This morning, two days after the Chicago Marathon, I had the track to myself. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure even I was going to show up. Last week I ran 46.5 miles. Between Sunday and Monday I ran 17.5 miles, biked ten miles, did about a thousand squats at my kettlebell class, and canoed for 12 miles. And I was a mother and wife and daughter and friend. I went to bed last night feeling tired. I didn’t run a marathon this weekend, but surely I deserve a break too. And yet this morning I woke up just after 5am. I got my body functioning. I ate a mini Clif bar and one Gu chomp, and then I headed out into the still-starry night, off to do 200s and 400s in the dark. I wasn’t feeling particularly speedy, I’ll admit. My first 200 was a second slow, as was my first 400, even though I felt like I was running as hard as I could. Boo. But I ran all four sets: a total of eight 200s and four 400s. Some of the reps were faster than I needed to go; all of them at least met expectations once I pushed myself past the first set.
The question is (always is) why? Why did I feel the need to get up and run sprints before dawn? Why stick with them when they looked to be going unwell? Why do a two-and-a-half-mile cooldown when one mile would have sufficed? What am I training for?
Ah, there’s the question that hangs around a runner’s neck. I am as guilty as anyone for asking it. On Sunday I passed a woman twice, once on the way out, and then again on the way back. I wanted to reach out to her, have a short conversation, so I asked, of course, if she is training for anything or just running. She was just running while her son was at baseball practice. And me? Why was I out running 14 miles? What am I training for? I’m daydreaming about a marathon in Arizona in February, but, honestly, I don’t know if my injured foot can take that or if the impending blizzardy winter is going to allow adequate training. So if I’m honest with myself, there’s a reason why I haven’t signed up. There’s a good chance that it’s not going to happen. I am planning to run a 10K in November, more to redeem this summer’s 47:01 10K (ugh) than because the course is particularly inspiring. I’m not likely going to regain my former glory there, where I once set an age group record. And so, last week, when there were two other people at the track doing 200s in preparation for Sunday’s marathon, and one of them asked what I was training for, I didn’t really have an answer. I said, “Just to get back in shape.” One might argue that I’ve been in decent shape for some time. So “shape” for what? I don’t know.
Today, while attending a study on Genesis, I decided that getting up at 5am and doing speedwork in the dark is as much about hope as it is about anything. Near the end of class, someone made the comment that because of the stories of the Bible, even when we are in the midst of our own messes we know God will make everything come out for good eventually. Yeah, good, but, as our pastor pointed out, that’s only comforting if you’re OK with the eventual good not happening during your own generation. That message only applies to people who are willing to take the long view rather than the short view. It’s for people who, like Abraham, are willing to live by promise rather than by having. It seems, does it not?, that God wants us to live faithfully, to endure trials and wander in deserts and live and pray and work and witness and maybe martyred all for the sake of an unspecified someday, with no promises that our plans for ourselves will ever come to fruition. In the new testament, Jesus promises to return: he warns us to keep our metaphorical lamps filled for that someday when he will—and it’s been 2000 years! How many generations is that? Evidently, we are always training for a race we may not even get to run. We go to Bible studies and hash out what we think different stories might mean, and maybe we will be the ones who get to see it all worked out, but probably not.
I don’t know, exactly, why I am running quite so much or quite so hard, but I have a vague general idea. I am running so much because “getting in shape” is, for me, an act of hope. Hope that my foot is going to be fine soon. Hope that I will get to the starting line of some beautiful race someday. But even if I still have a long journey to heal this foot problem, even if Arizona doesn’t work out, there is a bigger and more nebulous hope that gets me out of bed in the morning/very very late night. This vague hope maybe more often gets called gratitude. I get up and run speedwork because I can, because even though it’s hard, it’s also a privilege, a gift. Even though my foot is still injured enough to make my future plans unknown, to call tomorrow’s run into question, it’s also well enough today to run on for eight miles, and hallelujah for that. If I was given a body to run with, an hour to run in, and a track to run on, you better believe that I’m going to be running and grateful for every step.
In the end, I don’t know what will happen with my life or my running. In the middle, though, I think I am called to live as though the things for which I hope are possible. And I think, in the middle, that is the message of the Bible as well. We are called do some silly things sometimes, even if they seem so small or so ridiculous or so far removed from the hope that inspired them that we can’t even say for sure what that hope will look like when we get to it. Even if I do not get to see the Promised Land, walking (or running) towards it makes more sense than accepting death in the middle of the desert. If, for me, hope means track repeats in the dark, then I will take my blessings and run with them.
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