Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Train hard till it hurts and then some


This afternoon with much of the rest of the nation I cheered on Sir Chris Hoy as he won his 6th Olympic Gold Medal. A truly amazing athlete but his continued success can leave is thinking that it is all too easy.

We see a moment of glory while he has lived through years of tough and sometime the torment of training.

Here excerpt from an article in the Telegraph a year ago:

“I believe the medals are won now as much as they are on the day,”Hoy said. “People talk about pulling it out on the day but that’s nonsense. It is physically impossible to perform above what you can do.” Here Hoy breaks down what goes into training for elite cycling competition, a regime so brutal it leaves you in what he describes as “a kind of hell”, fetal, needing to vomit and with lactic acid burning through you — every agonising step up the stairway to the Olympic podium."

Today he talked again about the pain that he inflicted on himself cycling knowing that even when he managed to demount that the pain of lactic acid had only begun to build.

It reminded me that champions are made far from the arena of competition. Glory is founded in pain before it is released in the win.

The Bible compares this Christian life to that of an athlete so maybe just maybe I have something to learn from Sir Chris Hoy.

You've all been to the stadium and seen the athletes race. Everyone runs; one wins. Run to win. All good athletes train hard. They do it for a gold medal that tarnishes and fades. You're after one that's gold eternally. - 1 Cor 9 v 24-25

This is no afternoon athletic contest that we'll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels. - Eph 6 v 10 -12

Time to train till we feel the pain and then some more!

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