My First Triathlon!

So, I'm doing the True Cougar Triathlon this Saturday and I'm getting really excited about it. It's just a sprint triathlon, but I'm really excited about it! It's a different order than normal as well. We start with a 2 mile run, then move to a 6 and change mile bike ride, and end with a 200 yard swim at the Richards Building. I'm terrible at swimming so that's what I've been focusing on the most in my training. I've been doing quite a bit of running, though, as well. Hopefully I'll have someone that will be willing to come take some pictures so I can put them up here.

I ran the full distance last night in just under 13 minutes and swam the full distance yesterday morning without stopping (which is way better than where I was when I started :))! I'm not really worried about the biking section since half of it is downhill anyway.

There were several reasons I became interested in doing triathlons. One obvious one is the great exercise that you get while training for three completely different events. The other, though, has proven deeper than I thought. Life is like a triathlon. Ok, life is actually like a decathlon or something, but we'll say triathlon for now. Just as you get feeling good at something, you have to start something else, or a new twist is thrown in somehow.

I definitely felt this way on my mission. Once I finally got to the point that I thought I knew how to do the work, I became a trainer, or a zone leader, and I had to figure out how to do that as well. Then, by the time I felt comfortable in those assignments, I was told I had to go home and start dating and going to school again.

Since returning home, that pattern has continued to repeat itself. A rhythm seems impossible because there's always a new challenge or assignment. Life's not about doing the same thing perfectly, over and over again. The point of life is to become more like Christ. To become more like Him, we must be stretched. Elder Maxwell said, "Christ loves us too much to merely let us go on being what we are now, for He knows what we have the possibility to become." He knows us perfectly and, thus, knows the areas we need to further develop to become perfect. Each new obstacle, challenge, assignment, is designed to push us beyond our level of comfort into a new realm of discipleship.

This is one of the main reasons I became interested in doing a triathlon. You can't just develop or train for one thing, like running. As soon as you're done running, you've got to hop on a bike and use a different set of muscles that you've also been working out, then as soon as that's over, you jump in the pool for yet another different challenge. You can't just focus on one aspect and do well. Life is the same. If you ever become too narrowly focused on one aspect of life/living the gospel/etc., a new challenge will surely come that will have you feeling very ill-prepared. A balance is required, and even then, adaptability and dogged perseverance are musts.