About Transformations

This past Sunday was Scout Recognition Day at our church. Our church sponsors a boy scout troop that has a particularly high turnout rate of Eagle Scouts. Also, I've been meditating for a while around the concept of transformation, more specifically this quote:

During the regular church service the scoutmaster gets up to talk about the troop and the ideals of the boy scouts, and how they align with the goals of the church. Then all of the current and former scout leaders, as well as any Eagle Scouts in the congregation, stand for recognition. Something really clicked for me then, and I want to explain it here.

I distinctly remember waking up on my 17th birthday (almost 25 years ago), rolling over in bed and staring down my boy scout handbook. My first thought was "I have one year left to finish this and if I don't do it now it will never happen". I knew what I had to do.

Telling people that you are an Eagle Scout sets - well "expectation" is the wrong word. There is a reputation that precedes you at that point, but that's a good thing. Eagle scouts know the value of honesty, are trustworthy, and have a natural leadership ability. The keyword is that you "achieve the rank of Eagle Scout" because it's not something that you can just step into or pay for. It takes more work than most people realize.

Everyone knows there are a large list of merit badges that you have to complete. Those are checklists, things where everyone has to put together the same accomplishments like riflery (shooting a .22 5 times inside of the diameter of a quarter on a gun range). Some people know there has to be an Eagle Scout Project where you have to build and lead a team through ideas, funding, materials, and project completion. My project involved remodeling part of a house for an elderly couple taking care of an adult son with disabilities. Very few people know that you then have to defend your accomplishments to a council of scoutmasters. I had my council meeting about 10 days before my 18th birthday.

12 year old me who joined the scouts just wanted to go camping with my childhood best friend. I learned the value of honesty, and standing up for what's right. I became a trustworthy person and then led my peers and kept the younger scouts in line just like the older scouts kept me in line. At the time I didn't realize how distinct that transformation was, but from age 12 to 18 I did transform myself to achieve the rank. It certainly still has a lasting affect on me to this day.

Lots of people add "finish an Ironman" to their bucket list. I wasn't necessarily one of them. I was a pack a day smoker for 15 years. I was an obese, heavy drinker. When I finished my first sprint triathlon I had two thoughts: First, I knew I had beaten my tobacco addiction. It's been 9 years, still happy about that. Second, I thought those people who did Ironmans were idiots - certifiably insane.

The Ironman brand's mantra is "anything is possible", and you learn what that means during Ironman training. As humans, we don't have limits. Our mind sets up what we can and cannot do. If you can change your mind, you can alter your entire reality.

To get ready for Ironman training I lost the rest of the weight. I established a solid aerobic base during the weight loss phase by running 5 miles on the treadmill 5 days a week for several months straight. Then I increased my endurance steadily over time, joined a US Masters swim team, and started increasing my time on the bike. The training plan for a full iron takes about 9 months working out twice a day, 6 days a week. Ideally, you want to ride 5 times, run 5 times, swim 2 or 3 times, and still work in some yoga/stretching and strength training every week too.

Your body turns iron long before race day. On 11/5/2011 I finished Ironman Florida in 13:06:24 and became an Ironman. The day of the race was a magical celebration, swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, riding through a breezy flat course, then running my way to hear an announcer say "John Flynn You Are An Ironman" - and all of those hours of sweat paid off in exponential ways that were better than I had imagined.

I had transformed myself from smoker to triathlete, then from triathlete to Ironman. The registration anxiety was crazy the day I signed up. I wasn't that guy who actually thought I could finish the race I had just dropped $700 on. I had to change myself into someone who could do that. I learned discipline, confidence, and where my limits were (hint: I don't have any)

Since the Scout Recognition Day happened in Church, it got me thinking about the transformation that happens when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. It gives me a sense of peace. The unending love that God has for us is the same love that we should show for our fellow man.

