How I Became a Baptist

A year ago, I had never been in a Baptist church.  This Sunday, I will be “walking the aisle” to become a member of one – indeed, to become a Baptist.

Is becoming a Baptist the result of a personal transformation? 

Hopefully the answer is both “yes” and “no.”  Yes, my life has changed and I have transformed as an individual over the last year and the last several years.  But hopefully I’m not done.  May my transformation ever remain incomplete!  May I never stop growing. 

It is interesting for me to look back over the timeline of what brought me to this present day.  My memory has reversed the order of several of what I perceive to be watershed moments of the last couple years of my life.  The shaping of one’s life can rarely be attributed to a specific, solitary event – a single “aha!” moment.  Though there may (and hopefully will) be ahas along the way, it’s hard to imagine that most of us have that singular moment on which our lives hinge.  When we look at others’ lives, we may think that’s what we see, but even then, it’s probably an oversimplification of a complex process of growth.  (Perhaps our best example of having “the one moment” is Paul on the road to Damascus.  But if that event was so central to Paul’s development, why does he mention it only once, briefly, in his many letters?)

That said, I can certainly identify a number of influences in my recent life that have had substantial impact.

What stands out to me most was a book I read: Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place.  I read that book November 16, 2013.  It was one of the most powerfully moving reading experiences of my life, no doubt.  I was swept up by this woman whose story was so profound and heroic, yet she didn’t seem to attribute greatness to herself.  She was a Christian woman who was doing the right thing, nothing more, in her own estimation.  But in so doing, she was first able to save countless lives – mostly Jewish lives that would have been eliminated at the hands of the Nazis – and then brought to the brink of death herself in a concentration camp after her activities were discovered.  And yet, even in the face of an enemy so clearly defined, she never lost her heart of forgiveness.  Truly, hers was an outwardly-directed life that is a model of many of the virtues to which I sincerely aspire.

But looking back over the timeline, I see that another domino had already been tipped by that point.  A month prior, I had been driving from a client’s warehouse to the Kroc Center in Greenville to pick up my packet for a race.  In my car, I had on “Walter Edgar’s Journal,” the Friday noontime radio show on SC ETV Radio.  The show that day was a discussion of Year of Altruism, and featured an interview with my teacher and friend Rabbi Marc Wilson.  I had studied with Marc on and off for several years.  He used to host a weekly Torah study in his home on Monday nights (a class that continues to this day, though now in Greenfield’s Bagels).  For several years, Julie and I would go through periods of time when we would attend fairly regularly, and then fade away for a while (babysitter costs, etc.).  Anyhow, the Rabbi Wilson that I heard on the radio was hardly the man I had known for the last several years.  What I heard was a man with “fire in his belly” – a man who had been regenerated, given new life by the cause he had found.  I knew when I heard that radio show that I needed to get on board, to hitch my wagon to whatever train he was on.  He had found new verve for serving his community – my community, Greenville – and seemed to be organizing folks to uplift our community as a whole.  Year of Altruism was the outgrowth of the idea of commemorating Kristallnacht – that horrible and fateful night that ramped up what was to become the Holocaust -- not by dwelling on the suffering and loss that ensued, but rather by celebrating the “righteous gentiles” among the nations that acted without concern for their own lives in efforts to save lives of Jews. 

I knew that that radio show was a clear domino in leading me to try to become involved in Year of Altruism, which brought about MeetingPoint, the interfaith community-building effort with which I am currently involved.  In retrospect, since that radio show was 22 days prior to my reading The Hiding Place, it must have piqued my interest and primed me to be able to really understand the book as I was able to do.

And it was only a month before that that I was immersed in baptism.

When I was immersed, I didn’t sense it to be a particularly transforming experience.  It was, in my perception, primarily a formality.  As you can see from my prior blog entry which discusses my decision to be immersed (if you should wish to read it), I was immersed so that there would no longer be an obstacle between myself and my church. 

Perhaps you see the theme that runs through these three influential occasions in 2013: awakening my desire to actively participate in my community.

While my immersion itself didn’t awaken a new sense of religiosity in my life, it was a demonstration of a cornerstone element of religious involvement.  Organized religion is about community.  It is about coming together to do things we can’t do on our own.  It is about loving something and someone other than oneself.

