This weekend I went over to GR to visit with Alex and his family for a bit. One thing his family does every summer is train for a triathlon so on Friday night I decided to join them on a run. Alex's dad had run a 5k recently at 33 minutes and Alex's recent time was approximately 20 minutes. The idea was that Alex would run 13 minutes after we had left to see if he could catch us, and that way we would be motivated to run faster.
As we were running, Alex's dad told me about winning his first 10-k. Each runner had to send in their best time in order to determine when they would start. The race was one hour total, and you started based on your time and tried to beat it, so the winner was whoever could improve on their best time. This might be confusing so let me explain. If your best time was an hour, you started first. If your best time was a half hour, you started a half hour later. Alex's dad sent in his best time - 56 minutes. He trained for several weeks, but no matter how good he felt on a run, he could never break the 56 minute mark. But then, on the day of the race, he won with a time of 45 minutes! He was able to run 11 minutes faster than normal, shaving more than a minute off each mile. I thought that was amazing.
As we continued to run, I thought about my recent (and first) half-marathon. I had never actually run 13.1 miles, but on race day I had a burst of energy and when I finished I felt like I could run a few more miles. It made me wonder why I don't have this energy to run every day. Maybe it's that I'm running alone, maybe because I'm not competing with anyone but my stopwatch.. who knows.
This concept applies to my relationship with God as well. When I go on Spring Break trips or Retreats at church, it's like race-day for my faith. I get a sudden burst of energy and I'm excited again. But when it comes to running this road on a day-to-day basis, I don't feel that same adrenaline rush that I get on retreats...
And I think this is where having a church community comes in. If there wasn't other people with you, to motivate you to run up that next hill, to get back up after you fall, to push through that last mile, or improve your form, it would be hard to stay in the race. In fact, we'd probably all reach a point where we'd wonder "Why am I still running?" and stop. But when you see that person running up beside you, who's more tired than you and still striding it out, you know why.
