the corner of broken and blessed: on running and marathons

It doesn’t make sense, this thing Matt and I keep doing. We call it “running”—putting one foot in front of the other in relatively quick fashion for an extended period of time. Honestly, in our case it’s more of a hopeful jog with a generous number of walk breaks and no small amount of swearing at hills. But why do it?

People ask me this all the time. I ask myself even more often. Why would a person do this bizarre, difficult thing? It’s not as though I like to run. (I run away from the crazy people who like to run… we do not understand each other.)

Running is exhausting.

It’s sweaty.

It’s time-consuming.

It’s completely unnecessary given all other possible modes of modern transportation.

I’ve gotten black toenails, underarm chafing (chafing is the worst!), hyponatremic dehydration, and Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome in my right knee. I can think of just about every reason there is to NOT do this exact thing that we keep doing. So why—why do we keep doing this bizarre, difficult thing?

Honestly? I think it’s contagious.

Matt’s dad started running in his twenties, and has completed nine marathons and numerous half marathons thus far. One day in college, Matt started running with him. And shortly after that, Matt talked me into running, too. And then we ran-walked this 12K race called Bloomsday in Spokane, twice. And all of a sudden, we started training for a half marathon the summer after graduation. And here’s the thing—Matt finished his training and ran that half marathon with his dad, and I did not. I got up to three miles in the summer heat and gave up. It was awful and I couldn’t do it. (I didn’t realize at the time that I had terrible shoes and that running in cotton tank tops was also a major no-no, but that’s beside the point.) I felt completely defeated and out of shape and embarrassed.

It took another two years and a wedding ring to convince me to try again. Matt had already run his first marathon in that time, and the peer pressure (or “encouragement,” as he called it) finally got to me. Go figure that this time we were running at five thousand feet in elevation, but still—we started training again for the same race I had quit on last time. About a third of the way through our first four-mile run, Matt felt a sharp pain in his left knee (which we later found out was an IT Band injury that took quite a while to heal) and had to walk back home. I finished that run on my own, and had to continue running on my own throughout the summer. And I realized something: I had spent a lot of mental time and energy comparing myself to my husband. I thought I was never going to be as in shape and athletic as him, always just trying to “keep up.” I believed running was “his thing,” and that I was slowing him down. That summer I found out that I had it in me—I, of all people, could be a runner. I could go distances I never expected. I could push my body to do things it had never endured before. I could own it. I could look in the mirror and be proud of the person that I saw, because she was trying to stay healthy.

I finished that half marathon—my first ever, the Other Half Marathon in Moab, Utah—on October 20^th, 2013. A week later, on a whim, I ran another one in Salt Lake City. Apparently, half marathons were a thing that I did now. And we kept doing them. I got six half marathons under my belt before Matt finally talked me into running a full.

We registered in January 2017 to run the Kauai Marathon for our five-year anniversary in September (because if I was going to run 26.2 miles, I was definitely going to get an incredible trip out of it). And just for the heck of it, we ran the Rock N’ Roll Seattle Half at our halfway training point, too. (And, might I add, the contagion spread—this time, our friends Emily and Robert ran it with us. They beat our time, in fact!) And then we kept training.

Finishing that first marathon was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

We started before the sun rose, and the first half (which we ran with Matt’s dad) was beautiful and cool. Even the section of steady uphill was bearable beneath the famous “Tunnel of Trees.” The second half, though… now I know why one does not simply run a marathon in Hawaii at the end of summer.

We baked.

It was humid, shade-less, and as my friend Amanda lovingly says, “hotter than the hubs of hell out there.” We chugged Gatorade and water at every aid station. I reapplied sunscreen and Body Glide multiple times and still ended up burnt and chafed. We crested a hill at mile 24 only to see another in the distance—one that wouldn’t even register as a hill in your brain if you drove over it, but after running for hours looked like a freaking mountain—and I started crying. Only, I had been sweating so profusely that I didn’t have any water on reserve in my body and no tears came out. My knee was killing me. The scenery was drop-dead gorgeous when I had the energy to notice it, but I was depleted beyond measure and may not have made it had it not been for Matt. But then we finally crossed the finish line. It took us five and a half hours from start to finish. It was utterly unbelievable. The finisher medal felt heavy around my neck as I sat on the grass, back to a rock wall and ice packs on my knees. Who knew that it was possible? Running a marathon was never even on my bucket list, but I finished one anyway. I was elated; and I was simultaneously pretty certain I was never going to do another one. I’ll take my victory and call it a day, thank you.

Lo and behold, as you might guess—another year, another marathon. Two days ago, Matt and I ran the Bellingham Bay Marathon in northern Washington (as a six-year anniversary event), shaving half an hour off our Kauai time despite running the entire race in the rain. We were soaked and tired, but the views of Puget Sound were beautiful. Hearing Matt’s jokes get worse and worse over time as all the blood went from our brains to our legs was even better. I’m again uncertain that I will ever run another full marathon, but it still reminded me why I do this bizarre, difficult thing.

I run because it keeps me healthy—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

I run to break up the chaos of my “to-do” lists and get outside.

I run so I can eat whole pizzas and not feel guilty; and for the peace of mind that comes from not caring how my body compares to other women’s bodies. I’m taking care of mine as best I can.

Mostly, though, I run because Matt runs, and because his dad runs, and because this is a thing that we do together. Even better than finishing the race—insanely good as that feels—are all the hours that I get to spend with Matt while we train. Countless miles have nurtured numerous conversations about life, relationships, struggles, and hopes. It’s become a good reminder for us to thank God for the healthy bodies we’ve been given and the time we get to spend together. It has also been a way for us to encourage one another (and the other awesome people we love who have trained for events with us!) that we can do hard things, which is a lesson that carries way beyond the rubber meeting the road.