Sunny Sunday in Minneapolis

Today I went to John Piper's Church, Bethlehem Baptist Church (or BBC), my local church is Brant Community Church (or BCC) I enjoyed worship and his sermon. The only problem of the morning was that when I went to get a photo with him my phone camera crashed, and now I have to figure out why it won't take photos... Darn. That would have been cool to have that photo.

Oh well, the worship was good, the coffee tasted like church coffee and they had goodies galore for coffee time. I then headed back home the non-highway direction looking for some place to eat and via wandering down a road I ran into a neighbourly cafe with a lot of people standing out in front. I had to wait for quite a while, this is Victors 1959 Cafe, which is Cuban... No Cuban food in Ft. Lauderdale but in Minneapolis I manage to eat Cuban.

Time to let some of the food settle then out in the sun for some riding.Which was a bit cool today... but I still got in two hours. Along the green-way there is a bike shop call Freewheel and they have a coffee bar. I stopped in for an espresso and an inexpensive bike lock so that during the week and on my return trip I will be able to stop at some of the other shops for nachos or beer or whatever... I don't want my bike to go AWOL!

Improvements Physically and Spiritually

First, the physical; I have a hilly loop that is a bit difficult but I enjoy riding it. I head over to St. George and do Cheese Factory Road, the cut across Maple Manor. The hill there by itself is easy but cumulative of Cheese Factory it burns a bit. Then over to Footbridge Road to Greenfield over to Ayr, down Paris Road which is now paved nicely most the way and makes for a nice head down hammer fest. Finish up through Paris and back home on Powerline (which is also a hammer fest road.)





I rode it on July 26th by myself and then again last night, August 13th. Comparing the two last nights ride was 1.4 km/hr average speed faster over 62 kms which cut 4:48 minutes off the overall time. Now what would be impressive if I could cut another 4:48 off in three more weeks... we'll see.

Now for anyone reading to give input and for me to RANT (so you've been warned). My bike computer is a Garmin, they have a Cloud training log at Garmin Connect, Which I've used for the links on the dates because if your truly interested you can see my metrics from the ride. I use Map My Ride for most postings as it shows the route, elevation and no metrics because most the time it's about the ride not how I rode. It also lets us plot out and share courses in our riding group. Finally I've been using Training Peaks because "its free" and all the cool kids use it. My rant is why does Training Peaks take less than a minute to download my training file and Garmin took last night 5 minutes? When in Denver with a bad internet connection it would not even take it. What do any of you use, if you use at all? This would be between Garmin and TPeaks as downloading everything twice is silly. OK there that complaint is off of my chest.

Spiritual training: I have been receiving the Blog from the Desiring God website and have used that as a point of prayer and challenge in my life, it is also a fantastic resource for reading and devotional material. I have read through Matthew and now I'm in the middle of John. Matthew because, the pastor at my church has been working through the book and the life of Jesus, and John because it's the most "intuitive" of the four books and the ideas of Christ's teachings come across more than the facts; thus providing me with a contrast of Christ's life.

Then on the Team FCA Endurance "The Body" website under forms the topic of fasting has come up. I've been participating in that discussion which has lead me to get the book from John Piper A Hunger for Desiring God and I have read through that, not as quickly as I would like as the Notbook's screen is a bit small, and then at the Desktop I've got the distraction of work duties. Fasting is a way to seek God and reminder to our body and soul that our true food is spiritual as Jesus said in John 4:32 "I have a kind of food you know nothing about."

So my physical training is going well, and I'm thinking it might be a good year to go out and race cyclo-cross, and my spiritual training is going quite well to, and the fruits of that are harder to qualify. But I still visualize my "life verse" 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, as I study and as I'm riding. There has to be a greater purpose in it all, and The Eternal Prize is worth it all.