The Lord of the Rings – Part 3

OK. There are so many themes and messages in this trilogy that I could write an entire book. And entire books have been written. But I want to focus on 2 things.

First. Evil cannot win. It cannot sustain itself. By nature it cannot win. Some may say that the basic quality of evil is the desire for power. And certainly that is in there. But I think the basic quality or nature of evil is that it consumes. And it consumes everything. And eventual that means it consumes itself. It occurred to me as the order went out for the orcs to attack Minas Tirith and “leave nothing alive,” what next? After evil wipes out all the good, what is left for evil to do. It is not like the orcs are going to then settle down and start little orc families. After Sauron conquers all of Middle Earth and then has all the power, what next? Will he build a gazebo and rest on his back porch. No. The need to consume is still there. Evil is about consumption. That gives me pause when I think of how our society consumes. We consume. We consume. We consume. It is interesting how that idea parallels the search for riches. How much money is enough? Just a little bit more. How much economic growth is enough? Just a little bit more. How much corporate gain is enough? Just a little bit more than last year. The desire for more never stops. And we set up this country as a free place to do that and called it wonderful and good and based on consumption. We lie about it to ourselves. We veil ourselves with how we have to consume to progress. We have to consume to keep the economy going. If we don’t consume, it will all break down. I think we ought to be very very careful about how we have made ourselves all about consumption. Because evil is about consumption. That does not mean that all consumption is evil. But it is a slippery slope.

Point number two is a little more esoteric. At one point on the journey of Frodo and Sam and led by Gollum, they are on the secret staircase which leads to the Dark Tower. They have stopped to rest. Gollum frames Sam by wasting what food they have left. It is his last attempt to isolate Frodo from Sam so that he can get to ring more easily. The plot works and Frodo sends Sam home.

During the exchange, Gollum tells Frodo that only he, Gollum, truly understands the burden the Frodo bears. That “the fat little hobbit” cannot possibly understand as he has not carried the ring/burden. Sam pleads with Frodo to listen to him, that Gollum is a deceptive liar, but Frodo refuses to hear it. He sends Sam home. It is really amazing to watch because it mimics what all of us do in real life. We choose to hold on to the burden, the pain, the rage, the anger. Why? Because it at least feels comfortable. There is some empathy there. We become co-dependent on the pain. Peace is foreign. We do not know what lies in that realm. We are afraid of the unknown. So we refuse to listen to those who are trying to help us, to those who can help us most, to those who love us the most. And we instead choose to listen to those who would deceive us. Later on, at Mount Doom, as Frodo is trying to decide to drop the ring into the fire to destroy it, he again has trouble letting go of his pain, of his burden. Sam says to him, “Just let it go.” I could see the pain in Sam’s eyes. The tiredness. The anguish. They had come so far. Been through so much. And still Frodo would not let it go. All he had to do was just let it go. Oh how that mirrors the human condition so much.

So that is it. I love these movies. They awaken emotion and truth and inspiration within me. If you haven’t seem them, you should.

The Lord of the Rings – Part 2

The boys LOR weekend continues. We watched number 2, The Two Towers, last night while eating greasy burgers from Sonic and drinking a 2 liter of Mountain Dew. Jack thought that this one was more “creepy” than the number 1, mainly because of the marsh that they cross where dead people are floating in the water face up, reminders of battles past. But we survived and will probably knock number 3 out this morning. Jack and Jace don’t know it yet as they are still asleep. I will surprise them when they wake up.

I see the main theme in the second film as that of enduring friendship. How odd that friendship is what Paul Hill talked about last night at church. He talked about how we usually assign only “agape” love to god. This type of love is objective. It says that I will love you always no matter what you do or where you go. I will not leave you. What this type of love is not is sentimental. It does not move you. It is almost cold (my words). It is by choice. He explained that while god certainly has this kind of love for us, he also has “phileo” for us. This is the kind of love you have for a friend. It is affectionate, sentimental, emotional. It moves you. And that god also has this kind of love for us. He likes us. He wants to be where we are. He has affection for us. That is a powerful thought and something from which I have wandered in the last few months.

