"Why would you want to do that?"
That always seems to be the first question I get when I tell somebody that I like to run, and that I like to run very long distances sometimes. And I get it, I really do. When I was playing sports in school (especially high school) running always seem to be the preferred form of punishment doled out by the coaches.
"Watkins! You screwed up! Go run a few laps until you can block that guy and not get our quarterback killed!"
Of course, "conditioning" was always given as the motivation for the sprints, but I always suspected there was a little bit of sinister delight in the coaches eyes when they said that.
"Alright, everyone, you're going to run until I puke! We gotta win the fourth quarter! You may not be the fastest, but you sure as heck are gonna be in the best shape!"
If you can imagine the gratuitous shouting and some expletives mixed in then you get the idea. When I was done playing sports in high school, running was the last thing I wanted to do. It was hard, painful, and more importantly I didn't have to do it anymore, so by golly I wasn't going to. It may not have been that drastic, but it was easy to kill any momentum that may have tried to develop for running with thoughts like that.
Over the years, as I moved out of the college phase and into my adult phase, I would have seasons where the idea didn't seem so bad. I knew I needed to exercise and I had always heard that running was one of the best ways to burn a lot of calories in the most amount of time. Well who doesn't want that?! So, let's get to it! The only problem was that it was still hard, and frankly, it still wasn't all that much fun. I would have the propensity to start fast, burn out quickly, and usually hurt something along the way. You see, not that much fun.
But even in all that pain and suffering, the idea of running was still in the back of my mind. My dad was running marathons about once a year. And the idea of finishing that feat sounded pretty cool. I even came up with the idea of running one with some friends of mine. We made a plan and we were gonna do it! The plan got derailed pretty quickly. I hurt my heel, we lost interest, you know how it goes.
Flash forward about six, seven years. I am at the heaviest weight I have ever been. I have trouble sleeping at night because I keep waking up. Over the last few years my family, and more recently my new wife are telling me that I stop breathing during the night. At work, we have free biometric tests given and I take one. They give me the results and I can tell by the look on the lady's face the results are not good. She tells me I really should go see a doctor.
I did go see a doctor and we discussed the results. I also went to a sleeping lab and discovered I has sleep apnea. So I was getting help, but I didn't want to end up with diabetes, or end up needing to take medicines for the rest of my life. I still needed to do something to lose the weight.
But what could I do? Around this same time my dad had finished another marathon and our family was sitting at a table while he rested. The old urge to run a marathon came back to me. But I'd tried running before and it had never really stuck. Plus I kept getting hurt. Could I do it this time? Did I even want to do it? Wasn't it still as hard and painful as ever? I knew I would need help.
So I prayed; something along the lines of, "Lord I really need your help. I need you to help change my attitude about running. Help it be fun for me. Because I need to do something to lose the weight and I know that running is one of the easiest things to do. So I'm going to start doing it and I'm going to trust you to change my attitude about it."
So within the next day or so I started. It was still difficult. But I had made another decision too. I had decided to act like I had never run before; I decided to start from scratch. I began following a plan that would get me to a 5k in 10 weeks. Even though I had done one before, a long time ago, that didn't matter. This was a new endeavor.
The first session went about like I expected. "Why am I doing this? This is not fun." But I stuck with it. The second session was a little better. But by the third session, a miracle had happened. I started to enjoy myself. It was hard, but I was doing it. The Lord had done it, He had changed me! I started to enjoy being outside. It was around Christmas time, so I would run in the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights. I was having fun.
And it is still fun to this day. There have been setbacks and triumphs along the way, but the Lord has been with me every step. He's been running along side me the whole time, sharing those experiences with me. And I'll share those stories another time.
To be continued . . .
Phillip