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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This is the overview of my daily ride.

Click on the picture to go to the interactive map at LiveStrong.com.

My best time was 53:30 until I started knocking it down this week.  I took two minutes off of that on Monday morning to lower it to 51:30 and then another 15 seconds Tuesday afternoon to lower it to 51:15.

I really think I could have even done a lot better, too, but there was so much congestion on the trail in the afternoon that I was slowed several times.  I also look forward to riding this with a real road bike.  Right now I am riding the low end hybrid from Trek – the 7000 – which is a good and affordable bike, but it is basically a mountain bike with road wheels and a little better gear set.

Still, I love it and I’m grateful for it.  I will train on it until I can make the move to something better and then I will probably use it to commute to work.

In the meantime, I’ve lost about 50 lbs. and a lot of that is due to the exercise I’m getting on the bike.  It’s no impact cardio – until you wreck and then it’s high impact.  I wrecked in the spring and was out for about 4 mos. recovering and gaining back about 10 lbs.  I was able to shed that in the two weeks back on the bike.  It’s that dramatic a difference.

Oh, by the way…  I came up on this guy the other day:

As Jason Kearney is fond of saying, “You’re excuse for not riding a bike is now officially lame.”

Let me just add that this guy was moving. I can not even imagine what he would have been capable of with two human legs.

I’ve been teaching through the Gospel of Matthew on Sunday nights for quite some time now.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that the congregation may have picked up on the theme of Jesus being at odds with the legalism of the Pharisees.

Legalism is not solely a religious issue, however, even our relationships with God must occasionally deal with what becomes a sanctimonious shallow reflection of true faith.

In 2006, back on the original SBC Outpost, Marty Duren wrote an article that addresses the subject with an adept touch and the writing style that I miss so much.  Then it had a specific context of the roiling SBC Blogosphere that has now passed into something else – something about which I have no desire to publicly opine.

Now, I think the article relevant well beyond the original context as spiritually beneficial for us as we think through the issues of living an organic, Christ centered and Biblically informed faith.

With his permission, I repost it for your consideration:

I believe in the fundamentals of the faith. I believe unashamedly and fully in the verbal, plenary inspiration and sufficiency of Scripture, in the virgin birth of Christ, in His perfect life and complete, atoning death. I believe in His bodily resurrection from the tomb and that He will return visibly at some point yet to come to receive me and His entire bride to Himself.

But, though I once was, I am not now a Fundamentalist.

The purpose of this writing is not to condemn those who are Fundamentalists, but to express some of the reasons why I now reject that label and the extra biblical beliefs associated with it. One way to demonstrate just how far afield it is is to compare it to its first cousin, liberalism. They must be related as they have much in common.

Liberals expunge scripture in favor of cultural whims: women today should be pastors because Paul was a male chauvinist whose writings are woefully behind the times, homosexuality is acceptable if the partners are truly in love and committed to a monogamous relationship, etc. Fundamentalists decried this abuse of scripture (and rightly so) yet in practice they also deny the sufficiency of scripture for daily living, favoring often to appeal to heritage or accumulated practices rather than a dependence on scriptural authority.

Thus we are taught that we shouldn’t attend movies because of Hollywood wickedness, that we shouldn’t play cards because the Joker card represented Jesus, that we shouldn’t listen to secular music because Jimmy Buffet might smoke dope, that being “not of the world” means to withdraw from culture, on and on ad infinitum, ad naseum. Now, while it is obvious to some that these positions are biblical, it is just as obvious to others that there are equally valid biblical reasons to hold opposing positions. Legalism is not an individual having a conviction to abstain from alcohol or not attend R-rated movies or having his hair cut above his ears. Legalism (and thus Fundamentalism) is the projection of that individual’s conviction onto another person who is not in violation of scripture.

In another arena liberals consistently took political positions that were rightly viewed by Fundamentalists as non-biblical: pro-abortion, extreme environmentalism and pacificism were examples of a philosophical system of thought that routinely refused to subject political stances to biblical tenets. Looking at Fundamentalism on the other side, there seems a bent toward the same mistake. Leftover goals from the Moral Majority have left many holding out hope that if we can just “elect the right people” or “get the right judges” we can return to a “Christian America.” Recently high profile spokesmen from our Convention participated in “Justice Sunday I & II” for the purpose of encouraging the affirmation of a supreme court justice held up in filibuster. How can there be a biblical position on stopping a filibuster?

