Marathon

Ever since I completed my first half marathon a year and a half ago, people have been asking me when I'm going to do a marathon. My first answer was "When I can do a 90 minute half marathon." When that goal looked actually feasible, I changed my answer to either "When I have a good reason to" or "I'll run a marathon if she's really cute," depending on the seriousness of the situation.

On Monday, September 26th of this year a young marine named Scott Davidson died in a motorcycle accident. I knew him through his brother, Sean Davidson. We had talked motorcycles and gone water skiing/wake boarding a few times together. Scott was signed up to run the Marine Corp Marathon in Washington DC as a fundraiser for the wounded warriors project on October 30th, 5 weeks later. To honor him, Sean decided to take his brother's race number and run the marathon for him, with five weeks to train and having never run a marathon.

I had been planning on attending the race to encourage Sean, and then, a week and a half ago, he asked me to run it with him. I had been thinking about what it would mean to run a marathon because of talking to him about his training, but it still took a while for the possibility to sink in. In the end there's no way I could give up on such an opportunity.

I could go out tomorrow and run a half marathon with a pretty decent time, maybe even get close to my PR, but there's a big difference between a half and a whole... simply put I am not trained for this. But neither is Sean. So tomorrow my goal is to make sure that he crosses the finish line. My knee hurts, I might be catching a cold, and the temperature at 8am tomorrow morning will hopefully be above 32 degrees.

"When are you going to run a marathon, Peter?"

"When I have a good reason to."

I found one.

Say a prayer for Sean today.

Thanks

Peter

Why do I run?

I've been running this spring. A lot. After running 4 races in 5 weeks, I feel like talking about why I run... if you don't want to listen, well, you've been warned...

I often tell people that I like running 95% of the time, and the other 5% is when I'm actually running. I like being a runner more than running itself. There is some truth to that. There's a lot of pain, a lot of soreness, a lot of time invested into running. And the payback is being in good shape for sports, being really hungry at meals, and getting cool racing t-shirts.

But I also enjoy the feeling of simply making my body move. And there's something about pushing one's limits that is almost addictive. My heart counts out how hard my body is working, my legs and lungs complain when they're getting pushed, but my head decides what I'm going to do. There's a certain point in almost every race when I'm nearing the end that is always clearest in my memory.

In the same moment that I want my legs to move faster than ever and my lungs to supply oxygen, my body is screaming out to lie down in some soft grass and never move again, I want to finish the race, I want to cry, I want to laugh out loud, I want to scream, I want to stop, I want to fly, I want to run for the rest of my life and I'd be fine with my life ending then and there....

And it's in that moment that I feel alive. When I am pushing my body to its limit, when I can feel every part of my body working and every muscle straining, when I want to go faster but know that I can't, when it's all that I can do to keep moving: (inhale) step step step step (exhale) step step step step... then crossing the finish line knowing that I ran to my utmost and found my limit for that day. That is why I run.

In the past several weeks I've set new personal records for:

5k

6 mile run

8 mile run - set and then broken twice

half-marathon

most miles run in 24 hours

most miles run in a week

In an oft-quoted scene from the move Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell expresses his intention to become a missionary to China while still taking time to compete in the Olympics: "I believe that God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure." After participating in the 1924 Olympics and winning a gold medal, Eric Leddell went to China and served as a missionary until his death in 1945.

I don't expect to win any gold medals or to be a missionary in China, but I know that God made me for a purpose, and he made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.

Food for thought

"Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget." - GKC\ Chesterton

Agree or disagree?