Thunder Thighs

A few weeks ago, my friend Jess posted this awesome Nike ad on her Facebook page. (Please click on the picture, and it will blow up to be larger in a separate window so that you can read the text. Do it now, I'll wait.)

I loved it at the time, but wasn't really sure I could claim it.  I mean, yes, I do have thunder thighs, but I wasn't sure I could claim to be as strong as the person in the ad.  I mean, I'm not that great of a runner, and I've never done a marathon, right?

That was before last weekend when I ran my first triathlon.  My friend Amie was there and took several great pictures of me before, during and after the race, including this one.

My first thought when I saw it was "Look at those thunder thighs!"  My gut reaction was completely negative. I even said something out loud like "Ugh, look at my legs."  After hearing this reaction, Amie even cropped my legs out of the picture when she posted it on Facebook later.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how proud I should be of these thunder thighs. They carried the brunt of the abuse during my tri. They helped me run up out of that beach, jump on a bike for 9.3 miles and then run/walk another 3.1.  They've carried me up mountains during hikes and helped me participate in many a jump picture. I'm proud of what they've accomplished for me.   Like the ad says, "I have thunder thighs, and that's a compliment because they are strong and toned and muscular."

Part of this journey is learning to love your body. What have your thunder thighs done for you lately?

Why I Love Hiking

This weekend I went hiking with friends to a most amazing summit that overlooked the Linville Gorge.

It made me realize that I've never posted about hiking.  I'm not a serious hiker, but I do go out on day hikes every couple of months.  I love it. It's a chance to get outside, see amazing things and spend time with friends.

It's really just a glorified walk in the woods that goes uphill.  The whole time I'm walking, I'm looking down and watching my step.  There are rocks and tree roots and mud in the path that you have to watch out for so you don't slip and fall.  I'm always very focused on the ground during a hike and often forget to look up and around to enjoy the scenery.

However, when we get to a summit, you can't miss the scenery. We always stop and spend time there, resting, eating, taking pictures and enjoying the views.  This place we visited over the weekend (see picture at right) was amazing, with 360 degree views of the North Carolina mountains.

It's funny how easy it is to become so focused on some things that you can completely miss amazing things happening right in front of you. Hiking is one of those great activities that remind me how grateful I am to be fit and healthy. I never could have done this climb two years ago (or I could've, but it would've taken me a million times longer because I would've had to stop so much.).

 Here's to keeping our eyes open to seeing all of the cool things around us!

First Bloom

Today I had my first bloom of day lily season.  If you do not know, I am quite proud of my day lilies. Many of these flowers were originally planted in my grandmother's yard in Illinois.  Over the years, as they multiplied, my dad took the new growth to his yard in South Carolina.  After I bought my house a few years ago, Dad divided the plants in his yard and helped me plant some in mine. I'm proud to say that my flowers were planted in both Granny's and Dad's yard before finding a home in mine.

First Bloom 2011!

Each year at the end of May and beginning of June, I am eager to take Bon outside each morning so I can see which day lilies are blooming.  Each day brings new flowers and new beauty to my yard.

This past fall, there was some neighborhood drama that caused me to move my day lilies to a newly created bed near the house. I wrote the post, Roots, about that difficult task. A few months later I spent another weekend working on the bed, and wrote the Everything and Nothing post about that.

In both of those posts I was angry, tired and bitter.  Moving the day lilies were a lot of hard work and not my ideal way of spending my Saturdays.  But today, when this beauty of a bloom showed up in my yard I was perhaps even more excited and grateful to see the bloom, precisely because of the hard work I had put in this winter. Hard work always comes before results.

Of course, I can apply this to my weight loss journey. It is hard. Eating right is no fun. Sometimes the weeds take over, and I make more poor choices than I do healthy ones.  In the end, though, the blooms that I see (blooms=results in this analogy) make it all worth it.

If you're trying to lose weight and you find yourself tired or discouraged, remember that if you stick with it, summer will come.  Think of the joy and excitement of the blooming lilies and just keep trying!


  "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant." -Anne Bradstreet

Delight in Weaknesses

Have you heard of Paul's thorn in the flesh?  If not, here is the passage from 2 Corinthians 12:


Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 


No one knows what Paul's thorn in the flesh was, and theologians have often speculated on what it could've been.  A vice?  A physical ailment?  No one knows, and I don't believe we need to know for this passage to be pertinent to our lives today.


During this season of my life where I am struggling so mightily against food and for weight loss/healthy eating habits, the "thorn in the flesh" resonates with me particularly.  The lure of food seems to be my thorn in the flesh, the thing that I wish more than anything the Lord would just remove. If he would just step in and fix me, I would live a happier, healthier life. Problem solved.


This week I was bemoaning my own thorn in the flesh when it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I am not the only one who feels a connection to Paul in this passage. I bet many people feel like they have a thorn in the flesh; a problem or a temptation that haunts them. I'm not alone in this.


Are you struggling? Maybe with health issues or money issues or job issues or sin issues?  If you are, first let me say, I understand the struggle. But we should take hope in the words of Paul that follow his admission of his struggle:


⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.


It's hard to believe that we should delight in our own imperfections.  I want to believe it, I really do, but even as a  professing Christian it is hard to accept the words in this passage.  It's just the opposite of what comes natural, I guess.  What do you think?  Do you boast about your weaknesses? If you know the feeling of the thorn in the flesh, does the rest of this passage give you some peace?  We are not perfect, only Jesus was.

