The first thing that you should know about running a 5k… check that… about me running a 5k, is that cycling doesn’t translate to running.  They are based on a different set of muscle groups.  When a runner or a cyclist crosses over to the other discipline they will find a jump in their heart rate and a demand for oxygen from those muscles that haven’t been being used.

Which is a great argument for cross training, if training is your thing.

To date my thing has been just trying to drop some weight and cycling offered me an aerobic exercise option with no impact.  Which was huge.  Because I was huge.

If you want to understand this better, try running with a couple of 20 lb. sledge hammers, one in each hand.  Get the idea?  Now add another 15 lbs and you’ll understand how much weight I’ve lost.

So I biked because I couldn’t run.

Until last week.  My son was running in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.  I then found that several of our church family were also running.  It’s a great cause and personal as well.  My Mom, Annette, both of her sisters (my aunts Suz and Sandy) and, as of couple of weeks ago, my Mother in Law, Lynda, have all had breast cancer.

So I guess I was feeling froggy or just stupid and, when signing Jimmy up for the race, I signed myself up, too.

Keep in mind that I haven’t run in FOREVER.  I tried to run in the Spring and couldn’t, so I bought a bike.  I tried to run a few weeks ago and was moderately more successful, but honestly I only ran about a mile.

Pride? Foolishness? Arrogance? Whatever…

I have no idea what caused me to think I could run a 5k (3.2 miles), but I showed up with one goal.  Don’t walk.  Run the whole time. Even if you have to shuffle.

And I did.  Official Race time results:  33:41.85.

And now I hurt all over.  I can’t get on my bike because my ankle hurts. I feel worse than I ever have.  Well, maybe not EVER… but bad.

I hear the swine flu is making its way through our congregation.  Maybe I can catch it and feel even worse.

But then again, I don’t know that I have ever in my life run that far consecutively. And it was for breast cancer research.  And I didn’t walk.

So maybe I feel pretty good after all.

Ok, here are some pics (Click on the thumbnail for the full size pic):

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Got a few questions recently about why I haven’t posted much.  Couple of reasons…

I went on vacation.  I came back from vacation tired (it was one of those where you come back less rested but also less stressed) to a pile of work, a three day plumbing project and the accusation from the youth group that my new full beard makes me look like Billy Mays.

It’s almost enough to make me shave, but Bonnie says, “It’s sexy,” and after 16 years of marriage, I take seriously anything that elicits such a response.

Anyway, I’ll have to give you the story on my toilet sometime, but I just don’t have the time to do that today.  It’s a long day with much to do.

See you soon.

Today is the day when more collect phone calls are made than any other day of the year: Father’s Day.

We love you Dad, please pay for us to say it… ;)

Happy Father’s Day.

It would almost seem obligatory that I would post on the recent confession of moral failure by a reasonably high profile pastor.  Gary Lamb confessed to such and resigned his position this last Sunday.

I won’t write about what we should do to avoid becoming such an example.  Others have done so and I commend them to you:  Marty Duren, Geoff Surratt.

I’m not even going to comment on Gary’s situation, though I join the chorus asking for the body to pray for all involved.

I simply desire to express how vulnerable I feel at the news.  I have known for a couple of decades now that anyone is capable of anything.  Seeing this happen scares me to death.

It ought to scare us all.

We should not view such things from the position of security and, therefore, pity.  We should view such things as from the precipice and realize that we are far from secure.

Should we fail to recognize how vulnerable we are, we may likely find ourselves looking at the situation from a position that is entirely too uncomfortable.

My wife’s hometown of Clinton, OK has a unique bond among its churches. Across denominational lines, they frequently participate in emphases together. The last major shared focus was 40 Days of Purpose. Now they are working on the One Month to Live campaign.

