Yesterday I sat next to a friend and tried to describe the thrill of running in the Portland Half Marathon. It is exciting, full of energy, exhausting, difficult, exhilarating, mentally taxing, cumbersome, and delightful.
Running on a regular basis is helpful for the goal of improving health, losing weight (in my case), and improving the functions of the heart. You don’t need competition for that but I find adding something to train for makes the whole experience exponentially more delightful.
I am running so 10 years from now I can keep up with my kids. And 20 and 30 years from now I am not relegated to the couch. I am running for stewardship of my body and training to be able to do the things I want 30 years from now. I technically don’t need competition for any of that. I could run my 3 days a week and would receive the benefits.
But a race… it is a test of your training. It is an evaluation of what you have done. Have I actually accomplished the goals of fitness or am I just pounding pavement? Have I improved the efficiency of the pumping of my heart and the ability of my calves and glutes to continue to move. Has my body learned anything?
Additionally, a race is hard. It is throwing your body against the proverbial wall and testing whether your training will crash you through the wall to some small glory. I think there is a reason the metaphor of a race is used in scripture for the working through life. And I think it is far more valuable for me to run a race to better feel that metaphor. Life is difficult and hard. Sometimes it is physically demanding and sometimes mentally or emotionally.
Putting yourself in a race is a conscious decision to put yourself in some level of suffering. Our culture pulls us toward avoidance of all suffering and thus this is an uncommon decision to be made. Life is often suffering, we live post fall after all, and even if we try to avoid it that does not mean we will not experience suffering. Instead, we will just be unprepared for it when it inevitably slaps us in the face.
For me, running is a race is putting myself in a little bit of suffering so that I am more prepared to endure it. The pain of the 13th mile of the Portland Half Marathon does not compare to the pain of loss, the loss of a job, or the strain of broken relationships but I would rather be accustomed, by practice, to engaging suffering rather than attempting to avoid it.