Moving along at a slow waddle

As miserable as they sound to a lot of people, I've always enjoyed my weekend long runs. They're hard, of course, but I like the time to myself and the scenery of Stone Mountain and the sense of accomplishment when I'm done. This is the case almost every long run day. But not today.

Today's run killed me, brought me back to life, and killed me again. It was bad. It was bad from the start. Two and a half miles in I was running up this hill and a truck came up behind me and I thought, if that thing ran over me right now, I would probably not feel different. I was supposed to do 3 7-mile loops around the mountain. By the third, my "run" had pretty much become a slow waddle. And then I started walking up every hill. And then I just walked the last three miles. I've never had to do that before. I felt defeated.

So I came home and read some Ecclesiastes. As evidenced by my blog title, it's one of my favorite books (ever since Dr. Strawn's class first year.) Ecclesiastes is, in a way, about accepting our limitations. For Ecclesiastes that means death and the apparent lack of ultimate meaning in life. It's only when we stop trying to find or create things that last that we can simply eat, drink, and enjoy our toil--because that's God's gift to us.

My athletic limitations are probably a superficial parallel. After all, if I were Ecclesiastes, I would have run this marathon, won it handily, and still pronounced everything vanity in the face of death. But hey, we all have to accept less significant limitations every day. Accepting that I couldn't finish the run I planned today means that instead of dwelling on it I can be thankful for the fact that I could run, walk, and waddle around that mountain for 21 miles. And I am thankful for that. A few months ago it would have been unthinkable.

I'm not giving up on the marathon training. Come March 29 I am going to run that bad boy. But for today, I accept defeat with a grudging smile and give thanks for what God has given me the physical strength to do on this particular day of my vain life.