CBS came to town and video taped several people in relation to the focus and one of the families was Bonnie’s brother’s family, Jay, Beth, Jarrett and Ryan.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Interestingly, the home where the people are seen studying the book is Bonnie’s parents’ former home, where Aaron was staying when he drowned in a neighbor’s fish pond.  For me, it’s hard to look at that scene and know the connection.

On a lighter note, the crew was at Jay & Beth’s house for a couple of hours.  Jarrett, as is typical, talked intelligently and frequently.  Ryan, as is typical, kept his mouth shut until they asked everyone to give just one thing they wished they could do – just anything.  What makes the cut?  Ryan’s one line, somewhat out of context.  Of course!

It’s been pretty well documented that the church in America has lost one generation and the jury is out on whether we’ll lose the one following.

My take is that the church has facilitated the abandonment of parents being the primary disciplemakers to drop and go Youth and Children’s Ministries.  Those things were never supposed to be that, but a supplement to the role of the parents.

As a Youth Minister for 19 years, I frequently found myself counseling kids to do the opposite of what their parents were doing – shall we say “modeling a bad example?”  It was ironic to find myself in conversations with parents of young adult graduates of my Youth Ministry who then blamed me for not doing enough to disciple their kids.

Suffice it to say, it’s one of the reasons I left Youth Ministry for the Lead Pastor position.  I wanted to guide the church to do better.

So, what do you do?  How do you pass on your faith in your home?

I may need to get this for Jimmy, but I don’t think I could take the alarm going off until he got up and put the rotor back in.

In the rural mountains of Lao Cai Province, near the China border, there are schools serving ethnic minorities that live on neighboring farms.  The pictures above are from last year’s trip where we saw Forefront Church out of Virginia installing a computer lab, a water filtration system which will be used by the region and building relationships with the kids through sports at Ta Phin School.

This year we will be installing a computer lab and building relationships at San Sa Ho.  I hope that next year we can install a water filtration system. Though the cost for that is much greater, it will affect so many more people.  We will be adopting this particular school in hopes of building long term relationships and making a cumulative impact in their lives over many years.

The computer lab (consisting of two computers and a printer) will be the first computers these kids will ever see, most likely.  As the government brings connectivity out to the school, they will go from being exposed to the mountains of rural north Vietnam to being exposed to the whole world.  It is a giant leap that we are able to help provide and a privilige to do so.

Please remember to pray for the children and families of San Sa Ho.

So, my knees are bad and have been since college.  Actually, they are worse now, from age and carrying excess weight around.  It’s been hard for me as I’ve started to get back into shape.  Even walking is not easy on virtually any joint below the waist.  Running is pain like sharp knives in the sides of my knees, and that ignores the hips, ankles and feet.

At the encouragement of fellow Tulsan and local blogger, Jason Kearney, I’ve taken up cycling again.  It is hard on the seat, but (pause for snickering at the pun) easy on everything else.  I just took out my new bike last night and had probably the best hour of cardio I’ve had since college and maybe even my life.

I rode 12.5 miles in 1:08:01.  It was great.

So here are a few things I’ve learned in the last week or two and even just last night, just in case you’re interested.

1.  Get a real bike.  I took my old department store mountain bike in to have it checked, because I am contemplating a tour across Oklahoma in June and wanted to see if it was worth fixing.  Knobby tires produce drag, low handlebars will hurt your back, it’s extra heavy and you’ll have to spend about half of what a new bike costs, just to get it out of garage storage condition and into actual riding condition, which I think I pointed out wasn’t all that great to start with.  I got the bottom of the line hybrid from Trek and it is awesome in comparison.

2.  Get padded gloves and padded shorts.  The padded parts are where the weight of your body rests on the bike and they, ahem, need padding.  Just by the by, they make cargo shorts with a removable padded liner.  I took some spandex shorts to the dressing room to try on and the sales girl said, “So you have no problems wearing spandex?” and I flippantly replied, “It’s no big deal.  They’re just to ride in.”  Got to the dressing room, changed and perused the mirror.  “That’s a little bit bigger of a deal than I thought it was.” said I, looking at the 42 year old sagging body before me wrapped in tight Lycra, the image of which eerily resembled a misshapen sausage.  Hmmm.  “Did you say you had cargo shorts with padding?” “Sure.  They’re over here.”  “You are a great help.  Thank you ever so much.”