Muslims pray 5 times a day which seems absurd to so many Americans. But if we ask a blessing before each meal, start the day with some prayer and meditation time, and finish each day by thanking God for what happened that day, we're there as well. And if you establish a new pattern of prayer, do you think God will transform something in your life if you keep praying often enough?

When you learn how to love yourself, you then learn how to love others. If I can grow so many different ways above, then I can help others grow in their own way. Being a Christian has determined how I lead my family, what I teach my kids, and how I build my social circles. Currently I sing in the sanctuary choir and truly love sharing my gift of song.

Conclusion
Your goals don't have to be my goals. It took me 6 years to transform myself into an Eagle Scout. It took 4 years to go from smoker to Ironman. I was baptized at age 12, and I bet eventually I'll become a decent church member. What has transformed you in the past? How do you want to transform in the future? Any good, big goals ahead?

Postlude: Goals don't have to be physical. Now at 41, I've been fighting foot pain long enough that I'm starting to abandon my race schedule and start swimming more. I just can't run yet and I miss it so much. Actually, I've noticed that every time I do what I love I complain about it. Get in the pool? no flip turns today, my back hurts. Running? foot pain. can't get enough miles to properly train for the upcoming marathons. Also I have no idea what I'm going to do about that. Goals might also instill setting priorities. I still want to finish a full marathon or longer in all 50 states so this years new states have to be the priority. But am I too old for this? Some days I feel too old for a lot of things. Age is another form of transformation, I guess.

A Really Good Day

I never do "day in the life of" posts because I'm actually very boring day over day. But yesterday was quite special in a normal day kind of way. Walk you through it.

6:40 am
Woke up feeling refreshed and a few minutes before the alarm clock went off. Breakfast was oatmeal with raisins and a banana, delish! Got in my first workout of pushups (40) and some planking, followed by about 30 minutes of yoga. The time on the mat was particularly calming and felt great, and I haven't been on the yoga mat very much lately so this was much appreciated.

8:20 am
Made my way into the office. The commute is only about 6 minutes now, and that is quite nice. I am starting to get settled in at this new job, and I've been assigned a special project that is really fun. My new coworkers are really smart, and this system is very complex. I have been feeling like it's too complex for me to fully understand, but trying to have patience in learning the new system. That's not easy. This is week 3 of the new job, and I'm still waiting on that first paycheck to come in, which is equally frustrating. Finally starting to make some progress on the new project was a nice confidence boost.

The Oval, right behind my office building on the NC State Centennial Campus - BEAUTIFUL

11:15 am
We regularly have a meeting scheduled from 11:30 to 1pm on Wednesdays which directly conflicts with my noon swim practice. I hate this meeting anyway. Today it got cancelled! Yay! I can actually make the Wednesday swim practice! But I have no gear.

11:30 am
go to swim practice. Swing by the house first to pick up my gear and some extra food - love that short commute! It really does make a huge difference. We got 3200 yards in the pool in an hour and 15 minutes with some hard 100's that I absolutely crushed. Felt great to be in the water, so glad I was able to make practice.

1:30 pm
Back to the office, eating at the desk. Realized I brought a lunch that was fit for a non-workout day. Right after I finish that, someone tells me there is catering leftovers in the main break room, so I grab an extra sandwich from there to finish things off, and a brownie. I get a text about a bill pay, and Kelley tells me that both paychecks came in today! I get paid every week and it took a few weeks for the system to catch up. Ah, getting paid on the 29th of the month is a real relief when you have to make a mortgage payment and the first health insurance payment on the new plan (not withheld) so we paid all of the bills. amazing.

Then I cleared a huge milestone on my new project. For my fellow nerds, I was able to use a console app to authenticate TFS online, execute a query and process the work items returned individually. This is very challenging, and finally getting the result set I was expecting was a serious win!

4 pm
Work held a social hour in the big Centennial room on the first floor. This meant free beer and catering for all employees, and apparently they do this once a month. My boss found us all down there and told me how excited he was about my project and that he left a LexisNexis pint glass on my desk because all of the cool kids had one. I'm cool now. And finally full. Nothing better than free food (and beer!) after a nice hard swim practice. I went home after the social hour and got to hang with the fam for a bit.

