Much harder than expected....

If you will notice the pictures, you will see that I am all alone.  Due to my well known athletic abilities, one might think that is because I was out in front of the pack, sadly that was not the case and I was dead last much of the event (here is the link to the results).

A couple of weeks ago I competed in the Chattanooga Waterfront Triathlon... and finished!

Before the race, I had been working out and was in the best long distance shape I had been in since my college basketball days, so I thought that I was in pretty good shape.  I had to swim 1 mile, bike 26, and run 6.4.  I went down there with a few friends and we figured we were going to have a good time and be able to show off all the work we had done to train.  As the time of the race grew nearer, I became much more nervous and scared that I did not train quite hard enough.  Here was the reason... I had looked at the race course and it looked like I was prepared.  The bike course said that there was only 570 feet of elevation gain over the 26 miles.  This would be a pretty flat ride for East Tennessee.  For those of you in Johnson City, TN, the Tweetsie Trail is 10 miles and it has about 500 feet of gain going from Elizabethton to Johnson City.  Well, we drove the bike route for this the night before and it was no 500 feet of elevation gain.  It had to have been at least 4 times that (and I have not even started my fish story about the 28ft bass I caught in Boone Lake).  I mean really, this was scary!


Sometimes in life we think we are doing all we should do, but then, we realize, boy, I did not do what it takes.  Jesus even speaks to this where He says, For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
I can tell you, I came VERY close to not completing this triathlon.  The moral of the story is, "When you start to "count the cost" make sure you are using the correct tools as you count the cost.



Grace & Peace,
Andrew Darlington AAI, CRM, CBIA, CIC
www.VeritasRM.com

My sweetie and me!