Jesus was reasonably clear that His kingdom was not of this world…that if it were, His servants would fight. When He died His earthly kingdom measured the dimensions of a graveyard, yet when He rose it was beyond the limits of all creation. Both liberalism and Fundamentalism give secular politics a greater role or a greater weight than scripture ever did.

But perhaps the most harmful move of Fundamentalism is the substitution of extra-biblical rules for the working of the Spirit through the Word in the maturation process of the believer. The entire book of Galatians was written to combat this error into which it is easy to slide.

In a recent post, it was stated this way by Joe Thorn:

This is the argument the Pharisees made. They sought to honor God’s law by making additional laws that will (in theory) keep them from transgressing God’s laws. Their motives are great, but this is a form of legalism that falsely binds men’s consciences and produces something other than godliness while placing something other than the yoke of Christ on the necks of brothers and sisters.

Which is worse, a liberal position that denies the sufficiency of scripture or a Fundamentalist position that ignores it? Is it ok to ignore the way of the kingdom of God for the advancement of an earthly kingdom? It is a mistake of both extremes to regard Caesar more obedience worthy than Christ. Paul asked the Galatians if they had been “bewitched” to begin thinking like this. Hardly the work of God.

Liberalism is modern day Sadduceeism, while Fundamentalism is modern day Pharisaism. It is just as errant to “say there is no resurrection” as it is to live as if Jesus never fulfilled the law of Moses. Peter equated the forcing of Gentile believers to live by rules and regulations as “testing God” (Acts 15:10), while Paul said it is the “ministry of death” and “the ministry of condemnation” (2 Corinthians 3:7, 9).

Regardless of intent and claim, Fundamentalists find themselves guiltily smack in the middle of Jesus conversation of Matthew 15:1-3:

Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” And He answered and said to them, “Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (NASB)

God save us from both extremes back to a place where His Spirit and His Word are all that we depend upon for vitality and maturity. I don’t want to run my car off the road on the left or the right; I’m reasonably certain, The Italian Job notwithstanding, that we are not supposed to be driving on a narrow road and not through the culverts.

Lately, I’ve seen several people stepping out after the arriving at the conclusion that God was calling them to do something.  Some have left jobs, others have left the country.

Just curious.

What was the last thing you did that was risky because you believed God wanted you to do it?

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?

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.

Haven’t been out lately, but here are a few of Cain’s Ballroom.  I’ve posted them before, but it has been a while.

Still, if you like these and want to see more, you can check out my photoblog or my flickr page.

Click a thumbnail for a larger picture.

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A couple of years ago, our church staff had a little “Biggest Loser” style competition to lose weight.  Says alot about Baptists that it was an easy competition for us to buy into.  In other words, we’re fat.

So, I did really well and ended up continuing to lose weight well past the competition.  About 6 mos. in, I went to the Southern Baptist Convention and tried to continue to exercise and eat well while there.

While I was there, Marty Duren and I ate together several times and at one point, he chose Tony Romas.  It was the beginning of the end of my diet.  It’s all Marty’s fault.

Anyway, I’m starting back.  Just thought I’d say so, since I may be twittering things about it and posting things about it here on the blog.

Oh, and it’s not a fad diet thing.  Just counting calories.  I know how Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice and all those “diet” dinners help you lose weight.  It’s fairly obvious once you cook one up for the first time.  They starve you to death.

It’s good food.  Just about two teaspoons full.

Your prayers, as always, are appreciated.

Have you gotten your “Economic Stimulus Check” from the government yet?  If not, like me, there is a pretty easy solution for finding out your check’s status.  The website has a printed schedule, but the IRS seems to be behind in sending out the money.  Hmmm.  Surprised?

Anyway, if you call the IRS’ automated hotline, with a few easy questions, you can find out when your check is due to be mailed.  The number is:  1-866-234-2942.  You should know where you stand in a few minutes.

Now, what will you do with yours?