Not feeling like a competitor this week!

I should title this post, "you make plans and God laughs", which is exactly what has happened to me this week. One of my daughters has been sick with the dreaded lurgy which has meant me taking the entire week off work and doing very limited training. This has left me, naturally feeling like "what the heck are you doing with only 6 weeks to go and not training?" Then I remember that most of it is nutrition side of things being the most important thing right now, with the training being an added bonus. My motivation is to see this thing through properly to the end, enough said. Right now, I am the biggest I have ever been at this stage of the game at this time out, so there is probably some major work to be done. My issue is not seeing myself as being too fat, mine is in seeing more leanness than there probably is - which means it must be time for a round of photos - camera never lies!

I'm looking forward to Saturday though - I get to dish out some RPM punishment to Lindy and Lia plus I get to catch up with Dori and Lisa and some other bloggers to name a few. We're going to head out and have Vietnamese afterwards. I can't wait - so if there's anyone else that would like to join in the party, please let me know.

Hmm , what else - heard a very interesting talk on Sunday about some themes that underpin Christianity and how they apply to the athlete. There were four key points that I found pretty interesting. They were a) dissatisfaction - everyone, no matter what their station in life suffers from varying degrees of dissatisfaction - whether you're rich, poor or somewhere in the middle. In the athletic sense you are always striving towards betterment and if your performance is not up to par, in creeps dissatisfication.
Then, b) discipline - this refers to the point that human beings love discipline in order to live a full life. I know I've mentioned this before - along the lines of why a society without rules doesn't work. Lack of discipline works against the athlete - "sucking it up" and getting on with the job, no matter what it entails seems to be important for success both in athletic endeavours and with life in general. Then there was c) "trust" - in the Christian sense, that is trust in God - and for the athlete, it is "trust" in the plan. I've experienced the benefits of both - call me superstitious, but my prayers do get answered, sometimes though the answer was not what I expected. Finally there was d) gratitude and connection with the poor - to help you to be grateful for what you have and what you can do. Gratitude about how your body works is important for it to work well. My physio said to me when I complained about my shoulder once - "but you're nearly 40 years old and you've never had anything go wrong before this!" It was a great reminder to be thankful for how well things do work.

We all have a tendency to focus on remembering the immediate past, so if injured you will focus on the injury, not how well the body has served you previously.

Wow, I don't know where all that came from! Therein lies my lesson - I just wrote about the week not being to plan - no it hasn't been but I've got other things out of it, so it isn't all for nothing.