Becoming a Runner
After a six-week break, my first day running was pretty discouraging — high heart rate, low endurance, slow pace, sore legs — but I discovered, for the first time, that I am a runner.
This might sound somewhat strange, coming from someone who ran a marathon and who runs 25 miles a week, but recall that I only started running in 2002. For almost 45 years, I was a couch potato.
When I first started running, I trained with runners. Then I trained alone, and I trained as runners train. After almost ten years, I was running better and faster and harder, almost as if I were a runner, myself.
Now, seeing that I enjoy running and that I miss running when I am unable to run, I realize that I am a runner, not just someone who trains with runners or trains like a runner.
Also, I realized how much reflecting I do when I am running: I probably could not blog, if I did not run, and it struck me that I became a spiritual person, in the same incremental way that I became a runner.
When I first started reflecting, I read a lot of history and theology, mostly Christian history and theology. Then, I read a lot of history and theology from other traditions, to place Christianity in a broad context, and I read a lot of mysticism and mythology, to understand the meaning of Christianity and other religions.
After years of long runs and short sprints in the spiritual realm, I realize that I am a spiritual person, not just someone who reads about spirituality or thinks about spirituality, and that my spirituality colors many of my actions and my thoughts, for better or worse.
P.S. This is me, crossing the finish line at the San Diego marathon. (Yes, I was smoking a cigar.)
