Another week in the books and another set of random adventures. I started the week by getting another batch of stories off to the union for the April issue of their magazine, the Record. Other than the editorial (each conference does a brief editorial at the begging of their section every month)that I'm still waiting on, everything is in on time. Which was good because we had another snow adventure on Tuesday.
I learned on the news that morning that this has been the foruth-snowiest winter on record for Dallas. Much like our last two winters in the Northwest. If this is the exception to the rule I can probably deal with business as usual.
Today I had my first field assignment: photographing a 7th/8th grade music festival at Southwestern Adventist University. It was a lot of trying to be inconspicuous with a very conspicuous camera and an even more conspicuous lens... but I did manage to get some good shots I think. Any shortcomings with the shots have nothing to do with the equipment. We are so spoiled here. Canon 5D Mark II, 2.8 glass from 28-200 and a FISHEYE lens (forgive me, but any photo-geeks reading this are going nuts right now).
Tuesday I hit the treadmill despite the snow. It was a rough run. I fought valiantly, but my pace was almost a minute off my last run. Curious to say the least. Tonight I figured out why. One of the treadmills in the workout area is stuck on an incline even though it says it's at zero. Guess which one I used Tuesday and didn't use tonight? MUCH BETTER.
To be fair, I'm sure I got a much better workout on Tuesday. But it's just so nice when my Nike+ adapter in my ipod tells me, "Congratulations! You just recorded your fastest mile." That's happened twice in the last week. Last Friday I averaged 7:20/mile for my two-mile run and tonight I knocked it down to 7:10. Before tonight the fastest time I had ever recorded for one mile was 7:13.
It's funny to me... normally I find myself in a funk this time of year. I don't know if I would always go so far as to say "seasonal depression," but it's definitely something like that. This year I've felt close to getting down a couple times, but then I find myself making pad thai, getting paired up to golf with three Adventists or slaying the treadmill with a merciless onslaught of unrelenting strides... and suddenly there's all this optimistic momentum that just carries me over the potential valleys.
In my devotional this morning there was a quote from Tom Landry (how fitting for Dallas) saying, "A coaches job is to teach grown men how to do what they don't want to do in order to become what they've always wanted to become." I have to smile to myself when I think of the list of "I'll nevers" that I find myself tossing aside. Things like "I'll never put onions in something I'm cooking just for me," or "I'll never be a good runner outside of just sprinting 100 yards or so." Listening to a coach you trust can lead to some pretty amazing results.
We don't begin to test the resources of God until we attempt the impossible.
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