Amazing how these kinds of love are very much at play in Frodo and Sam’s relationship. As Frodo carries the ring, it changes him, as it does to anyone who possesses it. We see it change Bilbo. He does not want to give it up. We see it change Gollum for certain. He transforms from a young boy to the miserable creature that he is. We see Gandalf, who understands its power, refuse to even touch it. We see countless men destroyed by it, Boromir, Isuldur, etc. So as Frodo possesses it longer and longer while on the journey to destroy it, he is gradually affected by it, not wanting to separate from it, being hyper-suspicious of others trying to take it, feeling its weight. We even see him at times acting like Gollum, calling it “precious.” Jack, my 10 year old, even picked up that himself without my prompting (he is a very smart boy).

Well, Sam stands firm. He does not give up on Frodo. He offers Frodo grace. He encourages Frodo. He saves Frodo from injury and death. He never leaves Frodo’s side. Some of that is obviously “agape.” He even states that he made a promise to Gandalf to always keep an eye on Frodo. It is obvious that he is making a choice not to break it. It is a very objective love. But he also is filled with much “phileo” as he and Frodo journey. And I think the “phileo” even increases as the journey progresses. Despite Frodo pinning Sam to the ground and holding Sting (Frodo’s sword) to Sam’s throat, Sam still holds true with obvious love and compassion and grace for his friend. That is “phileo” in action. It is not a cold love that we see. It is genuine affection, and that is despite how he is treated by Frodo at times. And after the knife incident when Frodo realizes what he is doing and is on the verge of abandoning the task, Sam gives a moving speech of hope in the good of men and the world.

I want that kind of friend. I want to be the recipient of that kind of friendship. I want to have that kind of relationship with Christ. I want to have that kind of relationship with Karmen (of course I would like some, no a lot, of “eros” added in here). And so I hear the boys stirring now. They again slept on the floor in my room, but of course The Lord of the Rings is “not scary” to hear them talk about it. The just “like sleeping on the floor in your room.”

The Lord of the Rings – Part 1

I first read The Hobbit when I was a freshman at Little Rock Catholic High School For Boys. It was on the reading list for my English class. I fell in love with the story. As the trilogy also subsequently appeared on the reading list, I completed the series. I again read it in its entirety before each of the movies came out a few years back. I have now watched the entire trilogy multiple times. There is so much in those movies that I actually enjoy seeing them over and over. There are not many movies that I enjoy watching for the 4th and 5th time. These I do. Well my boys have been asking non-stop questions about them since seeing a snippet of one while in Tempe a couple weeks back. To this point we have felt maybe they were too intense for their 9 and 10 year old brains. But they have seen all 6 Star Wars and all 3 Pirates of the Carribean so we figured they could probably handle these now. So Karmen is OOT this weekend, and we decided to make this a Lord of the Rings weekend. We watched the first one tonight.

Do you ever have those times where you look at yourself and realize that you have fallen into some of your old ways without even realizing it? Things happen, you do a few stupid things, someone calls you out, and all of a sudden you see yourself more clearly for who you are. That happened today and a phrase from the movie tonight was like a laser exposing my charade. These movies are good for that, exposing truth.

The Fellowship has been forced to take a path through the mines of Mount Moriah and are stopping for a rest as Gandalf considers which corridor they should select for travel. He and Frodo begin a conversation which centers on Gollum. Frodo says that it is a pity that Bilbo did not kill Gollum when he had the chance. Gandalf’s response is a laser that exposes truth. He explains that it was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. And then he gives this quote, “Do not be to eager to deal out death and judgment.” In flies the arrow straight to my core.