6:30 pm
Choir practice started and was wonderful. I don't talk much about singing or church on here, but that is how I worship best. I love my church and the family feeling we have in the choir, usually about 20 - 30 people singing. Practice ran a bit long tonight, then we end up hanging out talking for a while after practice.  Here's a video Kelley took from the service a few weeks ago where I got to lead a song of worship.

8:20 pm
Hitting the gym for my last workout of the day. Like I mentioned earlier, I am on a marathon training plan again and I had to get in my 6 miles with a 25 minute tempo section in there. I went into the gym feeling grateful for exactly how well everything had gone so far. There was no way I had the energy or stamina to pull off a good run after all of that. But since it was the day where good things happen, I nailed it. Hit my tempo time, felt good the whole way. It's too hot to run outside anymore here in NC, so I'm on the treadmill all the time again. Baseline was at a 7.5 speed (8 minute miles), and for the tempo 25 minutes I took it up to a 7.8 mph (7:38 pace) until it was time to cool down.

9:30 pm
Made it home tired and satisfied. Icing on the cake, June 30 is the next price increase for 2 of the marathons on my 12 in 8 months list. After paying all of the bills, we still had enough left over to go ahead and register for both of them. So I'll be going back for my 3rd Tobacco Road marathon in March, and my first time tackling the City of Oaks marathon will be in November. Both are local, here in Raleigh so the logistics are easy.

11:30 pm
back to bed.

See? that's a totally normal day. I went to work, had some solid workouts, got to spend some time with Kelley and the kids in between, and capped it off with registering for 2 marathons. It just so happened that everything went right in some very incredible ways.

Since about mid-May when I found out my last job contract was not going to be extended, it has been kind of high stress around here. I was glad to finally be done with that place, and it only took a week to get this Lexis job lined up. But the transition into Lexis has been incredibly frustrating. I know the zen theories about suffering (everybody has both good days and bad, in the end they number about the same) but to string a bunch of bad days together like we had then was really tough. Being unexpectedly unemployed for over a week while I waited on a background check to clear threw a lot of money stuff up in the air. It was a valley for sure. Then stuff started to go right again. I got into the payroll system. The complex software started to roll up. Today was a real peak. it makes me humble and grateful.

End of March

Well March is over and came to an end on an overcast day. That means April is here, and that has its own set of terrifying conditions.

Swim: 0
Bike: 15 miles, 1 ride
Run: 144 miles, 12 runs
Strength: 5 times
Yoga: 6 times

Overall it was a decent month. Still no swimming this year. The one ride was on March 1st, and it was a great way to recover and spin the legs out for a while. Most of this month was in taper. Still getting 144 miles in 3 weeks of taper for the Umstead 100. And it sure beats the 138 miles I ran in February.

Today April 1st is the packet pickup for the 100. That's not an April Fool's joke. Saturday is the Umstead 100. I've been training for this since October. My nerves are setting in and I'm terrified. not even scared to admit that. I have no idea how the day is going to play out, but all I can do is take what the trail gives me on that day. It looks like it's going to rain until about noon on the first day.

I also got signed up for a couple more races for this summer. it's shaking out to be a fun year. I will finally get to do all three races in the open water swim series, and I'm doing the shorter distances at all three events. Went ahead and registered for the first one, got until June to beat the price increase for the other two. Also signed up to run the 3 Little Pigs triathlon again this year, I think my boss right now will be trying this as her first race ever. It's a great choice for her, and I hope she follows through.

March also provided some really fun times in the convertible.

3/1 driving home from work

a bit warmer on 3/9

Also got in my first shirtless run of the year! 3/13 I got to break in a new pair of Hoka One-One's. Giant shoes are a perfect complement to the really really short shorts.