3.  Decent helmet.  Actually had an issue with this.  It may surprise some to find out that my head is apparently capable of swelling to an even larger size and, therefore, I needed to get a larger size helmet from the other store, because they had sold out of “gargantuan” where I was.  It has to fit.  It has to adjust easily while you ride.

4.  Don’t bring a Camelbak.  If you don’t know what that is, it’s a backpack for water with a tube that runs over your shoulder so you can easily drink.  They’re great for hiking, so you don’t have to carry stuff in your hands, but on a bike, you don’t have to weigh your back down when you can attach water bottles to the frame.  Just use water bottles.  Two’s plenty.

5.  When you run out of water or want something to eat, stop at a nearby store.  It’s not the Tour de France.  You can stop.

6.  Those cycling jerseys that they sell have nifty pockets in the back for you to carry your stuff.  You should have your ID in one of the pockets and your cell phone won’t kill ya, either.  Just in case.

7.  Before you take your first real ride, scope out a place to do it, and how you’ll get there.  Tulsa is full of trails.  Over 200 miles with more on the way.  Very good urban planning.  And they were full last night.  Lots of people using them.  Figure out where you want to park and where you want to ride before you load up.  This is assuming you don’t ride your bike to the trail.  The streets between my house and the trail are some of Tulsa’s busiest, so I drive to and from.

8.  When you go on your first ride, do less than you think you should.  I was planning on clipping off 4-5 miles and then turning around.  When I got to 6.5 out, I noticed that I didn’t feel bad at all. Shortly thereafter turned around just because I thought I should and found I was now heading south directly into a 10-15 mph headwind that Oklahoma enjoys.  I use the word “enjoy” ironically here. It was miserable for the first couple of miles back until I reached some cover to break the onslaught.

9.  Stretch before and after.  Of course, if you are like me, your back will stiffen up as you bend over in various positions trying to improve elasticity in your legs.  I have to stretch from my stretching.  Anyway, not stretching is more painful and causes you to be more likely to injure yourself.

10.  Hot bath or hot tub (jacuzzi) after.  The heat helps your muscles recover.

11.  Rest.  Don’t ride hard every day.  Take some time off for your body to recover.  (I have this from Jason Kearney, aforementioned cycling enthusiast and Tulsan).

12.  Finally, and once again from Jason, although it is more through Jason and from Lance Armstrong:  Spin a fast cadence.  That’s cycling enthusiast speak for “pedal faster.”  It means that you should run a gear that allows you minimum resistance for pedaling across whatever incline you are on at the moment.  This is actually huge.  If he hadn’t told me this, I would have exhausted myself in a couple of miles and probably hurt myself straining to push the bike, instead of letting the gears do the real work.

Anything else, anyone?

Dear locks of mine,

I am so very grateful that you’ve chosen to remain faithful all these long years.

Though many of my friends’ manes have betrayed them, abandoning their crowns like rats from a sinking ship, you’ve stayed with me.

And there are so few albinos among you.

In spite of my metabolism grinding to a shuddering halt, my joints creaking and popping with gravel between the bones, my eyes no longer enjoying words near them but preferring text at arms length and my memory switching off and on in random fashion… yes, despite all of these decrepitudes, you still treat me as if I were a young man.

I am so very appreciative, it seems almost churlish to ask you this one favor.  But…

Would you please, if you could, stop sending missionaries to my back, nostrils, eyebrows and ear canals.

I really have no need for strands resembling the leg of a large spider to protrude from said body parts.

Though, after the way I treated you in the eighties, I suppose I should simply be grateful I have you at all.