Tuesday, September 30, 2008

One Thing I Do--Focus

One thing I’ve been working on (or at least should be working on) as I work out is focus. Whoever read my IM Loo race report knows that I was focused during the race, just on the wrong thing. Now, the workouts that I’ve been doing are intense, require focus, and should eventually translate to performing correctly in a race by making my muscles work the same (i.e. I’m creating the same feelings in the gym as I would have on the road). So is it working? I thought so, until I remembered what I was focused on last time. Instead of focusing on my pushups, I was watching the 3-year-old who was playing with my watch. I needed the watch to tell me when I was done, and needed her not to play with it and inadvertently stop my timer.

When I told my trainer this, he wondered aloud whether he had taught me that. Obviously I knew the answer was no. And then I realized how long of a road I have ahead of me.

Philippians 3:12–16 reminds me of what I really need to be focused on: “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind.

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