I became very clearly aware today and tonight about how that old problem of selfishness and an unhealthy self-focus has crept back into my behavior. How I have been passing out a lot of judgment. Most of it in subtle ways but still very much there. I see it mostly in my responses to others. In the way I am too quick to take offense. In the way I am unwilling to truly listen. In the way I have no time for others. In the way I would rather lecture someone than listen. In the way I am more concerned about being understood than trying to understand. In the way I have different standards for others than I have for myself. In the way I expect grace from others but give little in return to them. In the way I can argue the crap out of anything. In the way I think I am “above all that.” In the way I tend to see things too black and white, running and hiding behind theology or rules without asking the tough questions sometimes. In the way I look to exclude rather than include. It just makes my soul feel black.

So if you have been the recipient of my judgment recently in any way, I apologize sincerely from my core. I have done that truly human dance of taking 3 steps forward and then 2 steps back. But yet again I have been graciously refocused although it feels more like a slap in the face than anything involving grace. And even thought the dance is back and forth, if I just stay in the game I make progress no matter how slow it may be. And sometimes just staying in the race turns you into an Ironman. Couldn’t resist that one.

We are watching part 2 tomorrow night. Will probably be rocked by something else so stay tuned for part 2 on the blog.

The Details

I feel like I need to thank everyone first off here for following me during the race. There have been countless numbers of you who checked out ironman.com and even a few who stayed up until midnight to watch me finish live on the video feed. You all are awesome. And to all who checked my blog on the 15th I also want to thank you. I received 77 hits on that day which more than doubled my previous high. All of you have made me feel very loved. I am honored to have you as friends. Many of you are from Wheatland, and it is starting to feel like home to me there. Thanks.

OK. The details. This may get a bit long so don’t feel badly if you check out early and come back later. Or maybe you won’t come back later. That’s OK. Read what you want to. At the end I will speak to what this has taught me so if you are not interested in the rest, maybe just jump to the end.

The race started at 7:00 AM. I was up at 3:30 AM to shower and drink a couple of Odwalla’s. I know from experience that putting food in my gut on race morning with my pre-race nervous stomach is just not a good idea so I used the vanilla protein Odwalla’s. The were about 800 calories together, and I added a cup of coffee with cream and sugar while sitting by the fire in the courtyard of our hotel, the Tempe Mission Palms. I read Isaiah 44:8 and made my way down to the transition area (the area where all the bikes and clothes were organized for the different segments of the race). Topped off my tires at the bike tech station in transition, added a few items to my transition bags, put my Gatorade and food on my bike, drained my nervous stomach and bladder a few times, found Karmen and The Boys who had made their way down by about 6:30. Near 6:40 I got body marked with my race number and put on my wetsuit. The professional triathletes started at 6:45. The 2200 of us other racers then all got in the water for the deep water start at 7:00. It is rather surreal jumping into a lake with that many other people who look just like you with their goggles, wetsuits, and swim caps in place. The only real identifiers were the girls in pink caps and the boys in blue. I located my family on the bridge above me, but they couldn’t pick me out of the mass of swimmers.

It is also quite a different experience to swim 2.4 miles with 2000+ other people. There is just no avoiding collisions. At least we are all going in the same direction so there is no head on stuff. But I got kicked in the face, in the head, in the gut. I got grabbed and groped. I almost lost my goggles a time or two. I almost lost the timing chip around my right ankle from someone grabbing me there and had to stop and tuck it back up under my wetsuit. But I did my share of grabbing and kicking and groping too. It just goes with the territory. One guy that I came up against acted like he had just had enough and forearmed me in the right ribs. I just popped up and glared at him like, “If you can’t handle it you weenie, get out of the water.” My goal was to finish the swim feeling rather like I had not done much work. And I would have to say that is just about how I felt. The swim has always been pretty easy for me. I am always just glad to be getting out of a medium, water, that is potentially lethal, and into a medium, air, that my lungs can easily handle no matter what. There are always people to help you climb out of the water and then to help you peel your wetsuit off. It was humorous to me to look around and see people soaking wet sitting on the ground kicking while someone else is pulling their wetsuit off. Then we all hop up and run to get our bike clothes and into a tent to change. It really is just organized chaos.

