My favorite training gadget is my Garmin Forerunner 305 Personal Training Assistant with a heart rate monitor.  It can do just about anything, like tell me how fast I’m going, what my cycling cadence is, guide me through a complicated workout, and calcuate how many calories I’ve burned, all while telling me exactly where I am on the planet.  The most useful function on this gadget is its ability to alert me with a polite “tweedle-deet” when my heart rate gets out of a certain zone. It helps me fine-tune my training to meet specific goals, like race in a half-ironman later this year.  More on that in another post….

Now, there are two things that are important to know about heart rate based training and me.  First of all, I have a tendency to push too hard – WAY too hard.  And not just in training, but in most of my life. It’s a personality thing.  I want results and I want them fast! That means I have a tendency to overtrain, which is why I wanted the Garmin in the first place.  The second is that training at a heart rate that is too high means my body will burn fuel from my muscles instead of burning fat off my tummy.  Since there’s not as much fuel in my muscles, I may be able to go fast, but not for long.  Plus, it’s counterproductive to my weight loss goals.  Having the Garmin to keep me in check is a very good thing.

So, I was jogging along this morning, with my Garmin firmly strapped to my left wrist.  I did well for a while, but then I began zoning out and slipping into old habits. “Tweedle-deet!” my Garmin alerted me. Sure enough, I was pushing too hard up that hill.  I backed off a little. “Tweedle-deet!!” it insisted. Okay, okay…I’ll back off some more. “TWEEDLE-DEET!!!” Oh, give me a break!   I was barely jogging, I was going so slowly – or at least that’s how I felt.  But I had enough sense to back it down as far as I could until I heard that satsifyingly modest “beep” that told me my heart rate was back where it should be.

I wish I had a Garmin for my spiritual life.  Too often I push way too hard and try to do more than I am ready for. I wouldn’t mind a “tweedle-deet” every now and then to keep me in check when I’m taking on too much.  “Oh sure, I can volunteer for that!” (tweedle-deet!) “I know my plate is already full, but God would surely want me to serve here, right?” (tweedle-deet!!!) “I really need to be sure I check off all of my spiritual disciplines today – at least an hour of quiet time, plus doing some extra study, and take a meal to that person, give that other person a phone call, and….” (TWEEDLE-DEET!!!!!!)

When I’m running and I’m working hard, I have a tendency to hunker-down, raise my shoulders, tuck my head, and get a bit of tunnel vision.  The problem is running in that position makes it harder to breathe, which makes my heart rate go up even higher. I also don’t see the other people around me – the neighbor walking her dog, the car coming down the street, the cracks in the sidewalk.  I have that tendency in my spiritual life, too.  Head down, shoulders tense, focusing only on what’s in right front of me. I miss out on meeting the other people who come into my world, and the dangers that could take me out.  Meanwhile, God – the ultimate Heart Rate Monitor -  is saying, “Hey, I can see your heart and what you’re doing is counterproductive, maybe even dangerous.  You can’t keep going like this – you’ll run out of fuel.  Get your head up, slow down, and breathe! Breathe in My Spirit or you’ll hurt yourself!” Tweedle-deet!

Of course, there are times when pushing hard is needed, like running up a hill, or pushing through all of those conference preparations.  But after each hill is behind me, I need a little time to recover, to get the heart rate back in the zone, and that means slowing way, way down.  Do I take the same recovery time in the rest of my life? Not often.  It’s even harder when I see someone else who seems to be going farther and faster than me.  I want to run as fast as she does. So I give it a try.  “Tweedle-deet!” my Garmin says. Oh, shut up! But the Monitor does not lie. “Tweedle-deet!!!!!!!”

It would be better to run at the pace that God designed for me and for my body.  If I continue to go too hard and too fast, I will run out of fuel and “bonk” as they say in the endurance training world.  Hit a sugar low.  Have nothing left in the tank. Hit the wall and crash.  That’s the risk that I run when I let my desire to push harder override my good sense and my heart rate monitor.  It’s a sickening and somewhat scary feeling, like I’m going to faint or collapse. When that happens, I eat everything in sight without much regard to whether it’s good for me or not.  Just give me fuel!  Then I really feel sick.  Ugh.

I also risk a spiritual bonk when I get my head down and try to do too much rather than allowing the Heart Rate Monitor guide my efforts and give me fuel for the long sustained run ahead of me. I risk burn-out and needing major rest, in addition to sabotaging the very goals I’ve been working so hard to reach.  I’m vulnerable to all sorts of bad thinking and guilt, terrible ideas about myself and my world, and may not have the energy to get the right kind of Food to keep me from being laid out for a while. That is so not fun, and doesn’t help me or anyone else.  And it’s not what God wants for me, either.

So, I’m learning.  It’s requiring a lot of patience as I adjust to a new level of training.  I’m waiting for the day when I can run faster at the same heart rate level because I’m lighter and stronger, not just more stubborn. And as I shed my spiritual baggage as well, I’ll be stronger in that way, too, but not if I take on more than I can healthily bear. Oh, Lord, let me hear those alert signals when you send them, so that I can be well-trained for the race ahead and finish it well.

Tweedle-deet!