Farm Fresh Friday, week 5

People, I am trying to be an enthusiastic vegetable eater with my CSA Farm deliveries, but it is getting hard.  I received my week five deliveries today and these vegetables just keep coming.
This week I got:
Kale
Radishes
Potatoes
Squash
Zucchini
Cabbage
And drum roll, please....lima beans! (Drum roll because it's the only new veggie in this week's box, but I have had them before.)


I haven't even finished all of the veggies from last week. This is the fourth week I've been given an entire head of cabbage.  Today, though, I gave the whole head to my friend that I'm splitting the box with. I just couldn't deal with more cabbage.


I think I'm going to have to freeze some of last week's veggies before they go bad.  Anybody know any good recipes for squash?  So far I've just roasted them and grilled them, but I'd love to do something a bit more creative with them. Let me know!

Triathletes Run

Picking up from yesterday's Triathletes Bike post, Tuesday's Triathletes Swim post and the general overview post...

As soon as I racked my bike and tossed my helmet, I was running out of transition for the run portion or the race.  There's just something about the transition area that keeps the adrenalin running.  I had completely planned to walk the first five minutes of the race at least to allow my legs to adjust from being on the bike for so long.  So as I'm jogging along in the transition area I kept saying to myself, "Stop running, stop running, you should be walking." Finally about halfway through I did stop running and moved to a fast walk.

I kept up the fast walk for longer than I expected to.  I started thinking about how I walk almost as fast as I run, and it would be worth it to walk longer and be able to run more later. When I started running, I kept mostly to frequent, short bursts. I had no way to measure time, I'd forgotten to take my watch off my bike and I didn't have my headphones/iphone with me. In the end, I probably walked about 60 percent of the 3.1 mile  run.  I kept thinking, "Will I be disappointed in myself for not running more?" The answer was always no.  I was accomplishing enough by finishing the race.

This leg of the journey was crowded. We ran on a narrow path. It was an out and back course- we sprinters turned around after 1.5 miles, but the Olympic distance participants were on the same course. They had a 6.2 mile run, and they had to turn around at 3.1 miles.  There was constantly people passing you in both directions.  This is where I felt a lot of encouragement from my fellow triathletes.  A lot of them said, "Good job!" or "Keep going!" to me as we passed. I think this is because I was walking a lot and they felt sorry for me, but I did not feel sorry for myself. I was being smart. They all looked pretty miserable themselves, and I was chipper.

The path wound along the edge of the beach. It was beautiful to look out over the seagrass and see the ocean and the sun shining on it.  It was also hot. There was no shade and by this time it was 8:45 or 9 a.m.

As I neared the finish line, I again heard my friends cheering for me.  Right at the end, I was supposed to veer off the path, run through the grass and under the finish line banner.  I almost missed it!  Spectators standing there had to tell me to turn!  I was so focused on the path in front of me that I didn't see the turn. I yelled "Thank you!" over my shoulder and veered to the finish.

At first I was sad...the clock over the finish line said 2 hours and 15 minutes, and I was hoping for more like 1 hour and 30 minutes.  After awhile it dawned on me that the clock started from the very first wave of the race, which was approximately 42 minutes before I started. This made me feel much better.

When I saw the medals all lined up afterward, I got very jealous and hopeful that maybe I had possibly earned one? They had medals for the top 3 finishers in each division, and I eventually found out that I finished 8th in my division.  So no medal this year, but something to strive for in the future. Someday I will earn a medal for something I do. I promise.

At the finish line post race. :

In the transition area after...this is how my
bike was racked, except it was crowded
with a bunch of other bikes.

Triathletes Bike

Picking up from yesterday's Triathletes Swim post and the general overview post...

After throwing on a shirt, shoes, shorts and a helmet in transition, I walked my bike out of the transition area and mounted for the 9.3 mile ride.  The route took us around the top half of this beautiful island.  Most of the course was shaded by giant trees covered in hanging moss. It was beautiful and cool.

Right away, I saw one of the awesome signs made by my friends and it made me tear up.  I am so loved.

I began passing people at first, which made me feel good. I also got passed by quite a few people.  There were long stretches, though, without another biker in sight.  Nine miles is a long time to be riding by yourself with no headphones (No headphones is a USAT rule.)  I eventually started singing "Magic" by B.O.B. at the top of my lungs (the last song I heard before leaving my car that morning). Unfortunately I only know two lines, so I began to annoy even myself. Imagine this repeating over and over: "I've got the magic in me. Every time I touch a track it turns to gold. I've got the magic in me."

I also discovered that a course that is "flat and fast" is pretty boring and guarantees steady cycling.  My legs were pumping consistently the whole time. There is no place as flat as the beach here at home, so I had never trained for that. They held up pretty well.

There were cars allowed on the course. I thought that might be a problem since I've done all my training in city parks.  It turned out not to be a big deal. Except for one time where a car was going so slow I ended up passing it.  That was just annoying.  

I expected to bike a 5 minute mile, but I ended up closer to a 4 minute mile, which was surprising.  Almost halfway through, the Olympic distance athletes started coming back around from the opposite direction. They had started long before me, and had to loop the island twice.  These are serious competitors who have fancy bikes and fancy helmets.  I was glad we were moving in opposite directions so they weren't passing me and making me feel bad. 

Somewhere around mile six or seven, I saw my friends again. This was a surprise. I didn't expect them to have time to make it out on the course to see me.  They started screaming my name and all I said back to them was "I can't take my hands off the handlebars!"  (Because I felt like they'd want me to wave at them, but I'm not confident enough in my biking to wave and bike at the same time.*)

I finished the bike portion, re-racked my bicycle in transition, discarded my helmet and added a visor and headed out for a run. Stay tuned tomorrow for the final leg of the journey.

*Yes, I just admitted that to the world.