The bike started well but soon became more than any of us had anticipated. It is a course that is about 34 miles. You complete the 112 miles by doing three loops. It starts in Tempe, right by ASU and Tempe Town Lake where the swim took place, and goes out of town northeast onto the Indian reservation and back so the terrain changes from city to desert pretty fast. About 8 miles into the first loop the wind just became vicious at about 20 mph sustained directly head on from out of the northeast. Dust was in the air. The turn around point is at mile 17 and the entire route out is slightly uphill. So to average much more than 12-14 mph into a 20 mph wind going uphill was very exciting. I kept thinking that all I have to do is get to that 17 mile turn around, and then I will fly back into town which is exactly what happened. The ride out took about 1:40 and then averaging about 25-27 mph with the wind at my back going downhill took about 0:40. That 17 miles back into town was awesome.

So by the end of my first bike loop I was about 3 hours into the race. It is 10 AM and starting to warm up a bit. I had predetermined that I needed to drink about 40 ounces an hour and was able to do that fairly well, about half Gatorade and half water. The second loop was about the same. The pro’s began to lap the rest of the pack here, them on their 3rd loop while we were on our 2nd loop. They were able to average 18-19 mph going up hill into the wind. That is just ridiculous. The first male pro’s passed me as I was starting my second lap. The first female pro’s passed me as I was getting to the turn around point on my second lap. The wind was just as ferocious as the first lap, and the downhill back into town was just as much fun. The conditions were taking their toll on the field though. I saw a couple of athletes get hauled off in ambulances from various points on the bike course. There were also rumors going through the field that there had been a couple of bad crashes. The entire course was strewn with water bottles, spare tubes, CO2 cartridges, etc due to the rough conditions, and I counted probably at least 20 athletes who had pulled over along the side of the course with bike mechanical failures. I was lucky to avoid all that. I did drop one water bottle.

As I started my third lap the temperature was now getting into the mid 90’s. The temp reading on my bike computer topped out at 104 later in this lap. The thought in my head was just making it to the turnaround, and then I could rest coming back down into town. But the wind changed a bit and was not nearly as advantageous coming back into town. About the last 10 miles I felt an old familiar problem start to rear its head. In several of the previous 70.3 mile triathlons that I have done and the Pikes Peak Marathon and Ascent, I have seemed to hit a wall which I have interpreted as dehydration. My mouth gets really dry. I get dizzy. I feel nausea. I have thrown up before. It has gotten better each race, happening later and later in the race as I have focussed on better hydration. I thought I was going to lick it this race, but there it was again. I took my time in transition getting changed. They had ice there so I cooled down a bit. As the sunscreen gal was lubing all my exposed parts I almost fell over. She escorted me to the medical tent.

There they gave me chicken soup saying that I was likely salt deprived in the heat. And you know what, after about 20 minutes, I began to feel better. Still dry but not dizzy and no nausea. They cleared me to go back out on the course, so I started the run. I figured that I was probably just barely starting to recover so I decided to set as aggressive a walking pace as I could for a few miles and continue to drink soup along with Gatorade at all the aid stations which were positioned about every mile along 8.5 mile run course. I was able to go at just over 4 miles per hour walking. I went through another brief period about 3 miles into the run where I again felt nausea, dizziness, and dry mouth. I increased my soup and Gatorade consumption and by about mile 6-7 was feeling much stronger. At that point I began to run and was able to run 95% of the remained 18-19 miles. As it got towards 5-6 PM and the sun set it cooled off nicely to take the heat out of the equation. It was odd to me how I just felt stronger and stronger as the run continued. Don’t get me wrong. I definitely felt fatigue and tiredness and by the finish was exhausted. But the nausea and dizziness never returned. I think it was because I finally replaced my salt enough along with adequate fluid intake. I was able to run faster and faster and put together an 8 minute mile for the last mile into the finish at 10:30 PM.