On the face of it, it might seem strange.  I left one church home relatively soon after I was intentionally doubling down on my commitment to that very church body.  But it seems clear to me now that the desire to enrich my relationship with the church was part and parcel of the growth that has led me away from it.

See, our former church home, which our family still loves dearly, is far away.  For years, we were willing to make the fifty-mile drive to and from Clemson to remain connected to the church.  We visited a number of churches closer to home over the years, but never found a good fit.  We tried to be “semi-involved” with a couple of churches – participating in extracurricular activities with one while commuting to Clemson for Sunday worship – but we ended up being lukewarm in two places.

When we first began talking with friends about Earle Street Baptist Church in Greenville, it was perhaps with the desire for another lukewarm attempt.  Could we, maybe, just do Wednesdays at ESBC?  What time is early service on Sunday during busy season?  How about being part of the Earle Street basketball team or something?  Thankfully, we were somehow wise enough to know better this time around.  But what about “Baptist?”  Isn’t that, like, Jerry Falwell, and right-wing politics?  Don’t they just sing praise songs?  Aren’t they, kinda, mega-churchey?  Or maybe, are those the folks that talk about “gettin’ saved” and preach hell and brimstone?  It’s taken me long enough to fit in at any church, what with my Jewish-influenced practices and apolitical (or left-leaning) sensibilities.  How on earth  can I give that up to try to convince a new church family that I’m not a whacko, zealot, legalist, Judaizer? 

Buddhism is divided into two primary schools.  The older, more “fundamentalist,” school is known as Theravada.  The majority of Buddhists would fall into the other school, which is Mahayana.  The word “Mahayana” means, essentially, “great vehicle” – though it was taught to me, and is perhaps somewhat more intuitively understood, as “big raft.”  The concept is that there is room for a great diversity on the “big raft,” while the Theravada, the “way of the elders” is a Hinayana: a minibus.

What I have learned in the last year is just how big the “raft” of the Baptists is.  It is not narrowly defined.  There is room for diversity of opinion.  It can run the political gamut.  But in the end, a Baptist church is a collection of individuals – a congregation – and the congregation is the ultimate authority.  So, yes, some Baptist churches are probably very political, and sing praise songs with electric guitars and drums and maybe even a little light show, and emo teens swaying their heads to the beat.  Indeed, indeed – probably most Baptists churches would not be a very good fit for me and my family after all.  But “Baptist” is a big enough raft to include churches for many types of person and walk and worship style.  Even me & mine.  Because we are an assembly of people, we can – and do – take on the shape of our constituency: our community. 

When we first began attending ESBC, they were kicking off the current church year, where the theme is that they are a “church without walls.”  We sing, every week:

Make us a church without walls

Open to all

Sharing holy love with all the world

And forgive us when we hide

And hold your love inside

O Lord we hear the call

To be a church without walls!

How exciting, to keep the outward focus on our lips, week after week!  And it couldn’t have come at a better time in my life, ringing true to what is so important to me.

I am delighted to have found a church that I am willing and eager to now make my own.  In another year, in five years, Earle Street Baptist Church is going to have a little more Steven Rau feel about it.  We will shape each other as we work together.  May we work to serve others, and may we elevate our community in so doing.

Get Zloty! -- The Argument for My Immersion

Almost two years ago, I wrote about trust.  In my post "Slower, Slower", I pointed out how, in committing to a run training schedule written by someone else, you are placing your trust in their expertise and admitting the limitation of your own.  I went on to discuss how this is similarly true to the religious walk.  Wisdom comes from those wiser than ourselves, plain and simple.  In my running life, this has often meant that I have needed to slow down – to pace myself so that I can endure longer or develop more fully.

Each year, I try to take a couple days to run at the beach to ask God for my marching orders for the year to come.  And so, when I was at Myrtle Beach last weekend, I set out on a run to ask for divine direction.  When I used to run infrequently, it was easy for me to be God-focused while I was running.  As I have developed as a runner, I have found it more difficult to pray or really have any “focus” at all.  In running, I tend to become devoid of selfhood.  (It is easy to see how the Japanese have developed a tradition of “moving meditation” that includes such things as raking rocks, archery, flower arranging, etc.)  Nonetheless, I did my best to entreat God for direction. 

