There are No Walls

A lot can get done on a 20 mile run.  Today, for example, I completely solved all the problems with public education in America.  That's right,  I completely overhauled the entire public education system.  With my new plan, we will not only produce an active, motivated, and well educated work force, we will eventually do it without any taxpayer money.  I know, you're thinking, that's just too much for one man to do, but I took care of it in the first hour.

The next hour, I started thinking about how I was going to qualify for the Boston marathon.  I did a lot of complicated mathematical algorithms and determined the exact pace and exactly how many years it will take me to work to that pace.  I worked through a lot of the physiological concerns and even determined a timeline to be able to work my way down to being a barefoot runner as I qualified.

The last hour was a kind of mish-mash of catchy God-centered phrases and slogans I can put on a race shirt that would encourage other runners, prayers, and somehow learning how to motivate myself enough to reach down and summon all the strength I had inside, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to somehow make it back home without stopping.

When I tell people that I ran 20 miles, or sometimes 15 miles, or sometimes 10, or 5 or 2, or that I run, I get a lot of different responses.  If the person is a fellow distance runner, we talk about pace, routes, and when and where the next race will be.  If the person is a beginning runner or shorter distance runner, I often  get a responses that range from I could never do that, to I want to do that someday.  From others, the responses include, I can't even run 20 feet, or, That'll never be me, or my favorite, Better you than me. 

I don't like those "quit before you even try" responses.  I absolutely reject the "I can't" phrases.  I'm not saying that it's healthy for everyone to run 20, 26.2, or 100 miles (a feat I have only imagined, and believe that, if I was committed enough and tried, I could do it- I've just chosen not to), but it bothers me when people just give up.  I understand physiological problems people have that prevent them from running, but no one is without the ability to challenge him/herself to go beyond what they think they can do.


I often reflect with people that not too many years ago, I couldn't even run 20 minutes without getting winded and my legs would cramp later that night whenever I tried.  Then one day, after losing weight doing Hip Hop Abs with my wife, I just decided to try again.  I said that if I could run for 20 minutes without stopping, then I knew that I was finally ready to start running again.  I ran 30 minutes that day and haven't looked back.

Over time, I challenged myself over and over again to do more than I thought that I could do.  I regularly pushed through walls and found out that there were no walls in the first place.  When we got to the 20 mile marker in the Columbus Marathon in October, I laughed when I saw an inflatable arc that we were going to run under.  The person next to me asked why there was this random arc in the middle of a marathon.  I told him that we were about to run through a wall, and, like the dork that I am, I punched the air in front of me to "break down the wall" as we passed.

When asked what the hardest part of a marathon is, I say, "The first three miles, and the last three miles."  These are the miles in which you have to summon energy and strength... to start, and to finish.

Some of my slogans:  "With Christ, there is no wall", "With His strength, I will not bonk at mile 23", "God just put another hole in the wall, run through it," and "I can do all things through Christ."