I didn't train this morning at 4AM. Yes, my 66-session streak of 4AM mornings have been snapped! Did I sleep in? NEVER! I actually hit my 3AM mark. I had a bit of an exploratory expedition this morning to see if I want to change the upcoming The Third Expedition. At 3AM, I read again out of Sproul's systematic theology text. I also used Logos to generate a 365-day reading through the Bible in a chronological order. Along with other aspects of this quiet time, I chose to extend it past its 3:55AM end, like the last time, and took it another hour, straight through my first hour of cardio.

But, don't fret—I haven't broken my training days streak: 67 sessions and strong. At 5AM, I went into my Back routine and finished to 6AM with cardio. It was a more aggressive day for me as I upped the weight of 3 out of 5 exercises: incline bench DB row, DB shrugs, and DB straight leg deadlift. In review, I believe I just had more in the tank because I didn't have the first hour of cardio to break me down.

Now, after all of that, is this change something I will implement? I don't think I will—don't get me wrong: 2 hours spent in His written word and books commenting on the Bible is two hours well spent. But for now, it's an issue of efficiency and mental stamina. My first hour was strong and I packed a lot of content into a relatively small space. But, I lost my focus in the second hour compared to the first. With the wealth of time that two hours presents, I think it can be a temptation not to push as hard or stay on point with the objective. Not that I wasn't doing everything I planned on doing, but my absorption strength began to taper off.

It's like back in the day with those 1hr 25m classes in college on Tuesdays and Thursday. I could get through the mornings well enough, but once I get into the 12:40pm class, my passion faltered to digest World Civ from a guy, who in 1998 divined we would be speaking Chinese as they would take over our country in twenty years. Well, it's 2018, I ain't got a bit of Mandarin down—despite longing to train at a Kung Fu school! I still regret not taking that opportunity in Anchorage.

I like the feel of being energized to hit my quiet time and then explode into my training session. That 3-3:55AM period is the perfect setup for a solid 4-6AM.

Lastly, due to a secondary matter, I don't believe I'll switch out my treadmill in lieu of that 2nd hour of the soul; I have more fat to burn and desire to increase my stamina, so I can be healthy and free to choose a running lifestyle in the future. While I had a great workout this morning, I did miss the extended cardio. It remains not as efficient as I'd like, but I'm working toward a solution for it. Sure, I'll have my lunch cardio, but the morning cardio is my bread-and-butter and sets me up for the rest of the morning.

But for now, 67 morning sessions and counting...

I feel the weight come off my shoulders with my exit from Google's ecosystem. It's nice to fire up ol' Firefox. I just want a browser to be a browser, not a gateway drug to corporate machinations. There have been many browsers and versions of browsers along the way for me, beginning with Netscape 1.1. It was my senior year of high school, that autumn night when I returned from sacking at Piggly Wiggly Bartlett or hanging out after wrestling practice with friends at Piggly Wiggly, when my conception of computers would explode from the family PC and my own computer in my bedroom: a hand-me-down, 40MHz, IBM-compatible AT—old, but much faster than the Tandy 1000's at school with no HDD, along with my coding and my non-extensive sneakernet, to a vast world of connections and hardware. We don't even think about it in 2018, but in 1995, it amazed me that I could access a computer in Japan or Europe—or Alabama for that matter!

Sure, I wish back then we had the tools that are there today. Things were more difficult—or, not as easy, I guess. Even a year later with my college class registration in late 1996, I had to use a phone to punch in my class registration in an era slightly before the ubiquitous distribution of phones. While beepers would soon lose the throne, I specifically remember pulling to the side of the road for a payphone during my registration timeslot to punch in my class codes for Spring 1997. And that was pretty high tech at the time for a year before that, students had to wait in long lines for a REAL human to request class enrollment. I remember even logging into a VAX terminal while in my university's library to check my school email for there was no web interface.

But, tech should be considered as tools in a toolbox. There seems to be a shift in our culture where tech is identity. We aren't hammers; we aren't power drills; we aren't sanders. Yet today, we seem to be just that in these tech ecosystems (which is crazy in of itself) to function as a cog in the greater system. We are seemingly locked into our smart phones for instructions; we're imprinted with hashtag commands. I could go on and preach on how this changes us individually and humanity overall: the frustrations; the expectations; and the fracturing and subjugation of ethos and love...

...but this is a Sunday morning and I'm feeling...FREE!

This hour marks the end of another workout week, sans the 2 ½ hour John Deere ride ahead.

I couldn't quite tap into the same fervor for my start at 4AM as I did yesterday, but I closed it out much stronger with a 10-min ride on the bike with it set on its maximum settings for about half the time immediately followed by a 2-minute sprint on the elliptical to close out to 6AM.

For the second day in a row, I woke up at 3AM for my reading. Currently, I'm in R.C. Sproul's Everyone's a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology. I may follow it with Grudem's text. I absolutely LOVE the time 3AM allows me to read unfettered. I'll steep a cup of Darjeeling and flip all of my switches to on. Previously, I've been trying to read merely 30 pages a day by squeezing them into open gaps of the day—it's been challenging. Now, I can blow the doors off that.

That said, considering its success and my desire for more: a devotional, scripture, prayer, and my reading list, I'm leaning heavily toward creating a 3-4:55AM schedule, thereby investing elsewhere my first hour of cardio. Considering that I woke up at 4AM to train for the past 11 weeks and have done so six days a week, it would be a shift. While I have loved that 2-hour window, for the past three weeks I've worked out M-F at lunch for an hour, thereby making it 3 hours a day. At what point does diminishing returns come into play? What do I gain for that 3rd hour? Is it more valuable than what I could gain by adding a 2nd hour to my time with God?

You see, I want the change within to outpace my outer experience, for the body is led by the soul. Again, I return to the Sermon on the Mount: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21, ESV)." Is my treasure merely developing a fallen body that will eventually either succumb to entropy or meet some fate akin to a falling anvil? Or, is my treasure in glorifying God, and enjoying Him forever? And guess what? Through glorification, I'll have this body in better shape than any late night TV infomercial could ever render!

Please don't misunderstand me—I'm not going to be a fat blob. This body is important. Hence why I've got 66 workout days straight of 2-hour mornings.