My prevailing thought during long runs tends to be “get zloty!”  What I have found is that, when I need to pull back my heart rate just a bit on a long run, there is a “slot” that I can find in which I can put slightly less effort into my motions, thereby becoming marginally more efficient in my running.  When my heart rate monitor tells me to decrease my effort, my practice of running has allowed me to quickly find my “slot” where I can maintain my speed but lower my heart rate.  (“Zloty” is a tip of my cap to my dear friend Chris Coffman, who once brought me an already scratched lottery ticket back from a trip Poland.  Their currency was then the złoty.  I liked the word, and it has stuck with me.  Chris’s father passed away last night, and my heart aches for his loss.)

My “slot,” it occurred to me, was discovered as a function of trust for coach Roy Benson, who wrote the book that has been my primary guide in developing as a runner.  I have renewed my trust in this guy hundreds of times over the last couple years, and my calendar is often literally built around his advice.  And this is a guy I’ve never met.  As someone who is acutely aware of how my running life and my religious life inform each other, it begs the question: must not I put the same kind of trust in my religious leaders? 

The one area of friction, for lack of a better word, between myself and the leaders of my church has been around the issue of baptism by immersion.  I was raised in a protestant church and I was baptized by sprinkling as an infant.  I am now a member of an evangelical church which baptizes only consenting believers, and baptizes by immersion.  Since my wife first introduced me to the Church of Christ, I have spent a good deal of spiritual effort in determining my relationship to baptism.  I have scoured scripture, engaged in numerous discussions, and taken a winnowing fork to my soul to find answers. 

My working answer has been: I am right with God.  There is no necessary condition that remains unmet that keeps me from the blessed assurance afforded me by scripture.  Moreover, scripture is clear in the commandment to “honor thy father and thy mother.”  To undergo “re-baptism” by immersion might possibly be construed as a dishonor to my parents.  Therefore, other things being equal, I will not be immersed – at least, not while my parents walk with the living.  Yes, it may keep me from being totally accepted by my church, and thus keep me from being fully involved with the church – but we must all work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, and I am convinced of my salvation.

That answer has worked for a while.  But, ultimately, it is a child’s answer.  Furthermore, it hinges on a number of flawed premises.  It became clear to me on my run last week that I needed to change my answer.

Before my run, I read the book of Galatians.  It was Galatians 5 that would come home to roost:

5 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

² Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. ³ I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. ⁴ You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. ⁵ For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. ⁶ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

⁷You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? ⁸ This persuasion is not from him who calls you. ⁹ A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

It was this passage that would later occur to me to undermine my old answer.  I cannot appeal to the Law to find my defense in an answer to the question of baptism.  To bind myself to “honor thy father and thy mother” is to submit myself to a yoke of slavery.

For whatever reason, the song “Just as I Am, Without One Plea” continued to echo through my mind.  I don’t know that I’ve even heard this song in the last ten years, but the Spirit seemed to be calling me to these lyrics.  Am I looking to invoke a plea to the Lord?  It seems that, indeed, my old “working answer” was precisely that: the plea of a logical argument.  It’s not bad logic, I might argue – but it is an attempt to rationalize my relationship with the Lord.  It becomes all the more so when I think about how much time and attention the question of baptism has required of me and others over the past several years.  Again, let’s say my logic is sound, and that I really have no need to be immersed in baptism at this point.  But what of the effect is has on my relationship with my church?  Is it acceptable to voluntarily affix an asterisk to my role in the church, or to limit the manner in which I may serve?  Perhaps as a child, it is acceptable.  As a fully engaged adult member of a church community, though: I think not.

It’s as clear as day in scripture itself, too.  Not the mode of baptism; there are sound readings of scriptures in support of both doctrines.  Rather, it is clear that parental devotion is not supposed to inhibit our spiritual growth.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  What does Jesus say about clinging to parents rather than following him?  “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” in Matthew 10. In Mark 10: “No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel, will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age.”  In Luke 14: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple.”  That last passage is a particularly controversial one; but I think no possible interpretation of Jesus’ meaning can support my old argument that “honor thy father and thy mother” should in any way stand between me and being fully involved with my church.

