Connections

Several of you know my running story. For those of you who don’t know the story, I’ve not always been a runner.  I dabbled with running for fitness, a mile or two, in college and my early 20s.  I could never get beyond “the wall” to go any further.  So, I left the running behind and walked for fitness.

In the months leading up to a milestone birthday, my oldest child participated in a running program at school, and we went to see him run a mile the night before the Richmond marathon.  The race environment was electric.  A switch turned on in my brain.  Could I run a race?  Nah, that’s crazy talk.   A couple of weeks later, I was sitting in the church nursery with a friend while some of our children participated in the church’s music program.  She revealed she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.  That moment, it took my breath away. It still does.  She was the picture of health.  How could she possibly be ill?  Several weeks later, another friend, pregnant with her second child, was also diagnosed with breast cancer.  I was stunned and feeling like I needed to do something for them.   About the same time, Sportsbackers began advertising their Monument Avenue 10K Training Team.  Both women were (and are) runners.  Because they couldn’t run that 10K that year, I decided I would.  I would run this 10K for them, and that would be it.  They laughed at me.  They told me the 10K wouldn’t be the end.  I laughed at them, “No, really, I’m only going to do this 10K. I mean it.” The 10K was my marathon at that point in time.  I laugh at myself now.

As training started, I also started attending a Sunday school class on centering prayer.  The three women who taught this class had (and still do have) a wonderful glow, an inner peace.  I wanted that peace.  A couple of weeks into my training, a church family’s 3-year old goddaughter was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor.   I discovered my training team ran through their neighborhood and past their house.  Every Saturday.  One Saturday, I decided to combine what I had learned about centering prayer with my training run.  I focused my prayer on this family as I trained in their neighborhood.   In the process, I discovered there is so much more to running than putting one foot in front of the other.  I discovered I could find that peace I was seeking on the run.  I also discovered that running makes me open to other experiences.  Bravery.  Connections with other people.  Maybe it’s the endorphins, maybe it’s that the blood flow is redirected from my brain to my muscles, I don’t know.  I DO know that it makes me spiritually aware.

I have met so many inspiring people while running.  I’m not sure I would have met them, otherwise.  My first marathon training team coach is a woman in her 60s who has more energy than most 20 year olds.  She climbed to the base camp at Mt Everest last summer.  When the friend with whom I was training got injured, I found the courage to introduce myself to a woman on the training team I thought I’d seen training in my neighborhood.  I call her friend now.  We joke about how what is said on the run stays on the run.  But, it doesn’t, really.  Those conversations deepen our connection.  Not everything we talk about is deep.  Sometimes, it’s just plain silly…anything to get us through those miles.  Tomorrow, we are running 19 miles.  That distance, physically, doesn’t get any easier for me, but I look forward to our conversations.  I look forward to being so engrossed in conversation with her that I won’t even realize we’ve run five miles.

In the last year, I’ve become friends with another woman in my neighborhood.  We met through a virtual training team we are both on.  It’s kind of sill.  We have several mutual friends, our children are friends, but until we met up to run, I didn’t really know her.  Now, it’s as though we have known each other for decades when we chat on our runs.  RUNNING did that. It wouldn’t have happened without it.

Running, for me, is about connection.  Connection with my heart and Christ, connection with prayer, connection with the nature around me, connection with people.  And it doesn’t end when the feet stop moving.  Those connections, they are reminders that we are ALL connected in this world.  We aren’t meant to experience life alone.  We are children of God.  Running helps me remember that and encourages me to live out the baptismal covenant. I encourage you to find something that does that for you.  Running is my something.  What is your something?