if you would heal it.  But if you don't, I'm o.k. with that.  I just want to finish this run, and I want to run the marathon.  But that's all me and all about what I want.  So I'll leave it at that."

Nothing really changed in the discomfort, but in a few minutes I had a thought.  Before I bought the Brooks I was wearing, I had shopped on-line for a pair of shoes just like my old ones.  They had been discontinued, a new model had taken their place, and I had found a store that had the old model I had been wearing.  But I wanted something new and different, and hadn't gone that route.  However, after buying the new shoes, I had gone on my computer and was cleaning up some old bookmarks, including the one for those shoes I had found.  When I had clicked on the bookmark, I saw that the shoes were on sale for $40, less than half the price I had paid for them a year or so ago.  So I had ordered them, and they were in the back of my closet.

The Mizuno Wave Inspire 6 from Rogans Shoes

This all came back to me at mile 10, so I determined that I would change shoes at the end of mile 11 (I had divided the 16 miles into three legs, each leg coming back to our house.)  I made my pit stop, changing shoes (I had to do it myself, as I had no pit crew that day), and set off on the last 5 miles of the run.

Immediately I noticed a drastic difference in the way the shoe cradled my foot.  Within the first mile, I could tell that the ball of my foot felt much better.  I finished the run, exuberant that I had been given an answer to my petition for pain relief.  My best analysis is that the Brooks don't have quite enough support in the arch, and that was creating extra pressure on the ball of my foot.  Not a fault of the shoe, just that it isn't suited for my foot.

After a mere 70 miles on the new Brooks, I have retired them to the back of my closet (at least temporarily), and will press on with the $40 pair of Mizuno Wave Inspire 6's.  And I will order another pair of them, as they are still available on-line.

There you have it, way more information than anyone would possibly want to know.  And I'm not even sure there is a moral to the story, except for the following:

• As hard as we try to do the right thing (such as to buy the best shoes, or a gas range), sometimes it just doesn't pan out the way we expect.
• God does still answer prayer, although the answer may not come the way we expect.
• As to God answering prayer, in this case, He started the process of answering it immediately after I had bought the doomed Brooks shoes.  I had the answer in my closet before I even needed it.
• As a matter of fact, there is a moral to this story, as illustrated by the point above.  In fact, it is an excellent point, thank you very much.

The Horseless Headsman

Once in a while something will make me laugh out loud.  Not often... I don't think I have ever texted "lol".

So, this commercial is running now, with a Halloween theme.

http://www.framestore.com/work/snickers-horseless-headsman

Full of quotable lines, perfect timing, and the perfect face for the head.  And just when it couldn't get any better, a great ending.

Owen Meany

I recently read A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, and afterwards, composed an article about it for the October 2012 issue of The Manna.

That article can be viewed in The Manna with the following link:

"The Owen Meany in All of Us"

Happy Reading!


"Owen Meany" appeared in the October 2012 edition of the Manna. http://readthemanna.org.

Now, the Hard Part

Haven't posted a boring blog entry about running lately, so here goes.

Turns out my theory concerning the difficulty of increasing mileage needs some modification. (See "A Theory")  Once I pushed into the 10 mile range, the difficulty has leveled off some.
 
So here's what I have to do between now and December 8th.  The blue numbers are completed runs (updated periodically.)

                                Training Schedule

Week of:	Mon.	Tue.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
9/3		4		3	2	0	13.1	(1/2 Marathon)
9/10		3		4		10
9/17	3	4		4		12
9/24	4	4		4		10	3
10/1		4		4		14	3
10/8		5		5		10	3
10/15		4		5		16	3
10/22		4		5		12	3
10/29		4		5		18
11/5	3	5		6		12	3
11/12		4		6		20	3
11/19		4		4		12	3
11/26		3	2	3		8	3
12/3		2	2		2	26.2

If I can just make it through the 16, 18, and 20 mile runs, I will be golden.  It's weird... at the beginning of this whole thing, I knew in my head that a 26 mile run was a monumental task.  But I am reminded of just how monumental it is every time I do one of the long training runs.  Saturday, I ran 14 miles.  At the end of mile 13, I thought "I have to be able to run another 13 miles."  It's one of those thoughts you quickly put out of your head.  The trick is to take one day at a time.

Another monumental thing about training is the time you sacrifice, mostly for the long run. On Saturday I got up early, skipped breakfast with my family, ran for 2 hours and 24 minutes, and then it took the next couple of hours to ease back into our Saturday routine.  It's during those times when I often say to myself "Now why exactly am I doing this?"

I took my pulse one day sitting in church.  It was 44 bpm.  I suppose this could be due to one of several things:

• The training is working,
• The church service was boring, or
• Church has a calming effect.

Speaking of collections, I have considered using the marathon to raise money for some cause, partly to assuage my guilt for spending so much time in training, and partly to give some redeeming value to the whole thing.  But the fact is, I despise asking for money, period.  And most of the people I know, including myself, will give if asked, but are already tapped out in the giving department already.

So instead, it will remain a purely selfish endeavor, aimed at raising the level of my health and state of mind.  Plus, I get to write these boring blog entries.

Who Has the Greater Need?

Our two daughters are involved in an after school activity. Occasionally, the activity requires the group of kids to either eat dinner at the school, or to pick up something later that evening. In both cases, the students contribute to the meal cost.

My wife was talking to one of the other parents about planning the meal. The parent was discussing one of the students. She said they never ask for money for the meal from this child. And when the activity requires the student to buy something later, someone makes sure he has something to eat.

The reason is that this child never has any money to contribute to the meals.  The parent told my wife that they think that sometimes the only meal the child eats is the lunch he receives at school.

This is one of those things that we personally don’t see very often - a child dealing with hunger - an “In our faces” issue, right here at home. We didn’t have to go to Africa on a mission trip to see it. We only had to participate in an after school activity with our own children.

The question now is what, if anything, can we do. How can we get involved in the life of this child?  Never in my entire life have I nor my immediate family lacked something to eat.

The other question here is "Who has the greater need?" This child may need food. Our family needs an appreciation for that which we take for granted every single day. And in His great wisdom, He has brought this child and our family together, if for nothing else but for us to witness each other’s lives. And that answers that first question: we are involved in this child's life.

This is one of the reasons we have our children in public school. This is where we believe our family has been called.