Further, let me look at the issue of honor.  I was raised in a church-going family by parents that were consistently involved with the church.  Most of their best friends have come into their lives through churches.  To this day, many of the visitors that they entertain in South Carolina are dear friends from a church they attended thirty years ago.  Do I do them greater honor by adhering the letter of their teaching or by following the model they set out for me?  Should one issue of doctrine keep me from being a fully realized Christian man?  That’s not honor; it’s ancestor worship.  It’s choosing death over life, the past over the future.  I love my parents; they taught me what it is to love and honor and respect.  But was the model of love I learned from them shown by them venerating their parents, or instead by how they love each other, their church friends, and their God?  Indeed, I think to be immersed at this point, rather than being a rejection of my parents’ teachings, is rather an affirmation that I am following their example.

It is indeed well to work out one’s own salvation with fear and trembling.  However, that’s not the whole Christian calling.  Our cause is not so self-centered as that.  We are called to be outwardly-directed.  We are called to put others before ourselves.  We are called to humble ourselves before God and man.  I can think of scarcely any better way for me to humble myself than to be immersed before my congregation – to be buried with Christ anew. 

And so, it is my intention to take the plunge.  I hope to be immersed at the Clemson Church of Christ on Sunday, September 15^th.  May my walk with God continue to become deeper and may my relationships on this earth be made richer as I submit myself anew to Father, Son, and Spirit.

No Tomorrow - Part 2

“Just promise me that you won’t die.”

“I promise!  I promise!”

When I told Julie that I wouldn’t die, I was thinking about the physical toll that running two races in the same day could have on the body.  While I’ve not yet run a marathon, I’ve never gotten to the end of a race at the absolute bottom of my energy tank.  It surely seems reasonable to tack on a few extra miles after a race.  I wasn’t thinking about getting run over by a train.

~~

The joy of speed was what sent me down this path.  But it’s not just that it feels good to run fast; it feels great to run faster than somebody else.  I still remember the end of that race a year ago -- my game changer -- so well.  I had run at a moderate, even slow, pace.  Of course, those finishing with me had run at a similarly slow pace.  But another runner and I decided to tear it up at the end.  I went to pass her, but she didn’t want to be passed.  I stepped it up; I still had plenty left in my tank at the end of the “fun run.”  But apparently, so did she.  So, for the last quarter mile of the race, she and I were sprinting right next to each other, neither of us wanting to give in.  I got a step on her right at the end, and I beat her.  It was exhilarating.

That race changed me.  It awakened a competitiveness in me that I had not before known in my running.

Competitiveness is a mighty beast.  I suppose the progress of the world would be much slower without the drive that makes us want to do better than someone else, or perhaps better for someone else.  I wasn’t sure if I would be writing this piece yesterday or today.  Yesterday morning, I ran my usual morning run.   When I have specific goals for a run, I vary my course a bit to suit it -- but generally, I run the exact same route every time I head out.  I’ve run it hundreds of times in the last three years.  It suits my needs and I know it well.  When I’m running according to a training schedule, I generally have to pace myself to keep my heart rate near a specific threshold.  But when I’m “off the clock,” as I have been lately, I feel free to run it however I wish.  Of the hundreds of times that I’ve run that route, yesterday was my fastest time to date.  Why?  Mostly, it’s because I keep getting faster as I run more intensely.  But also, I knew that I’d be writing this.  I wanted to let you know that, yesterday, I got my PR.  Well, I didn’t get this written yesterday.  Today?  A new PR -- seven seconds per mile faster than yesterday.

My running mantra used to be, “Press on like Paul!” with specific reference to Philippians 3:13-14: “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of G-d in Christ Jesus.”  That’s a good verse to keep you running from an endurance perspective.  But does Paul say, “Just do your best.  Run the race for yourself.  Really, just finishing the race is the goal.  So press on!”  No.  Decidedly not.  Paul elsewhere says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” (1 Corinthians 9:24).  Granted, he was using a metaphor.  Still, it is hard to read that and the verses that follow it and not stand convicted.  If you’re going to race, run to win.

I have taken a different mantra for racing: “No tomorrow.”  There’s no point in holding anything back when you are in a race for which you’ve been training.  Better leave it all out there.  Otherwise, regret may follow you afterwards.