So in all, it was a grueling day but also very satisfying. I learned after the race that stats-wise this was the 3rd most grueling Ironman race in history. 18% of the athletes that started the race did not finish. So I feel exceptionally good about finishing my 1st Ironman under these conditions. This week of recovery has been very calm, peaceful, and I have felt centered and serene. And I have an incredible sense of accomplishment. The rest this week has been very enjoyable. I have felt sore, but not horribly, and tired. Yesterday I tried to run a bit, and that was a joke. It is obvious that I have some deep set fatigue and need more rest. I may try again Saturday or Sunday. Most of the advice givers recommend nothing for about 5-7 days and then only light workouts, not longer than an hour, for a couple of weeks. My next 70.3 is June 29 in Lubbock, Tx, so I have some time and am certainly over trained for that. Now for what I learned.

I have felt all along like God brought me on this adventure to teach me something and have been trying to pay attention to what that might be. It has taken several days to process it all and come to some sort of conclusion on that, and I may even have more insight as time goes along and I get further away from this thing. But I think the main thing I have learned is that I believe this is the first time in my life that I have done something totally pure. And by that I mean something that was only for me, where I didn’t care what accolades I got, where what others were thinking was not part of my motivation, where I felt totally engrossed in what I was doing, where I completely loved what I was doing. Most of the other stuff I have done (grades, college basketball, medical school, residency, job changes, church activities) have been done partly for the recognition I think. This was not. This was about me and only me. It was pure, and completing it feels pure and wholesome.

I also learned something about deserts. Paul Hill during one of our Lent services talked about Christ being tempted in the desert and how that was a preparation for confronting Satan rather than just something to make the confrontation more difficult which is what I always thought. He taught that at a time in my training where I needed to understand that concept. I was discouraged and felt weak. That new perspective changed a lot for me. And I now can also see how this race was possibly a desert, preparing me better for life. Karmen again told me on Monday, as she has after other races, that she likes me “this way.” When I inquired as to what “this way” means she said calm, kind, happy, still, at peace, present. And you know, I do feel all those things after a race. And those things are more intense after this particular race, I think just because this is the biggest thing I have attempted in my entire life, and I did it. I feel at peace and purified by the desert. It is interesting that this race took place in the desert. Next to surfing in the ocean, the desert is a place that deeply connects me with God.

So I agree with Karmen. These races do do something for me that I can’t quite explain. They purge me. They reset me. They calm me. They center me. It feels sort of nebulous, and I am not quite certain why nothing else in my life seems to have that same effect. Maybe it is that male instinct for battle and a good fight that I am able to calm or spend by doing this. I am not sure. But I do know that it helps me. It makes me healthier. It makes be a better lover. It makes me a better dad. It helps me relate in a real manner with God. It makes me a better husband. It makes me a better friend. And so I am entered in the 2009 Arizona Ironman.

Thanks again for reading and following along for these months. If I have more insight I will post some more on this. And by the way, the final step was getting the Ironman logo tatooed on my right calf. It is also done. And my favorite rock song began playing as King Pete started my Ironman tatoo. Best of Both Worlds by Van Halen.

Ironman Arizona 2008 – Been There, Done That!

Well, it wasn’t glamorous, but it’s done. Completed. I finished, which was my main goal. Karmen, Jack, Jace, and I are still in Tempe having a day of rest so this will be a short post. I have been eating a lot of junk today (and drinking a Dew or two). I just wanted to get a note down here for all who may have been following or interested. I owe a huge thanks to Karmen, Jack, Jace, and my dad and mom who stayed out for 15 and 1/2 hours following my progress. They were at every point they could be along the course to encourage me as I completed each lap. They are awesome, especially Karmen, who has put up with all my compulsiveness about this.

In short is was a brutal day approaching 100 degrees with sustained 15-20 mph winds. Approximately 500 athletes did not even finish including 4 pro’s. I had some issues with moderately severe dehydration and hyponatremia which bought me about an hour in the medical tent before I started the run, but I did not quit and finished strong at 10:30 PM last night. I feel tired today and moderately sore in places, especially the areas around my buttocks and the bottoms of my feet not to mention a few muscles here and there. I will post on the details later.