Week 5 Uncovering the athlete

There was a series of posts last week in P90X blog-land referring to the athlete in all of us doing the program. At first glance I did not think that much of it, but pondered the thought of us working, sweating, and of course, making ourselves better. Somehow there was a deeper message intended for me as the athlete theme began to pop up in work conversations and few other unexpected places. That is usually when God is trying to get some deeper message into my incredibly dense head.

This led me to a deep thought, what is the true purpose of P90X for me? The shallow answer was health, fitness, happiness, and all the usual “my body is a temple” conclusions that are enough good reasons to dedicate the daily timeslot. When I dug deep, and studied my heart, I could not help but find part of my motivation rooted in vanity and a simple desire to look better and be noticed. Perhaps not the most grave of all thoughts, but it certainly is a short term motivation that will eventually die off once I feel satisfied with a new me.

I realize great things come when we align our hearts with God’s will. That’s what I truly want, great things, the desires that only God can provide (Psalm 37, 3-4). I decided to replace any part of my P90X journey focused on appearance with crazy athletic goals. I have learned first hand that anything is truly possible in Christ. That led me to open the race calendar and pick an insane challenge that has eluded me the past several years. It’s time to get busy!

Getting back to the workouts, I mixed up the routine towards the end of week 5 due to weekend travel plans with the family. I decided to replace my Friday Kenpo with a 14 mile run which was a great butt kickin. I hit Monday with Chest, Back, and Tri followed by a hard 55 mile bike ride with my cycling buds. It was great to be lighter and stronger on the ride allowing me to dump them all on the big climb and drag them home into a headwind. Hopefully there will be more of that coming all summer.

This post may be more transparent than usual but discovered adding athletic goals into my P90X journey to be nothing short of invigorating. Now I have a big goal out there to help drive the decision to do one more rep, hold the mayo, and forget the snooze button when the 5 bell rings each day. No sense of comfort now, I have a long, long way to go, literally.