As I ran the Greer Earth Day Half Marathon, I felt very good about my progress.  I had learned a number of ways to gain or keep an advantage on other racers, and was putting my mind and my body to good work.  I’ve learned that I tend to run faster when I’ve got headphones on.  There’s something about driving beats keeping their persistent tempo in your ears.  It keeps your pace up, and it distracts you from the other things you might hear: heart beating, breath drawing, feet pounding.  Music changes your focus just enough to be a welcome diversion during a hard run.  I was running well.  There were a number of challenging hills on the course.  Just before the 11-mile mark, I crossed a bridge, and was running pretty hard downhill of the back side of it.  Then I noticed the arms of a railroad crossing in front of me starting to flash their red lights.

I kept running as the arms lowered.  I could see the train coming down the track.  My brain was working furiously but it was revving in neutral.  The beat of the music kept pounding its techco “thud. thud. thud.”  A couple runners in front of me stopped in front of the almost fully lowered arms of the track crossing.  I had to decide.  Look again.  There’s no time to look.  Gotta stop.  Probably.  “Thud. thud. thud.”  I’m running too well to want to deal with a setback like this.  If I can beat the train, I’ll get an advantage on these guys.  I can make it.  “Thud. thud. thud.”  I dodge underneath the railroad crossing arm, running as fast as I can.  I look briefly to my right as I cross the tracks.  Man, that train is really hauling.  It’s a lot closer than I thought.  I get to the other side but hadn’t thought about the other arm.  I make a leap to my right, move forward, and I’m on my way.

Another hundred feet up the road and I look back.  The thing was only three or four cars long.  The path is clear.  The other runners continue on their course.

I didn’t get hit.  But the image of that train bearing down on me stuck with me for the remainder of the race.  Wow, that was the stupidest thing that I’ve done in a long time.  That was really stupid.  What if I’d tripped crossing those tracks?  I’m used to running around cars, but cars can evade you by slowing down or turning a little bit.  A train can’t do that.  Man, how stupid was that?  Ok, I’ve got to finish this race strong.  No tomorrow.  No tomorrow.

With that, I decided that I shouldn’t run the 5k that evening.

No Tomorrow - Part 1

When I last posted to this blog, just about a year ago, it was in the wake of RunWalkAdopt 2012, and I wrote about my first taste of the thrill of speed.  A lot has changed since then -- in my running life and in my life itself.  In fact, there is no separate “running life” from “other life” for me any more so than there is a separate “spiritual life” and “work life.”  What occupies the mind, occupies the spirit, occupies the body.  Do I digress?  I think not.  Telling the story of my running is telling my life story.  And I think that’s what any blog is really about.

Up until RunWalkAdopt 2012, my running had been focused entirely on increasing my endurance.  But training to increase endurance is quite different than the process of developing speed.  By no means can I say that I am done with the process of endurance training.  I have not yet even run a marathon, and I have longer-term goals of running in at least a couple ultramarathons.  It occurred to me, though, that speed is of the essence of running.  Does my three-year-old know the joy of running?  Certainly.  But his joy does not hinge on how far he can locomote.  It is about breaking free from his ordinary self.  It feels good to run because we are accustomed to walking.

So I set out to get faster.  I would no longer approach 5k races as “fun runs” that I would enter without care or consequence.  I would train for them, and in doing so, I would invest meaning in the races.  And so, for the better part of the last year, I have been engaged in one training program or another in attempt to increase my speed.  At some point in the process, I came to realize that, if I were to lose weight, I would be able to run faster, and so I set out to become leaner.  I have lost quite a bit of superfluous weight in effort to better my running pace.

My most recent goal race was the St. Patty’s Day Dash and Bash on March 16, 2013.  I really like having a target race right around the corporate tax deadline.  It helps me to make time to maintain my body for the first couple months of busy season, and then grants me more flexibility of time and the possibility of another gear going into the stretch to April 15.  After any goal race, though, I am faced with a sort of vacuum of time & direction.  I spend so much time diligently following a structured schedule, but then find myself at the threshold of the unknown once the date -- the date that had been my focus for weeks and months theretofore -- has passed.  There is no wane after the long wax.

I have been through this cycle several times, now, and know well enough to expect vacuity of direction following a race.  I’ve tried several different ways to move through the uncertain and unstructured time (which really only lasts until I am 14-weeks out from the next race I target).  I get so used to racing -- my 5k training schedule has six practice races prior to the goal race -- that it’s natural to continue seeking them out, even if they don’t fall on a pre-ordained day on a training schedule.  I’m used to knowing what races are on the horizon and, generally, try to run in as many of them as I can.