In other completely random picture from March that I need to pull together news, I got a really sweet swag bag from the race in Alabama. They gave out finisher plaques instead of medals, and I got a stick-on thing in the mail on 3/31 denoting my 41 mile finish distance.

Delano Park Rocks

This is a really cool picture of Ella and I at a restaurant recently. I don't know why I like it so much, but it just cracks me up.

Man I love hanging out with my girl

Of course, also Easter happened in March. It was preceded by a wonderful visit from my parents for a couple of days. Since Dad almost never comes to Raleigh, this was a real treat. They hung out mid-week, I still had to work, we did some fun stuff in the evenings and worked on the shed some together, and they brought me my tools. I got no pictures this visit. Still a blast. They made it back to SC in time for the holiday, and we had fun stuff to take care of too.

Easter baskets with real eggs

Family portrait in front of the church

Easter egg hunt at the country club

The girls had a blast with their grandfather

We had a huge easter service at the church, it was a wonderful experience. Then afterwards we went to the NC State golf course clubhouse for a huge brunch with Mickey. They had an easter egg hunt at the club too. All of those Easter Sunday festivities were by far the highlight of the weekend.

March also finished on a really strong note! This and Easter should both really be their own posts since they have so many pictures but I've run out of March to post about. Evil Genius has finally learned how to ride a bike! She's riding on her own now, after being terrified of it for years. I am totally the proud daddy too. It's fantastic! All of those years doing the Indian Princess camps in the spring where everyone else there would ride and she still wanted training wheels. This is it! She's got it down now.

I hope the embedded video works.

March was overall a fun month, so much better than February was. Care to guess how many miles I'm going to run in April?

It's Pinewood Derby Time!

This past weekend we had the pinewood derby at the church! It was amazingly cute. Our girls cared more about painting the cars than making them aerodynamic or setting the weights properly, so they looked great and didn't win anything. They setup a round robin format, so each girl got to race 10 times. Ella won once, Evil Genius didn't even make it into a runoff. The most important part was that they had a blast! Everybody had fun. The pictures do the rest of the ta

The girls with their cars

The entire group of racing kids

lking.

Coffee Time

Interwebs, we need to get together soon. Find a coffee shop, get a warm mug of happiness, find a comfy chair and settle in for a while.  If we were getting together for coffee today, here's what we would talk about.

Raleigh is balls cold. One the one hand, this is supposed to be a temperate climate, normal highs are in the 50's this time of year. And it's supposed to start snowing Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday mid-day and dump 3-7" of the white stuff on us. I'm down with this, just wish that our house had insulation in the exterior walls so we wouldn't be so frozen inside.

People say this winter is proof that global warming was a hoax, but this is really how every winter was before 2000. So I'd say that environmental conservation efforts have actually worked and we're back to where we should be. No doubt that would start some debate.

This was a good movie weekend. Saturday morning Bigun had a birthday party to go to. So I grabbed the Evil Genius and we hit the $2 theater near the house for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and a giant bucket of popcorn. She did actually show some good behavior, which is a rare treat indeed! Then I came home, ran 12 miles to get my long run done. Kelley's dad wanted to play with the kids for a bit, so as I was pulling into the driveway after my run, Kelley pulled in at the same time from dropping them off. We then went back to the $2 theater to see 2 Guns and have another giant bucket of recovery popcorn.  Needless to say, my sodium intake was through the roof this weekend. 2 Guns was much better than I expected, Marky Mark and Denzel in a great shoot-em-up thriller. Then we grabbed dinner a local japanese place and picked up the kids. They were pretty worn out by then, so after they went to bed we watched Mud, a pretty bad Matthew McConaughey flick that we had in on Netflix. It was a little dissapointing. There wasn't enough shirtless McConaughey for Kelley, and not enough plot twisting for me.

