Mile 2
Matthew 7:14
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
Matthew 7:14
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
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So this is what race day feels like. My first race ever: the 2014 Richmond half-marathon.
I’ll be honest. I struggle to call my running racing. Maybe it’s my competitive nature. But to me a race takes place when two or more people line up to see who’s fastest. As I walk to the starting line with several thousand other runners this morning, I already know I’m not the fastest. |
I know I have a far better chance of finishing dead last than finishing within 3 days of the eventual winner. I’m here with one goal and one goal only - finish this race on anything but a gurney.
So, I have to ask. Who exactly am I racing?
So, I have to ask. Who exactly am I racing?
I fall into the procession that marches toward the starting line. I try to fit in. I mimic a few stretches the seemingly more experienced racers perform all around me; I bend an arm behind my head and try to lift one of my oversized legs toward my chest. I bob my head to the music pumping into my ears, imagining I look half as intimidating as the other head bobbers look.
We march on and I stare curiously into the cloud of breath that hovers over the city street. The morning temperatures are turning pre-race chatter into a steamy testimony of just how cold I feel. I blow warm breath through two layers of running gloves right into my hands. Running might take its toll on me this day, but hypothermia doesn’t stand a chance.
I’m within a hundred yards of the starting line when I hear someone shout my name. It’s Tracey. Tracey’s one of the online friends who’d inspired me to tackle this race in the first place. As I approach him I try not to hold that against him.
“How are you feeling,” he asks.
“I feel like someone marching toward a firing squad,” I answer.
He bursts into laughter.
“Hey, you’re not planning to throw away all of those nice clothes you’re wearing, are you?” he asks me.
Quite puzzled, I respond, “What do you mean throw away these nice clothes?”
“Most people wear old clothes they don’t mind throwing to the side of the road after they warm up during the race. Your clothes look too nice to be thrown away.” he answers.
“That’s because they are.” I tell him. “If I finish this race, I assure you I’ll be wearing every stitch of clothing you see on me right now.”
Tracey looks me up and down one more time. He shakes his head, pats me on the back and says, “good luck buddy, see you at the finish line.”
“Thanks,” I tell him.
His optimism reminds me how I got here in the first place. The human spirit is indeed contagious.
I find my corral. To this day I find that a strange name for a starting line location. Maybe because when I was growing up on a farm we used to put up temporary corrals to hold the cattle overnight before we took them to the slaughterhouse the next morning.
I know what you’re thinking. I’m not terribly optimistic about this run or race or whatever you want to call it. I won’t argue that.
I will offer a defense, though. I really think this is a strategy. Maybe if I turn the most physically challenging task I’ve ever attempted into something that’s actually downright impossible, if I convince myself I’m being led to slaughter and a few miles into the race realize that’s not the case at all, well, maybe the burden of running 13.1 miles will just disappear.
An announcer begins a countdown. His voice rushes through the crowd of runners like wind and they are all suddenly gazing in the same direction. My corral starts moving slowly forward, as if we’re unknowingly being sucked into the voice. One by one the invisible corral doors begin to open in front of us. Runners depart them into the vacant street ahead of us like they’ve just discovered freedom.
And then my corral opens.
I break into stride and I’m suddenly running my first half-marathon.
I fall in line behind a small group of runners who seem to realize they’re not racing either. I don’t plan to follow them, but 5 miles later there I am - right behind them - like a small boat drawn along by the wake of a much larger and more experienced vessel.
It occurs to me we haven’t stopped. The furthest I’ve ever run without the respite of at least a brief walk is 2 miles. Yet here I am, settled into a groove that’s foreign to me. I’m no longer cold. I’m no longer looking for the slaughter house. I’m simply running.
Sometimes that’s the key to finding the good groove in life, isn’t it? Not finding a comfortable path but falling in line behind people who are comfortable on a difficult path. I know that sounds too easy, but sometimes I think it is that easy. Maybe there are challenges that call us to abandon our need to control destiny and merge into the flow of people who already know how to achieve it. And maybe it’s not even that they know exactly how to achieve it, but they know exactly how to avoid the things that will derail it.
I’m at mile 10. A little over 3 miles to go before I call myself a half-marathoner. I’m tired. No, correct that. I’m exhausted and I’m thinking 3 miles to go never sounded more like 3 states to go. But just then a friend from my Megsmiles running group emerges from a street corner. She slaps me with a smile and a high five and a hug and then says, “You’ve got this.”
I think a lot about her those last 3 miles. I think a lot about that running group and the people who spent the last 5 weeks saying, “you’ve got this.” I think about how powerful it is to have people standing at the opening of a frightening gate begging you to run through it. I fight back tears as I consider what it means when they don’t abandon you once you do. They line the edges of that narrow way and keep screaming, “you’ve got this, you’ve got this.”
I’m at the top of the hill now. My friends have told me about this view. I stare a few hundred yards down to the finish line and the large banner over it that I’ll soon run under to declare to myself: I did it.
Maybe I’ve been racing after all. Maybe it wasn’t the head bobbers and the stretching pros that bolted out ahead of me I’ve been racing. Maybe I was racing the voices. The ones telling me I picked a gate too narrow and a way too hard – you know, the ones telling me I was being led to slaughter.
I give it all I have those last several yards. By the way – I have very little. I cross under the large sign that sprawls overhead of a moment that was once unthinkable. I see a large digital clock counting the hours and minutes and seconds that have passed since I started this crazy race. I pay it no attention.
My race is won. Time seems irrelevant.
I run into the welcoming celebration of several friends. “You did it,” they say.
