Ten Thousand Meters

Today was the 10k.

But you know me. I can't start there.

I used to really, really stink at running. Two summers ago I wasn't able to run more than about a minute straight without stopping. When we were in Hampton Beach on our summer project, I'd go out to the walkway by the beach every morning at some stupid-early hour and start to run. After about a minute I would slow to a walk, check my watch (a key strategy in communicating to those around me that it was some pre-planned fitness interval, which it absolutely was not), and pray that my lungs would not actually physically explode in my chest. When they stopped threatening to do that in about 5 minutes, I'd run for another minute. This cycle repeated itself for approximately a million years, until I had to go home to make breakfast.

I did that for a summer. Then I went home to the YMCA, gave up on running, and spent a year working my butt off (to some literal degree) on the elliptical machine. The same machine. Every day. The last one on the right.

When I returned to Hampton Beach the next summer (about 70 pounds lighter), I was sad to have to give up my friend, the last elliptical machine on the right, in favor of my old lung-bursting nemesis, running. Preparing myself for pain and failure, I set out my first morning...and found myself totally stunned.

I could run.

It still felt unnatural, but the first time out I ran over a mile without stopping. And I began to ask, if I can run a mile, what else can I do?

Maybe I could run two. Turned out I could. How about three? Not quite, but by the end of my six weeks in NH I was up to nearly three miles, and last July I ran-without-stopping my first 5k in Hoboken, NJ, home of lots of yuppies, the Cake Boss, and a beautiful waterfront.

My friend Kathy, who started running shortly before I did, has been indispensable to me in this process. She's better than I am. She's leaner and stronger, and she has longer legs. She got me through the Hoboken 5k by talking at me the whole time, distracting me from the fact that I wanted to lie down and die right there on the beautiful waterfront. She could have finished much faster, but she stayed with me and coaxed me across the finish line. I love this woman.

A 10k seemed like the next logical step, and I made it official by putting it on my list. Kathy agreed to run with me again, and once we settled on this race in Ridgewood, NJ we started training for it in earnest.

You understand that I mean earnest in my world. Like, go out a couple of times a week and try to run as far as you can. That kind of earnest. Not the kind where you keep a training log and buy expensive sneakers and sunglasses with a strap on them. But still.

Earnest or not, as of this morning I had been completely unsuccessful in my efforts to actually run 10 kilometers (about 6.2 miles) in a row. Kath did it a couple of times, but not me. And our last practice run together, last Thursday, was kind of a disaster. So I went into this morning's race genuinely unsure about whether I could do this at all.

Kath was positive as ever, promising to talk me through it again and declaring that she wouldn't cross the finish line without me. I had my doubts, but we lined up behind the hundreds of other runners in this morning's post-thunderstorm damp coolness (thank you, Lord), looked at each other as we crossed the starting line, and began to run.

The first mile was ok. The second passed fine. I was already soaked from head to toe, partially because I sweat like a maniac (which I think we've covered), and partially because all the residents on whose streets we were running were standing at the curb, cheering us on and spraying their garden hoses into the street to cool us off. As we neared the big red number 3 and the pace clock for the third mile, I was thinking that I might be just fine and feeling a little smug. That's when it turned uphill.

I've come a long way with running, but running uphill is still a special kind of torture. It still sends my lungs into a full-on revolt in which they seriously question my judgment and refuse to do their job with any efficiency, opting instead to instigate a slow burn throughout my chest cavity. I don't like it. In my training runs, the slightest incline caused me to slow to a walk to catch my breath. And while this hill wasn't long, it felt very, very steep. I mentioned to Kath that I might need to pause for just a moment.

"Not today," she said. "You can walk tomorrow."

Fair enough.

I kept going, but it took its toll, and by the time we reached mile 4, I was really hurting. At my request, Kath started with the nonstop talking while I concentrated mostly on moving forward and continuing to inhale and exhale. And we (she) talked about wraparound porches and theology and running styles and Scripture and music and childbirth and Rocky Balboa. And then she reminded me that at the finish line we were going to see my kids. And more importantly, they were going to see me doing something that is hard for me. Pressing on. Even when it hurts. Being healthy and strong and not taking the easy way out.

When she put it like that, I sort of had to keep going.

We finished, you guys. Without stopping. Without walking. I ran ten thousand meters in a row.

It took us one hour and eleven minutes. That's one hour and ten minutes more than I could run two years ago. Standing on this side of this accomplishment, I'm a little floored at how far I've come. And again, I can't really attribute it to anything other than God's grace. I haven't become a more disciplined person in any pervasive sense...one look at the mess in my bedroom will tell you that. He's just pushed me somehow to stick with this thing. Through Kathy, through working in my heart, and through His own amazing grace, my Savior brought me to this place.

And I'm left asking again, if I can do this, what else can I do? What other intimidating thing, what task that seems completely impossible, might lie waiting for me just around the corner, ready to be defeated? If I trust God to lead me to places that are scary and unfamiliar, what memories might I make? What barriers might I break down? I'm such a fearful, timid person by nature, but seeing Him do these things in my life makes me want to step forward in faith and courage.

Who knows what might happen. :)