Run With Endurance

One of the things I enjoy doing is to run. I know that sounds crazy. Trust me, I used to be just like you. I hated running. You guys, I even played soccer for a good chunk of my younger years and despised it then. In high school I was always in the back of the line trying to convince our team captains to stop short from what we were told to run by our coaches. If it was three miles to run, I would say ‘let’s just do two’, or while we were running another girl and I would say ‘it’s okay to stop here, they won’t know.’ I was always trying to find a way out of running. I could sprint, but distance was not my thing. After high school, I always wanted to get into running but the thought of it just seemed daunting. It took me time and a life event to get me to the place where I enjoy it today. Also, let me add a disclaimer that I am not an elite runner by no means. I am slower than molasses.

I hated running.

This past weekend Isaac and I ran in the Hot Chocolate Run here in Dallas, TX. When running becomes your thing you start getting into a routine, just like with any other sport. For me, I must have the same two shirts on, chew gum, have chap stick with me, my headphones, my Fit-bit (yes, because I have been fighting the switch to an apple watch), my supplements, my fanny pack and I’m ready to go. On our way to the run I was listing in my head all the things that I needed and made sure I had with me. Then I realized I didn’t have my Fit-bit, because I mean without that the run doesn’t matter, right? Ugh, I was so bugged, but oh well not the end of the world I can still track it on my phone. Then I go back to the list and realize I forgot my headphones!! My headphones!!! A very important and essential item for my running success. We were already 20 minutes away from the house. It was that moment where you need to decide right then, do you turn around or do you just keep going? I wanted to turn around so bad, those two things are the most important. Ugh! But I decided just to keep going. The whole ride down into Dallas I kept thinking how terrible my run was going to be. How was I going to get through it without my headphones? Isaac even offered his headphones, but he wears those fancy schmancy air pods (eye roll). The ear buds on those are too big for my ears so they don’t fit. You guys I was so bugged every time I thought about it.

I had a lot of things running through my mind during my run and I did better on my time then I had expected. During my run though, God truly spoke to me about life and how we sometimes treat it. Running is like everyday life. We are on this path, this mission to get to a finish line. To feel accomplished. To reach goals. Sometimes we make it and sometimes we don’t. We can get hurt along the way and get distracted on our purpose. I don’t know why, but we also get so caught up in what everyone else is doing. Who’s ahead and who’s behind. Who we can catch up to and who we pass by. I have learned that running and life is all about patience, endurance and a process. We all want to be at a place where we feel we have arrived at our destiny. But while trying to get to that place, we start looking at everyone else around us. Pretty soon we become so concerned with everyone else we start to lose sight of where we are going. These are the things that kept running through my head as I was running, without those headphones! Let’s just say I had a lot of Jesus time, lol. But really isn’t that how we treat life a lot of the time? I remember being younger in my 20’s and wanting to have this career as if I was a 30 or 40-year-old. I would get a little jealous when someone around me was doing something I wanted to be doing. I would think, how can I get there? How did that happen for them? We also do the opposite right? We start looking at who isn’t where we are in life and become so self-involved that we begin not to care whether they need help or not. Yet we look ahead and are desperately hoping someone in the front of the race will help us out. Interesting right?

Running is like everyday life. We are on this path, this mission to get to a finish line. To feel accomplished. To reach goals.

As I was running I kept noticing different types of people, different types of runners. People who pushed themselves real hard at the beginning. Then a couple miles down the road, I catch up with them again, thinking hey, I remember them they were moving fast earlier. They got tired faster because they went full speed from the starting line and they slowly start to fall behind. With running you need endurance to go long distance. I can tell who unseasoned runners are when I see this happen. They get caught up in what everyone else is doing and may even think they have to prove they are just as capable, but without that endurance they will fall behind. Then there are those I kept seeing every mile or so. These guys would run for a little bit and then slow down, then run again for a bit and then slow down. While I was steady at my pace they kept fluctuating between a run and a walk. There I was watching them go back and forth. How often do we see people moving fast, then they hit a wall and take a step back before they can run fast again? Another runner are those elite runners. Those guys are crazy. I do not understand how people can run 5 to 6 minute miles. There is no keeping up with them at all, but you admire and wonder how on earth they are disciplined enough to get to that point. I realized your race is your own. Comparing your pace, your rank, your finished time, your pain, your start it all steals from the training and the finish you did. How can we compare? None of us are the exact same and we have no idea what that other person did to train. We do not understand the injury they may be working through, we don’t know how long it took them to get into the race, we do not know what motivated them and what got them to finish.

During mile 4 in my run I started to feel my sciatic (I like to thank my amazing son Lincoln for that). In any long race like this one (15k = 9.4 miles) it usually does act up but not until I stop. I kept pushing through knowing that if I stop it probably will not be good. I get to mile 5 and feel the pain moving down my leg, but it’s not unbearable yet, just keep moving is what I am telling myself. Then a little bit after mile 6 I had to stop, and the moment I stopped, the pain shot down my entire leg and I was limping like an OG (Original Gangster) chola (lol, just kidding, but not really. I have some ghetto roots in me). I kept walking thinking it would get better, but it didn’t. So, I thought maybe if I run it won’t hurt so bad. I start jogging and the pain was not as intense. I didn’t have time to think a whole lot about the pain because I had to focus on moving. But sheesh every time I stopped man the pain was all I could think about. At one point I wanted to stop completely and move to the side of the road to try and figure out what do to. But I knew I had to keep moving. The pain was worse when I slowed down.

just keep moving.

Isn’t that the same in life? When we get hurt we want to wallow in our sorrows and feel sorry for ourselves. We make that thing that hurt us give us an excuse to get out of the race. It’s an excuse to not start something or to not try again. Or to keep that pain to remind us why we stopped. How can we keep running in our race if we are not willing to keep going? We get stuck on the side of the road. I think sometimes it is necessary to move to the side of the road because we need to catch our bearings. We need to recharge and get some supplements in us to continue moving. But you can’t stay stuck too long, trust me. The longer you stop the more time your muscles cool down and start getting stiff and sore. I know most of you have had an intense workout and within 24 to 48 hours after you can barely move, right? Life can be the same way. When we stop our muscles need to recover and during that recovery process, we hurt. We can’t stay stuck on the side of the road though. It will take you longer to get back to where you were in the race. And while we are down, we start seeing everyone else pass us by. We start wondering if we should even try because there is no way we can catch up.

How can we keep running in our race if we are not willing to keep going?

Your race is your own. No one else can do it for you. You can’t run your race if you keep looking at everyone else running too. When we get hurt or take a wrong turn, we must rely on our endurance to keep us moving. Endurance means the ability to withstand hardship or adversity especially; the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity. The only way to get endurance is to focus on what you can do in your season use your supplements to help you get a little more energy and keep moving. Your supplements are God, his word, the people he’s placed in your life that are willing to train and run alongside you. It is why it’s so important to have people who will pick you back up. Who will pull you off the side of the road and help you get better. It’s tough doing it on our own. Don’t compare how well others are doing, it’s not worth it and saves you some hardship. Do your best in your race. We always want the accelerated version, but how can we gain any endurance if we don’t know how to properly train? If we don’t go through injury we won’t know how to recover. Keep moving in your own race. God will get you to where you need to be. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us Hebrews 12:1.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

Hebrews 12:1