Running into the Desert
Another double session today. A 4-mile Franklin Field loop (32:41) at 6:30 am and an 8-mile Sweetbriar loop from USP (65:28) at noontime. In both runs I felt better than I ran, not slow but not fast, so that makes it half-fast. Ran the latter loop with JH. It was mild for the first run and the temperature really dropped by noon. Suddenly the snow they're predicting for this afternoon doesn't seem so unlikely.
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and for the occasion I made another powerful running-faith connection. I won't pound you over the head with religion. I've said before how I'd like my faith to be more like my running - some time carved out every day for a spiritual "workout" that sets the foundation for bigger and more ambitious things.
The homily for the Ash Wednesday mass is typically one stressing renunciation as a means not towards asceticism but towards spiritual growth. Father Z. yesterday stressed the desert metaphor, that like the Israelites and like Jesus, Lent is a time where we, metaphorically, should go into the desert and come back stripped down in the worldly sense and closer to God for doing so.
It struck me that, in terms of running, that is exactly what January and February are - trips into the desert. Here is a place to endure the elements and forego the glamor of the races, where we are compelled to embrace the miles and the hills and the track, in all of their ugliness, with the promise that if we get out into the cold and persevere through our workouts we will reap the benefits in the racing season to come. To make this theology of running even more bizarre, the Boston Marathon (or Broad St. or whatever target race) then becomes a sort of Easter. Two years ago Boston & Easter even fell on the same weekend, but I didn't make the connection then.
But I'm not looking to start the Church of St. Spiridon, just to borrow a few things from something that I do half-fast and apply them to something in which I'd like to do better. So I took five minutes before I left the house this morning to read the daily scripture readings and then meditated on them for a good part of the morning run. The emphasis in these readings was on the choice to go God's way or to go the worldly way. During the run I held on to the readings just like that - keeping this fork in front of me and taking comfort in that it is there. Got my spiritual groove aligned with my physical groove, so to speak.
And got thinking if only that fork were literal - and that if I took the God prong it would add some miles to the morning run or perhaps make it hillier. I'd be an enlightened man by now.
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and for the occasion I made another powerful running-faith connection. I won't pound you over the head with religion. I've said before how I'd like my faith to be more like my running - some time carved out every day for a spiritual "workout" that sets the foundation for bigger and more ambitious things.
The homily for the Ash Wednesday mass is typically one stressing renunciation as a means not towards asceticism but towards spiritual growth. Father Z. yesterday stressed the desert metaphor, that like the Israelites and like Jesus, Lent is a time where we, metaphorically, should go into the desert and come back stripped down in the worldly sense and closer to God for doing so.
It struck me that, in terms of running, that is exactly what January and February are - trips into the desert. Here is a place to endure the elements and forego the glamor of the races, where we are compelled to embrace the miles and the hills and the track, in all of their ugliness, with the promise that if we get out into the cold and persevere through our workouts we will reap the benefits in the racing season to come. To make this theology of running even more bizarre, the Boston Marathon (or Broad St. or whatever target race) then becomes a sort of Easter. Two years ago Boston & Easter even fell on the same weekend, but I didn't make the connection then.
But I'm not looking to start the Church of St. Spiridon, just to borrow a few things from something that I do half-fast and apply them to something in which I'd like to do better. So I took five minutes before I left the house this morning to read the daily scripture readings and then meditated on them for a good part of the morning run. The emphasis in these readings was on the choice to go God's way or to go the worldly way. During the run I held on to the readings just like that - keeping this fork in front of me and taking comfort in that it is there. Got my spiritual groove aligned with my physical groove, so to speak.
And got thinking if only that fork were literal - and that if I took the God prong it would add some miles to the morning run or perhaps make it hillier. I'd be an enlightened man by now.
posted by seebo | 4:33 PM
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