Running the Race

It was kind of like a slap in the face. That moment when you’re expecting pain, you know you’ve been hit, but the full extent hasn’t gotten to your brain yet. Then I was transported back to my sophomore year of high school, sitting in Bio class, glued to a TV watching the towers burn in NYC. That memory of the first tower falling mixes with the images from Oklahoma. My mother hadn’t wanted me to see those images, had tried to protect me from them. The images of children, the same age as my brother, covered in blood, limp, obviously dead. Then the pain sets in and I’m back to the present, looking at pictures from Boston.


My family has always been sports intensive. But from the merriment of different sports, soccer, baseball, football, volleyball, and others; we slowly gravitated to running. My sister got into cross country. My brother wanted to run too, so my father started to run to keep him company. Soon my father was running his first ½ marathon, followed by marathons, lots of marathons. We started the tradition of running a 5K every Thanksgiving. My dad started getting the Running Magazine. Running permeated our lives, and it still does. Less than two weeks ago I decided to do my first ½ marathon this fall.

Runners have a certain resilience that bleeds into everything they do. In my experience, most runners have supported some cause or run in the memory of someone dear to them. Running is a very personal, individual, event. However, when you become a runner, you become part of a family. Runners keep track of their own. I’ve had complete strangers, give me encouragement and push me to the finish line. Not only that, but many runners run for reasons outside themselves. Whether it’s raising money for a cause or running in the memory of a loved one or even protesting injustice. Many runners aren’t in it just for themselves.

That’s why the attack in Boston seems so senseless. The finish of a race should be a moment where the pain becomes justified and joy abounds. In Boston that glorious personal victory was turned into a dark ugly scene of blood and destruction. And it would be easy to only see the bloodshed, to only see the worst of the situation. We can ask why and who. We could wallow in the despair of another heartless, senseless attack.

However, that’s only part of the story. The best of human nature always get shown during and after acts of horror. People carrying and comforting complete strangers, Bostonians opening up their homes and restaurant’s giving away free food. There other a huge number or stories of people doing things that can only be call heroic. For all of our ability to be killers and destroyers; we humans can also be selfless and caring. So despite the darkness and the horror and all that blood; I will bend my thoughts and prayers on the good things. And I will give thanks to a God who despite our propensity to great evil, created us with the ability to do greater good.

‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,’ Hebrews 12:1

Running

There is a strong connection between exercise and my mental wellbeing. After about of month of not working out or doing anything to really get my heart rate up, I went for a run with a friend. It was painful. My lungs hated me. I had a stich in my side. I'm sore. But its amazing how well I slept that night. Weirdly when I write stories, running ends up being a part of how I write and think about my characters. Its part of the reality of the worlds I create. In epics like Lord of the Rings, running is part of the story. The great race of the three hunters in the beginning of the Two Towers. Of course we tend to not thing about that hardness of what the characters are doing. I don't know what the equivalant is, but I have always imagined it was like running a marathon a day for several days in a row. People have done this, it is not impossible. It is however an amazing feat.

I normally think of my characters as either in shape or out of shape. Those that are in shape, could run 3 to 5 miles with very little problem. The out of shape would be hard pressed to do one mile. However, there is a third group, the extordinary. This group could run a marathon today, fight and win agaist 2000 tomorrow, and not appear to be tired. I almost never write about characters that are this outside the normal, possibly because it seems so impossible. I like writing about normal people doing things outside of what they, or others, think they are capable of.

One thing that I have never done is write about a character practicing or working out. But the more I think about it, the more I realize this is a problem. If I want to write about things that are based in reality, I need to make sure that I keep reality in mind. To often I get in the world of a story and I forget about rooting it in some sort of reality. But the reality of the story is so important to the understanding of the reader.

Its like building a house. If you see the foundation of the house once its built, you can't see all of it. You almost forget that it is there. But since the house (story) is built on that foundation, every time you see a bit of the foundation, it shouldn't throw you off, it is part of the house. It belongs with the house and the house belongs on the foundation. Without the foundation, the house would fall apart. So my reality of the world in which I write, of the characters I create must be placed on an understandable, recognizable foundation.