When I saw RunWalkAdopt 2013 on the calendar, I was the first one to sign up for it.  It was scheduled for April 20, which worked perfectly with my working & personal calendar.  It was probably mid-February when I signed up for it.  As the days drew closer, though -- and especially after my St. Patty’s Day goal race had come and gone -- I was itching for something more.  I really wanted to run another half marathon.  And so I combed through the several websites and their calendars that advertise upcoming races.  I found a half marathon, and it came at the perfect time on my personal & work schedule: April 20.  I initially, somewhat regretfully, excluded the chance at the April 20 half, which was the Greer Earth Day Run.  But one day, while posting on the Facebook wall of a friend of mine about upcoming races, I came up with the idea: Why not run them both?  The half was a morning race, and the 5k was in the evening.  If I really wanted a novel challenge, indeed: Why not try to get personal records in both 5k and half marathon on the same day?  I had become faster than ever.  Why not give it a shot?

First, I had to find out if my wife thought that my idea was crazy or stupid.  I ran it by her, and, while I’m sure she wasn’t thrilled with it, she gave me the green light.  “Just promise me that you won’t die,” she texted me. “I promise!  I promise!” I responded immediately, whereupon I logged on & signed up for the Greer Earth Day half marathon.

Game Change -- The Fastest I've Ever Run

It’s been quite a while since my last blog post.  Busy season was, predictably, busy -- but it’s over now.

I’ve been trying to come up with a list of the races I’ve run so far this year.  I started out the year with the Resolution Run Half Marathon, and then did another half at the Famously Hot Half-Marathon in Columbia in March.  There was the Green Valley Road Race 8k in February.  It seems like there was another 5k or 10k or two in there prior to last weekend, but it might be that the others were in 2011.  I’m just not sure.  But I think there was at least a 5k somewhere.

5k races have always been just kind of throw-away events for me.  I mean, they’re a good time, but it’s just not a distance I’ve ever taken seriously.  I’m not terribly fast, so I suppose that’s led me to focus on the endurance aspect of running rather than what I’ve considered the more speed-oriented shorter distances. 

Even though I have strayed from strictly following the schedules therein, my training has largely been based on Coach Roy Benson’s Heart Rate Training, which has consistently served to slow me down.  By running slower over the last year, I have built up my aerobic capacity and am able to do longer distances.  Really, in all the races I have run, I find myself finishing the race with lots of energy left in my tank.  When I finished the Columbia half, I had to go run an extra mile just to burn off some of the reserves that I had been unable to exhaust in the 13.1-mile race.  Every race I’ve run, I end up flying past people for the last half mile or so.

Every race, that is, until last weekend.

April 21^st was Greenville’s RunWalkAdopt 5k.  Again, it wasn’t something that I was particularly excited about, but it was to be the first race after busy season, and might be a good chance to blow off some steam.  The course itself was moderately difficult, running along hilly parking lots and foot paths rather than roads.  Anyway, no big deal of a run.  Approaching the end of the race, I decided to turn it up a notch, as I typically do.  Pass this couple, pass this guy, then approach a short girl and start to pass her.  Have to turn up the gas to pass her.  I start to overtake her, but she doesn’t want to be passed.  I dig in, kick it up a notch.  So does she.  I put my pedal to the metal.  She doesn’t want to give in.  As we approach the finish line, people are cheering us on.  “C’mon!  You can beat him!,” they yell to her.  I thought I had a step on her, but no luck -- she’s right at my side.  In the end, I beat her by a fraction of a step.  The race website has us both finishing with the same time, but it’s only reporting to the second.  The final difference between our finish times must have been within a couple of hundredths of a second.

I had never been too interested in my pace, using it instead as a broad guide to make sure I am in a good rhythm halfway through a long race.  But this time, I was anxious to go home to upload my GPS data to my computer to see just what happened at the end of the race.  As it turns out, there was no illusion.  We really did keep getting faster & faster for the last half mile.  We finished the race at a 5:17 pace, or 11.36 miles per hour.  It is probably the fastest that I have ever run in my life.

This has been a game changer for me.  What if I decided to start taking 5k races more seriously?  Would I end up finishing with more competitive runners?  Would I find more people who will bring out the best in me?

