Why I Still Run

Back in 2013 I wrote a post entitled: "Why I Run".   Six years later and with another decade under my belt I'm still running. I've been running fairly consistently since 1978 when I was dared to run a 45 mile ultra-marathon race in Kodiak, AK called the Chad Ogden Memorial Run.  Whereas, I was not in particularly good shape and would not have considered myself a runner I had the day off the day of the race--so I figured I'd give it a try.  Believe-it-or-not, I finished 13th out of the 26 people who started the race.  Only 14 finished.  By the time I got across the finish line, 10 hours after we started, everyone had already gone home except for one race official who quickly handed me a “finishing trophy” and said "another hour and we'd have sent out the dogs”. That was it….no band, no hand clapping, whistle blowing crowd cheering for me, not even a T shirt. But it didn’t matter because I didn’t quit and that meant more to me than any of those things.  What I remember about that day was learning just how far 45 miles really is, how much it hurt, but how good it felt to finish and not quit.  This was the day I became a runner and I've been running ever since.

Now, don't take all this to mean that I am a fast runner or an accomplished runner.  I'm neither.  If anything, I am a plodder, struggling to pick up one foot after another only to do it again a few thousand times until the run is over.  Anymore at 60, I don't so much envision running 6 miles as much as I envision running one mile six times.

But why do I still run? Well, whereas, I do find enjoyment in running, it still comes back to what mattered most to me when I crossed the finish line 41 years ago….I finished! It wasn’t pretty. No one else cared except for the race official who finally got to go home but it did matter to me because when tempted to quit….when my body was begging me to quit….when the blisters on my feet and my blood chafed inner thighs were screaming at me to quit….when I really wanted to quit….I didn’t. I kept going until my race was finished and in the finishing experienced the sheer joy of not quitting. And that’s why I run and keep on running….for the sheer joy of not quitting.

Real runners don’t quit and that’s what proves they are real runners. So what does this all have to do with anything anyway? I mean, is there any spiritual significance to any of this? I think so. I think it portrays and illustrates what so many Bible verses teach regarding the need for believers to persevere until the end so as to not quit, but finish their race.  In the end it is their perseverance that finally proves they were true believers for only the true believer will persevere until the end because only the true believer will be preserved until the end.  And in the persevering, in the not giving up, in the enduring until the end they experience the sheer joy that comes when you don’t quit. (Hebrews 12:1-3)

In this day when apostatizing (quitting) seems to be in vogue among religious "superstars" remember this--just as real runners keep running and don't quit--real believers keep believing and don't stop.

And in case you're wondering......the pic is of our last two teens still at home, Esther and Peter, who, while being able to run much faster and farther than me still run with me to make sure I don't quit.  Ah, I think that's fodder for yet another post down the road.