Sunday we went to church, and the kids almost behaved well. We had to baptize 18 people! Each one had to read a witness testimony. And it was mosaic Sunday, so the Chinese Church Praise Team had to sing a song (and they baptized 9 of the 18 people), and the Farsi Fellowship had to sing a praise song. It took an hour and 45 minutes. Normally the service is right around an hour, so I expected the kids to get more restless the longer it got. They kept asking why people were getting dunked in the water.

In the afternoon the kids and I got some time in the garden. Got the second raised bed finished off and turned the soil in there one time. The girls only fought twice while we were out there, so I'll consider that a win. After dinner and showers, they went to bed while Kelley and I watched Elysium, also in from Netflix. It was pretty bad. Matt Damon action flicks are usually better than that. They took the 1% vs 99% concept of wealth division that most of the USA is protesting about right now and stretched it out to unreasonable levels where only the rich get to use the cure for cancer, and OSHA suddenly doesn't exist anymore. The 1% only want money, they don't want the rest of us to die. horrible execution on the plot.

Bigun's spring outing date is changed! The plan was to have Morgan's wedding, then EG's spring outing, then Bigun's spring outing on consecutive weekends. But too many of the other dads in Bigun's tribe had date conflicts, so we got it changed to the only other available weekend, which happens to be the same date as Morgan's wedding. So we end up being the only pair that got screwed.

To make it up to Bigun, we're going to take the same weekend for an overnight trip just me and her. I have no idea where we want to go or what we want to do, and if we were having coffee today we'd certainly have to brainstorm on that one. She's big enough now to go on some epic adventures and do some non-child-like stuff now! I'm not suggesting a weekend in Vegas or anything. If you were a 9 year old girl, what would you want to do with your dad for an overnight trip? She loves biking and paddlesports, anything outside really. We could go camping, or whitewater rafting, or go hiking in the mountains. Maybe kayaking down a gentle river or mountain biking somewhere. We could go to the beach or do some standup paddleboarding, or maybe to an amusement park. If I wanted to move it up a few weekends, I could take her skiing in the NC mountains, she's love the snow. HELP! I need ideas here people.

Cedar Point might actually happen. The only two triathlons I have on the race schedule this year are the new Lake Logan 70.3 (I love the oly's that I've done there in the past) and Rev3 Cedar Point 140.6. While I shouldn't throw in too many sprints, it feels odd to only do 2 triathlons this year. Haven't done that few since 2008 when I only did my first one. But it looks like I've got the cash together for the entry fee for both of those ($425 for CP and $125 for LL in case you think triathlon is a cheap sport), and that was the biggest question mark on those two races. Now it's just a matter of getting the guts to pull the trigger! March 2nd is the price increase for both races, so I want to beat that. Should I wait until after the marathon to see how my body is feeling? I know it's a commitment to that much training, and Ironman training will have to start immediately after I finish these spring marathons. Should I sign up now or wait until after Myrtle Beach?

Might have found a 5k open water swim for this year! The Lowcountry Splash is a 5 mile OWS race in Charleston, where you start in Patriot's Point, swim under the Cooper River Bridge, then finish at the USS Yorktown. Swimmers go with the tide the entire way so there's plenty of current assistance. Yea, it's 5 miles instead of 5k. But get this: my two Ironman swim times (2.4 miles) are 1:14 and 1:05. In 2013, the finish times for this 5 mile swim ranged from 1:18 to 2 hours, they only had one person that took longer than 2 hours. My typical pool mile is 25 to 30 minutes, so I would expect that to take me about 2.5 hours, and I'm a really strong swimmer. So that must be one helluva current assistance. Do you think the field is only really strong swimmers, or is the current that strong? I wanted the 5k swim to be a real challenge, do you think that's challenging enough? It's on Memorial Day weekend and we can stay with my brother Michael, so that would be a great time to take the entire family down to visit him. I can't decide if that's the right race or if I should keep looking.

See what I mean? Coffee. We needs it. Help!

