Inspiration

I rarely meet people that really inspire me to try harder in life anymore. In fact, more often than not I become rather disappointed with others. While working at the gym I’ve noticed a guy coming to work out multiple times a day. Yeah? So what? A lot of people do that right? What makes this guy something different is the fact that he’s missing his right hand and about half his forearm. I remember helping him out on the declined bench press one day and asked him why he’s training so hard. What I found out is that he’s training for a triathlon later in this year. For people who don’t know how tough triathlons are, here are some statistics:

• The swim is a distance of 1.5 km or .9 of a mile
• The bike is a distance of 40 km or about 24 miles
• The run is a distance of 10 km or 6.2 miles

Your average person can’t do either of these three events on their own without stopping, and you’ve got a one-armed guy who’s doing the whole shebang. No, he’s not doing the sprint triathlon, which is about half of all of the distances above. Puts us all to shame, doesn’t it? It’s inspired me to start working out twice a day rather than the usual once a day routine.

“A LONG TIME AGO I NEVER KNEW MYSELF
THEN THE MEMORY OF SHAME BIRTHED ITS GIFT
NO MORE THE SMALL ONE, THE WEAK ONE, THE FRIGHTENED ONE
RUNNING FROM BEATINGS, DEFLATING
I’M BECOMING MORE THAN A MAN
MORE THAN YOU EVER WERE
DRIVEN AND BURNING
TO RISE BEYOND JESUS
I’M BORN AGAIN WITH SNAKE EYES
BECOMING GODSIZE…”

Song of the Moment: “Becoming” by Pantera