The Warm Up Mile
 
2 Timothy 4:7
I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.

​The startling text message came while I quietly worked on a project at our local library: “Meg Menzies was just hit by a car while she was running. She died.”

My friend Scott and his wife, Meg, had been out running on a local highway. Meg was in the middle of a training run for the Boston Marathon, so this was no casual run. As they ran into a turn on a rural road not far from their home, an SUV driven by a drunk driver barreled recklessly toward them. Scott yelled out a frantic warning. They scattered. Scott escaped. Meg did not. In a split second of life so overflowing with tragedy that I’ll never be able to comprehend it, a training run ended. The race of life for a beautiful wife and mother of three young children crossed an unexpected finish line.

In the days that followed our local community mourned the loss of this beautiful woman. Scott was a local police officer. Meg’s mom a school teacher in our community. Her dad a local contractor and farmer. Each Sunday Meg’s family and her parents worshipped together in the same church. This is a family weaved into the hearts of many people in our small county. So, when Meg passed in such a tragic and preventable way, it felt to many like they’d lost one of their own.

 Me - I didn’t know Meg. I was friends with her husband, Scott, and had worked with him on different projects. (Ironically, many of them related to preventing drinking and driving.) But I knew a lot of people who did know Meg. And with shattered hearts they began telling stories about a woman who, to me, sounded quite ordinary. She loved God, she treasured her family - especially her three young children - and she had a passion for running. But as the stories continued, as one after another they continued to build on each other, I discovered something remarkable in her story. In a culture that is fixated on luring us away from the ordinary - from the sanctuary of God to busy cities that never sleep, from the quiet embrace of our children to the pursuit of fame and fortune, from a commitment to wellness to the endless chase of unhealthy pleasures - Meg was never lured away.

Less than a week after her death it became clear to me I wasn’t the only one who’d found extraordinary in her story. On January 19, 2014, the Saturday after Meg died, over 100,000 people from all around the world responded to a social media request to “Run for Meg.” Complete strangers were so moved by Meg’s story that they grabbed their families and friends and hit the streets to run. Many did so for the first time, or at least the first time in a long time.

At the end of the day, over a million miles had been covered in dozens of countries and states to honor the spirit of a humble, Christian mother from Hanover County, Virginia.

I was one of those first time in a long time runners. I ran eight miles that morning. The last time I came close to running that far I was in high school. My school had just hired a new head football coach. It was the first day of summer practices and he decided to make a big league coach impression on us. He loaded us into the back of a dozen or so pickup trucks lent to him by a bunch of local farmers who were waiting for us with curiously devilish grins. They hauled us 13 miles out into the country before they stopped and coach demanded of us: “run home boys, and don’t you dare walk”

I walked. Nearly the entire way I’m telling you - I walked. 

I walked because I wasn’t a runner. At least not that far. I was a decent sprinter on the track team, a running back on the football team, but when running became about miles and not short bursts of a few yards, I quickly lost interest. Not to mention a great deal of stamina.

 Maybe I made a conscious decision that day I would never become a runner. Maybe those miles became part of a haunting and stubborn mental block. Whatever the case, from that day forward I only grew to loathe running more and more.

But something happened over the course of the 8 miles I ran for Meg that January morning. I never once considered my decades old predisposition toward hating them. Instead, I reflected on the sadness Meg’s family must have been experiencing. I thought about the suddenly inescapable reality that I too will die. And quite likely, just like Meg, before I can say goodbye to all the people I’d want to say goodbye to. As I ran on, I reluctantly confessed to myself how much the idea of dying and life slowly slipping away weighs on me. Even if up to that moment it had done so quietly.

For 8 miles that day I thought about the life I was missing out on while I spent my days dreaming of what waited for me in the future. I kicked myself for fantasizing about the star athletes my two young boys would be one day instead of celebrating every minute of the beautiful people they already were. I thought about my sons’ mom, and how often that’s exactly how I see her - as a mom and not a wife. You think more clearly about someone’s title when you realize if their title suddenly dies, the person and all they mean to you often disappears with it.

That day I realized just how ordinary I am. I realized how often I am lured away.

My thinking that morning was deeper and clearer than I could remember experiencing before. It was likely the most meaningful conversation I’d ever had with myself, mainly because the me that answered back was astoundingly wise. As if the me that answered wasn’t me at all.

When I finished running 8 miles that morning I knew I’d been on a physical journey. Lord, did I know it. I was short of breath and my legs wobbled. My body held nothing back in its radical protest of my decision to run 5 miles further than I'd run in decades. Yet, at the same time, and quite inexplicably in that moment, my heart and my mind and soul were all on fire. As physically unprepared as I felt to take one more step toward anything, I felt emotionally inspired to tackle the world.

In that moment, I knew running had sparked a new journey in my life. I wasn’t entirely sure what that journey was, but I knew running was going to be my avenue for figuring it out.

Nearly 3 years after that 8-mile run - I completed my first marathon in Richmond, Virginia. It took me 7 hours to finish those 26.2 miles, which means I threatened no one for the first place prize money. But it also means I had plenty of time to think. I’d been told when a lot of runner cross the finish line of their first marathon, they begin to wonder what’s next. Not me. I knew what was next. I’d thought about it for 7 hours for crying out loud.

At mile 20 of that marathon, when I began to feel the intense pain of fatigue and cramping, when I began to know there was no way I could run those last 6 miles, a song came on my iPod that reminded me how powerfully God has shown up during every dark moment in my life. “Who can stop the Lord Almighty” this chorus sang out – over and over. In that moment, with maybe a slight hint of a slap, God reminded that if He can pull me out of the darkest days of my life, nothing can stop him from running 6 miles.

And nothing did.

There was a scripture printed across the back of the shirt I wore during my marathon: 2 Timothy 4:7. The words in this verse, taken from a famous letter the Apostle Paul wrote to his dear friend Timothy, say: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

 Through running I’ve come to know so many people who are fighting to finish races bigger than running. They are battling cancer or grieving the loss of a loved one. Their marriage is a mess, employment is nowhere to be had. And, like runners at mile 20 of a marathon, they have no idea how they are going to finish their race. In these moments, they’re finding it desperately hard to find or to keep the faith that lifted me to my marathon finish line.

As you read through the rest of this book, you’ll find 26 essays that will bring to life 26 lessons I learned training for and eventually running my first marathon. They are lessons that helped me keep the faith then, they sharpened it for the fights I continue to face today, they lift me up and carry me to the finish lines of the races I still long to finish. On the race course, and in life.
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My prayer is they are lessons that will give you hope, and who knows, maybe pull you to the finish line of your own marathon. On the race course, or in life.


Go to Mile One