Last Build Week

Besides the great race on Saturday we had a couple of other high points last week

Monday was labor day, so I did the double brick there instead of Tuesday.  Naturally, this also messed up the rest of the weekly schedule. I hit bike/swim Tuesday and that was ok. But then Wednesday has a bike and a tempo run.  This is the last week of heavy build phase training, so it's also the last bit of speedwork in the training plan.  I ended up running a 5k Wednesday night in 20:42, a 6:40 pace. Pretty strong.

The problem was that since Thursday was also Interval day, it got hairy.  I made the mistake of mentioning on facebook that I made the hard tempo run an had 4 x 1 mile intervals in the morning. Well, the real problem was that I didn't read any of the comments telling me how bad of idea that was. True, I like to put at least one day between hard runs, but this was the way that the schedule worked out so I just went with it when I really shouldn't have. Thursday morning I did 3.5 x 1 mile repeats at 6:22, stopping halfway through the last interval because of poop.  Sure, my lungs and leg muscles were screaming too. Those are really fast miles! But the foot felt fine, and that's what I was really trying to pay attention to.

Saturday had the race, and by the time we got back from white lake I was too worn out to do anything else. I thought we'd get back around 12 or 1 pm, not the 4 pm arrival time. So it was kind of hosed. I napped and watched football. Then Sunday I had a split run day to make things a bit more manageable.  I started with a 7 mile run before church that felt pretty good.  I was definitely fatigued from the race, but I got by.

At church, we voted in a new preacher! Finally our 3 year search for a new senior pastor has been concluded. This guy is incredible. He brings a charisma and ease to the pulpit that is exciting.

Then after a quick lunch, Bigun and I went out for an Indian Princess charity event.  We were filling bags of food for Stop Hunger Now who ships dried foods like rice to other countries. It was an assembly line process and we were on the bag sealing machines.

The coolest part about this was that Bigun really started to understand why charity work is important. She's really starting to mature into someone that I am so proud of, and it's really cool for me to get to see those gears start to turn like that. It feels good to help other people, doesn't it daddy?  yes, it does.

After we got back home I grabbed a short nap, then got out for a 10 mile ride and another 7 mile run. Tough workout, but that was a great way to finish off a long, hard week.

Thank goodness it's time for a recovery week. After this it's 2 weeks of peak training, then taper time. Ironman is only 6 weeks away!

Cantata Time! and CT

The Cantata went great Sunday.  There is audio online at the Forest Hills website, the recording is called I hear the Prophet Calling from Dec 16.  My solo starts 14:33 into the recording, and is only the first few lines.  The whole thing is a very picturesque retelling of the Christmas story.

I Hear the Prophet Calling by Pepper Choplin is a particularly descriptive and relatable version of when Jesus was born.  Mary rocking a baby to sleep and singing a lullaby seems exactly the same way I used to sing to my babies.  The way he describes a star in the sky to illuminate all of mankind is certainly enough to reset your point of view.

I can't allow myself to fully process what happened in Connecticut on Friday.  Those kids were the same age as my kids.  That could have easily been my city.  I can't imagine what those families are going through.  Losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to us as parents.  I don't care how old your kid is too, you should not outlive your children.  If they are in kindergarten, or about to graduate college, or killed on the job, or just dies early in retirement.  You should not outlive your children.

The cantata left me with a new perspective.  God came to us as Jesus the son with the foreknowledge that he was going to die on the cross.  It was a willing sacrifice, I know.  But that, to me, seems like the ultimate loss of a child.  And a parent living longer than a child is the hardest thing we could ever go through.  The image that was created of Mary holding the baby Jesus in the manger, singing a soft lullaby and trying to rock him to sleep hit me hard knowing what the eventual outcome would be. 

So in Connecticut right now there are a lot of grieving parents.  A lot of people are finding themselves in a position that nobody should ever be in.  I hope they can find some comfort.  I'm not sure I was able to pull this theory together into a cohesive post, but most of my ramblings barely make sense without an interpreter.