They’re right. I did it. I’ve joined the few who can say they’ve run a half-marathon. In time, though, I’ll come to understand I’ve done something much bigger than that. I’ll come to understand that when the way got hard I realized winning the race wasn’t about making myself bigger and stronger but leaning on friends and a faith that were already big enough. I’ll come to understand it’s not the narrowness of a gate we need to worry about, it’s walking through that gate alone.
I'll come to remember that first half-marathon taught me the way to life is indeed hard, but alone there is no way at all.
We march on and I stare curiously into the cloud of breath that hovers over the city street. The morning temperatures are turning pre-race chatter into a steamy testimony of just how cold I feel. I blow warm breath through two layers of running gloves right into my hands. Running might take its toll on me this day, but hypothermia doesn’t stand a chance.
I’m within a hundred yards of the starting line when I hear someone shout my name. It’s Tracey. Tracey’s one of the online friends who’d inspired me to tackle this race in the first place. As I approach him I try not to hold that against him.
“How are you feeling,” he asks.
“I feel like someone marching toward a firing squad,” I answer.
He bursts into laughter.
“Hey, you’re not planning to throw away all of those nice clothes you’re wearing, are you?” he asks me.
Quite puzzled, I respond, “What do you mean throw away these nice clothes?”
“Most people wear old clothes they don’t mind throwing to the side of the road after they warm up during the race. Your clothes look too nice to be thrown away.” he answers.
“That’s because they are.” I tell him. “If I finish this race, I assure you I’ll be wearing every stitch of clothing you see on me right now.”
Tracey looks me up and down one more time. He shakes his head, pats me on the back and says, “good luck buddy, see you at the finish line.”
“Thanks,” I tell him.
His optimism reminds me how I got here in the first place. The human spirit is indeed contagious.
I find my corral. To this day I find that a strange name for a starting line location. Maybe because when I was growing up on a farm we used to put up temporary corrals to hold the cattle overnight before we took them to the slaughterhouse the next morning.
I know what you’re thinking. I’m not terribly optimistic about this run or race or whatever you want to call it. I won’t argue that.
I will offer a defense, though. I really think this is a strategy. Maybe if I turn the most physically challenging task I’ve ever attempted into something that’s actually downright impossible, if I convince myself I’m being led to slaughter and a few miles into the race realize that’s not the case at all, well, maybe the burden of running 13.1 miles will just disappear.
An announcer begins a countdown. His voice rushes through the crowd of runners like wind and they are all suddenly gazing in the same direction. My corral starts moving slowly forward, as if we’re unknowingly being sucked into the voice. One by one the invisible corral doors begin to open in front of us. Runners depart them into the vacant street ahead of us like they’ve just discovered freedom.
And then my corral opens.
I break into stride and I’m suddenly running my first half-marathon.
I fall in line behind a small group of runners who seem to realize they’re not racing either. I don’t plan to follow them, but 5 miles later there I am - right behind them - like a small boat drawn along by the wake of a much larger and more experienced vessel.
It occurs to me we haven’t stopped. The furthest I’ve ever run without the respite of at least a brief walk is 2 miles. Yet here I am, settled into a groove that’s foreign to me. I’m no longer cold. I’m no longer looking for the slaughter house. I’m simply running.
Sometimes that’s the key to finding the good groove in life, isn’t it? Not finding a comfortable path but falling in line behind people who are comfortable on a difficult path. I know that sounds too easy, but sometimes I think it is that easy. Maybe there are challenges that call us to abandon our need to control destiny and merge into the flow of people who already know how to achieve it. And maybe it’s not even that they know exactly how to achieve it, but they know exactly how to avoid the things that will derail it.
I’m at mile 10. A little over 3 miles to go before I call myself a half-marathoner. I’m tired. No, correct that. I’m exhausted and I’m thinking 3 miles to go never sounded more like 3 states to go. But just then a friend from my Megsmiles running group emerges from a street corner. She slaps me with a smile and a high five and a hug and then says, “You’ve got this.”
I think a lot about her those last 3 miles. I think a lot about that running group and the people who spent the last 5 weeks saying, “you’ve got this.” I think about how powerful it is to have people standing at the opening of a frightening gate begging you to run through it. I fight back tears as I consider what it means when they don’t abandon you once you do. They line the edges of that narrow way and keep screaming, “you’ve got this, you’ve got this.”
I’m at the top of the hill now. My friends have told me about this view. I stare a few hundred yards down to the finish line and the large banner over it that I’ll soon run under to declare to myself: I did it.
Maybe I’ve been racing after all. Maybe it wasn’t the head bobbers and the stretching pros that bolted out ahead of me I’ve been racing. Maybe I was racing the voices. The ones telling me I picked a gate too narrow and a way too hard – you know, the ones telling me I was being led to slaughter.
I give it all I have those last several yards. By the way – I have very little. I cross under the large sign that sprawls overhead of a moment that was once unthinkable. I see a large digital clock counting the hours and minutes and seconds that have passed since I started this crazy race. I pay it no attention.
My race is won. Time seems irrelevant.
I run into the welcoming celebration of several friends. “You did it,” they say.
They’re right. I did it. I’ve joined the few who can say they’ve run a half-marathon. In time, though, I’ll come to understand I’ve done something much bigger than that. I’ll come to understand that when the way got hard I realized winning the race wasn’t about making myself bigger and stronger but leaning on friends and a faith that were already big enough. I’ll come to understand it’s not the narrowness of a gate we need to worry about, it’s walking through that gate alone.
I'll come to remember that first half-marathon taught me the way to life is indeed hard, but alone there is no way at all.