I’ve been to the mountaintop, and I want to go back.

Running and Thinking Without Words

Mark it for posterity: I have officially run my first endurance race.  Last weekend, I ran the Greenville YMCA Resolution Run in Traveler’s Rest, SC.

It was a beautiful day -- a sunny Carolina January morning.  I was grateful that it was warm enough to just wear compression boxers.  I have been having some issues with the compression tights that I have been wearing when it has been cold outside.  I’ve tried two different brands: CW-X and 2XU.  The CW-X are thicker and warmer, while the 2XU are very thin.  Either one might be preferable depending on the weather.  However, I think that neither is designed for someone with any kind of belly, so they tend to drift southward.  The result can be chafing, which is exactly what they are supposed to prevent.  And while chafing can be uncomfortable for a three- or five-mile run, it’s downright terrifying for a longer run.  Anyhow, I was thankful that I didn’t need to complicate matters by worrying about how I was going to keep my pants up.

The run itself was a fascinating experience for me.  There were 219 entrants, which I think makes it a pretty small run.  I had decided on my heart rate splits rather arbitrarily before the race, planning a run that would allow me up to 80% of maximum heart rate for the first five miles, 83% for the next five miles, and then graduate upward for the last three+ miles.  The course itself was very hilly, so the splits were only rough guidelines in the actual execution.  Still, they reflect what my basic game plan for the race was: take it easy, don’t burn out; make sure there is always more in the tank; and shoot for a pretty consistent pace.  By allowing my heart rate to rise over the course of the race, I essentially allowed myself to keep very close to a set pace.  As it turned out, I ran right around a 12:30 / mile pace the whole way.

What fascinated me so was how this played against the other runners.  By the time we had gone a half a mile, I found myself running near no one else.  Those who fancied themselves runners had all dashed well ahead of me, while those who were looking to walk the 13.1 miles were all well behind me.  At the two mile mark, the course made a hairpin turn and retraced for about .6 miles on a parallel path.  As such, I was able to see much of the pack running back against me before I hit the two mile mark; and after I hit the turn, I could see the small group of walkers that trailed behind me.  I am thus able to say that, by the 2.5 mile mark, nobody was within a half mile of me -- neither ahead of nor behind me. 

For the majority of the race, I was running absolutely alone.  There were no other participants within sight.

These lonely miles of running were across rural residential roads.  At mile 4, the course crossed over Main Street, so I had a brief glimpse of the real world.  But apart from that, I’ll bet not even ten cars crossed my path for the remainder of the run before re-joining Main Street and finishing into the Travelers Rest Community Center. 

In short, I had a lot of time to myself. 

A lot of things ran through my head during this substantial chunk of the race.  Most thoughts that I have during running are free of words and thus ultimately deprived of substance.  I learned many years ago that putting words to things makes them “real” in a sense that they cannot be if they remain wordless.  Words give things labels; labels give categories.  Words help us to organize and understand our world, but at the same time they add something of a lie.  The reality of things is without words; understanding and especially communicating is where language comes in.  Words are a kind of tool or crutch.  As William S. Burroughs said, “language is a virus.”  Running tends to break one away from the world of language.  This caught me by surprise earlier in my running experience, when some of the occasions that I would seek to pray while running would come up short.

This is not so say that, when I am running, I find myself free of thought, however.  It is not simply a matter of abiding in the flesh at the exclusion of the mind.  While running, there is joy.  There is fear.  There is even love.  But, until I open my mouth to proclaim, “I love Julie!” or “Thank you G-d!” or some other such declaration (these being, indeed, my two most frequent linguistic utterances while running), the thoughts that I have lack the objective substance that only words convey.  Being free in this way might be the single strongest driving force leading me to run.

Enough with the philosophy.  As I mentioned, how my strategy and training played out during the race was quite interesting to me.  As I hope I’ve made clear, I was very much alone for much of the race. But after an hour and a half, a funny thing happened: I caught up to the group.  Well, sure -- not to everybody.  At first, I passed one guy that had obviously overextended himself and “bonked.”  He was struggling to catch his breath after a big hill.  He found someone to attend to him, so it’s not like I blew past someone passing out on the side of the road, mind you.  Anyhow, after overtaking him, I soon passed another couple people, then another couple, then another. . .  Did I mention that the course was quite hilly?

