On Belay: Meanwhile

I am incredibly excited to add a new Blogger to my rotation. I met Shelby Mathis while our husbands were stationed together in the Azores, and she has also come and worked on our farm! She will be posting on Mondays!

I finished my first running race last weekend. It was a slow 10k, but I crossed the finish line at a dead sprint that would take longer to recover from than the mere seconds I shaved off my time.

It's not like I had a PR or anything. I'm completely new to running.

I have always thought I was a terrible runner. I was a strong ballet dancer when I was a young person, but otherwise I've never considered myself "athletic." Volleyball was hard. Basketball was harder. Climbing is hard. Running is harder.

But I decided along the way that I'd run anyway. Run because I can. Run because it's simple and minimal, all I can handle some days. Run and remind myself of people who can't and wish they could. Run to prevent how sick stress made my body feel last winter and I never want to go back. Run to have the energy for the kind of life I want to live. Run because an hour pounding pavement with headphones in is the best place I have right now to escape from apathy and laziness. 

It wasn't always this way.

I've trained for a 5k before and not finished it. That's my baseline. That's where I come from.

On July 4th this summer, I set out to accomplish a new goal. By the end of October, I wanted to be able to run 10k without stopping. Six miles is a long way for a non-runner. Especially one with a track record of slacking in training and taking walk breaks during low-pressure 5k races. Especially at 5,280' elevation.

As I got deeper into my training, I began to learn I was never a terrible runner. Turns out, I was terrible at accepting the hard parts of running in exchange for the good. The rewarding stuff is on the other side of perseverance in all things worth doing or being.

I was running farther, faster, and longer than I ever had in my life. And I'd worked so hard for it this time.

Three nights a week and the occasional early morning, I could be found with headphones in making perimeter loops around the college campus and adjacent park and reservoir near my house.

Along the way, you could find me peeling off layers when I got too warm, calling my sister to pass the time (even if she does get annoyed I'm half-panting through the conversation), finding a trash bin to spit my gum and fresh gum's wrapper, fishing chapstick out of my awkward rear end zipper pocket, making to-do lists in my head. Anything to distract me, even if only for a minute.

Eventually I learned the physical aspect of running gets easier while the real challenge becomes occupying the mind.

You could say I was bored enough to get to the bottom of some things. Like my to-do list, for example.

One weekday evening, I was on the most boring stretch of sidewalk sandwiched between a construction site barrier of chain link fence panels and a section of road with traffic. The sidewalk here is uneven, so I have to watch my footing, but otherwise, there's not much to look at, and I'm utterly unaware of my legs turning over and over under me, as if my head sat atop a torso that sat atop a machine that resembled my legs wearing my shoes.

It's not that I'd conquered running. It truly emptied me. I could handle the miles. What I couldn't handle was the quiet.

I begin to mentally run through my to-do list for the rest of the evening:

• invoices
• dinner plans
• submit photo assignment
• go for a run

I laugh audibly to no one. Really, it's blessing to forget the pain of miles 5 and 6. Because there was a time where miles 2 and 3 were uncharted territory. Impossible.

I am on a run. And I am mentally so far removed from the work of it that I am found wondering when I'm going on my run today.

One of the reasons I took up running was to be a good steward of the gift of health I've been given. I can run, so I should.

I considered having run the worship, but I didn't know until then I'd watch my sheer boredom become the meditation.

While keeping one eye on the concrete trip hazards and one on my phone, I crafted a new playlist, on the run. Music has always been a portal for me. This one became a compilation of songs that reminded me of someone or some place I could fixate on over the miles.

From then on, before I left the house, I would pen turn-by-turn directions on my left hand, and a list on my right. Then I'd shuffle through a list of songs that meant someone or someplace to me. When songs didn't trigger a response, my inked hands would. It wasn't my to-do list. It was my to-be list.

Be a runner.

Be grateful.

Be prayerful.

I'd see it any time I finagled the cap off and back on the chapstick tube. Any time I wiped away the sweat that makes my glasses slip slowly down my nose. Any time I waved thanks to a yielding driver.

You think you're training for a running race, and God has better ideas for the meanwhile.

It was race day. I shivered at the start line as it was early and still very cold. I was way under-dressed to be idle, but I knew I'd warm up soon enough.

As my corral got closer to the start line, I pressed play and entered the zone, the meanwhile.

A friend and victim of Hurricane Michael.

A school shooting at the junior high were my church meets.

A friend's family struggling with their recent adoptions.

A friend fighting for joy in the midst of horrific illness.

A friend wrestling and recovering from infertility treatments.

Another serving her heart out and needing poured into.
Another losing a best friend to cancer.

I endured the 10k and I get the medal to prove it. I put my head down and got through the months of training, but they persevered the course with me.

I think this is the real race.

Meanwhile, I rise in the morning to achy knees. Ligaments groan and revolt as I warm up to walking. Physiologically, yeah, it's likely the running. 

But maybe it's the gold medal of meanwhile.

Climb on,

Shelby