100%?

This week started 2-a-days for soccer conditioning. We meet at 6:30 am to run two miles then do some combination of 20 yard sprints, 20 yard shuttles, box sprints, or hill sprints. Then we have a two hour practice in the evening. Needless to say I am SORE! I’m starting to recover now as my body compensates, and hopefully by our first scrimmage on Saturday I’ll be in supercompensation and feeling strong!

But all this work was making me think. I was seriously pushing my body this week, but how close to my actual limit was I pushing it? I mean we tell each other to give 100% in our runs and practice, but no one really does that. I don’t think any of us know what its like to push our bodies to their actual max. The only scenarios I can imagine where I would truly go 100% or more, is a situation that we perceive as dangerous. I picture a SEAL team member swimming in the ocean miles from shore… he will push himself way beyond what he thought he could in order to get to land because if he doesn’t, he’s dead. But maybe that’s a worst case scenario. How about this, some friends of mine experienced an emergency situation this summer when someone got badly injured. Two guys took off running up a huge hill in order to help and they later told me that was the fastest they had ever ran in their entire lives! It just makes me wonder how far I could push my body in a situation  like that.

I realize I’m only talking about the physical body here, but I think this would also apply to the mind.Well, just some of my thoughts this morning.

Why Hello There, Long Time No See!

Random picture that has nothing to do with the post below...

Once again, I ditched my blog for two months while I worked at camp. But that’s okay, because I’m back now.

Camp was… hard this year. I had some problems with some things but I’ve let that all go now. There is no use living in the past. While I say that, there were some really good things that came out of this summer. I learned a lot more about having a true servant’s heart and putting others before yourself. I made some new friends at various churches, which is really cool. There are now a good number of churches I could just randomly show up at and know at least one person there! And, I met this lovely girl, who’s absolute class. So, weighing the positives and the negatives… it was a fantastic summer!

Some bad news… I think I’m officially quitting Project 365. As fun as it was, it was really hard for me to keep it up. Maybe I will try it again next year, or at some other point in my life. I was able to learn some things though. I learned how hard it is to actually post a blog post every single day. I also learned a good bit about photography and how to take better pictures.

After camp I traveled up to Dayton to stay with some good friends and work at a youth event for a few days at the East Dayton Christian Church. It was a great time and I loved every minute of it!

After that I stayed at home for a couple days then moved into school on the following Saturday. It’s conditioning week for the soccer team. Conditioning week and I… well, it’s a love-hate relationship. I love to hate it. It’s only been a day and a half and I’m already extremely sore. I know my body though and I know I just have to power through tonight and maybe tomorrow morning before my body starts to compensate. I am happy where I’m at physically though. The first run on Monday morning was better than my best time last year which I did at the end of the week. And this morning I ran better than yesterday despite being crazy sore. So I’m happy.

Well that was my summer in a nutshell… an extremely small nutshell.

(p.s. I took that picture for my friend Corinne Hodnett… even though it isn’t spelled the exact same)

Ropes Course Training

5-28-10

For the past two days I have been going through ropes course training at camp. The main instructor is a director at the camp. He taught the group of us everything we needed to know about running the high ropes, low ropes, giant swing, zip line, and climbing tower. Since I’ve been running these for 3-4 years already, I was sort of an “instructor” as well. Half of the time he would teach them and the other half he would make me teach. This was good though, because it just helped me be better at what I do. There is a saying that the only way you know you’ve fully learned something is if you can teach it to someone else.

So when we were training on the high course, of course, I went up with the trainees to the very upper level and taught them how to completely set it up and break it down. Now, I’ve facilitated the high course hundreds of times, but when ever go up after not being up that high for a couple of months, I really remember how high up it is. We all went to the upper level and I realized… “Oh yea! This is really, really high”. The other three trainees were very scared and didn’t even want to venture off the main platform. I realized that I’m up here with my friends and I expect them to learn how to run all of it without being scared and here I am, not entirely confident… It was kind of eye opening for me. I realized that I needed to step it up and be strong for them. So I did and it worked! I got one of them to travel off of the main platform with me! Of course we still need to work on the other two.

The take away: sometimes fear is a good thing, it keeps us from doing stupid stuff, but often times it gets in the way of our rational thinking and causes way  more harm than good.