When all was said and done: Not one person passed me after the initial half mile stretch.  It was I who did the passing.  And no, I didn’t find myself magically transformed into a great distance runner, excelling all others in my preternatural abilities.  However, I set out to finish in 2 hours and 40 minutes.  My result on Saturday was 2:45, on a course that was much more challenging than I had anticipated.  For the scale of the hills I ran, a five minute swing is wholly satisfactory to me.  More important by far is that I finished the run.  At no point did I walk the course.  I kept my steady slow run pace from start to finish.  My old mantra of “Press on like Paul!” was fulfilled, if only for a day.

“It is not that I have already achieved this.  I have not yet reached perfection, but I press on, hoping to take hold of that for which Christ once took hold of me.  My friends, I do not claim to have hold of it yet.  What I do say is this: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what lies ahead, I press towards the finishing line, to win the heavenly prize to which God had called me in Christ Jesus.”  Amen V’amen!

Half Marathon in Ten Days

In September, while I was vacationing at Hilton Head Island, I rather casually posted as my Facebook status, “Running half marathon tomorrow.”  What I intended at the time was that I would be running 13.1 miles the following day.  It would have been a nice way to finish off a week of excellent runs.  However, I came up short.  Basically, my intention was to park my car, run 5 miles north along the beach to a river inlet.  I would then turn around, run past my starting point by approximately 1.55 miles, and then return.  Not exactly a classic “out and back,” but close enough.  However, in the execution, I was unwilling to run past my car.  The 13.1 miles was truncated to a 10-mile run. 

It was only days later that I decided to run a marathon.  It became clearer to me on that trip that I needed to set some sort of goal for myself.  What was I running for?  Did I want to get faster?  Did I want to be able to run longer?  How should I measure progress?  The answer to these questions was that I wanted to complete a marathon, the benchmark distance run.  I wasn’t particularly interested in developing speed -- at least not initially.  First things first: finish a marathon.  Train for it & do it.

In retrospect, much of my running journey so far was presaged during that trip.  Why was I unable to finish my 13.1 mile run at the beach?  I would say that there were four factors to my early termination.  First, by the time I got back to the 10-mile mark, I sincerely sought to use a restroom.  To run right past a well-situated facility would have been exceptionally difficult.  This fed in to the second factor: it was quite convenient to stop.  If my run had been 6.55 out and back, I would have had little choice but to complete the run in some manner once I had committed to the first leg.  In my case, especially after using the bathroom, it would have been akin to starting a second run.

Third, since  I was running by myself, I didn’t have any of the good peer pressure to keep me going.  Running in a pack helps you to press on.

But it was really factor number four that got me to head back: I was short-changing my family.  The night before my run was a particularly difficult one.  I don’t exactly remember which kid was keeping us up all night, but I know one of them was.  While I was gone, Julie would have to take care of both kids while being already exhausted herself.  Further, as I recall, she didn’t look to hide her irritation with me.  As with several other times that week, I was off to do my own thing, leaving her very little choice as to how to spend her time.  To make matters worse, this was the longest run of the week, and I wasn’t even starting at the house, so there was travel time to add to time I would be away.  This was, after all, her vacation, too.  Why shouldn’t she be a bit ticked off at me?  I guess I had never previously seen my exercising as being at some cost to anyone other than myself.  Surely, Julie and I hadn’t discussed the sacrifice yet at that point.

I haven’t endeavored a run that long since then.  And I’ve learned that running involves the whole family, in one way or another.

Still, I set out to run a half marathon on a whim, and it was on just such a whim that I signed up for the YMCA of Greenville Resolution Run to take place on the 7^th of January.  My schedule doesn’t have me running a half marathon for another two-and-a-half months.  And indeed, the half marathon is not a distance that particularly interests me.  From what I’ve been able to glean from websites and books, it’s largely a creation of the nomenclature itself (and a recent one at that).   Which sounds more noteworthy: running a “25k,” or running a “half marathon”?  The very word “marathon” attached to something makes it sound more impressive.  Of course, of the two I mention, the 25k is the longer run. 

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the chance to push myself a bit.  I don’t expect to do any better than about 2:40 or more.  I don’t intend to give it my all, since it really is just a whim.  However, it will be a chance to test my endurance, which is, ostensibly, my running goal.