As a triathlete, I know how wonderful it feels to be right on track (no pun intended) with your training. I also know how out of sorts you feel when you're not maintaining that level of discipline, and stray from your program or plan. The common thought about this is that the longer the break in training, the more difficult it is for you to get back into a regular routine.

Recently, in the middle of training for an Ironman event (which includes swimming, biking, and running), I fell in love, enjoyed a whirlwind courtship, got married, and moved across the country. The last thing on my daily agenda was working out, and this change of routine soon made me feel stressed—even guilty—about disrupting my regimen. I felt I was breaking a rule of some kind and damaging my goal to take part in the upcoming Ironman.

It was at this point, though, that my years of mental and spiritual training, through the discipline and study of Christian Science, kicked in. In my resolve to gain control over my feelings of stress, I began to reason in the following way.

The joy I was sharing with my husband in our new life together was nothing to feel guilty about. Creating a new home and beginning a new life in a new town with new commitments was certainly a happy step of progress.

The systematic, dedicated training I had done over many years was also worthwhile, and could never lose its value or effectiveness. The thought that I was being lazy or undisciplined, or even breaking a rule, was really invalid, because it bore no relation to the rules—or laws—established by God, whose guiding principles I had committed to follow.

This obedience to honoring God had always guided, protected, and enriched my life, and had shown me that the path to taking control of my well-being lay in scientific thinking that was based on God's laws, whose validity had been proven to me—and countless others—time and again. Every challenge in life, I knew, was really a mental one.

My continuing study of the Bible and Science and Health got my thoughts moving further. One of the ideas that helped a great deal is on page 283 of Science and Health: "Mind [God] is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action. Mind is the same Life, Love, and wisdom 'yesterday, and to-day, and forever.'"

In adopting this spiritual perspective, I saw that the ideas of discipline, fidelity, strength, courage, joy, and persistence, are at the heart of any sports activity—in fact, of any activity rooted in the action of the divine Mind.

It occurred to me that while I had taken a break in my physical training, I had never eased up on my spiritual training—my "perpetual and harmonious" movement toward God. Nothing could halt this thought-in-action.

The laws of God would also bless, I realized, whatever else filled my days—sharing time with my husband, acclimating to a new environment, meeting new friends.

This revitalized thinking led to a change in my approach to training. Instead of feeling pressured about a certain number of miles to run, bike, or swin each day, I began to play tennis with my husband several evenings each week; I took long walks on the beach; I participated in moonlight mountain climbs.

Soon I was back out on the bike, and running on a regular basis. The tension was gone, and I decided the Ironman could wait for another year. But, most important, I had discovered that the spiritual dimension to sports was the one that would bring me victory all the time and keep me mentally and physically fit and content. It isn't each day of training that gets you there—it's each thought along the way.