What is Running?

As a runner without a team any longer, I often find myself asking the question: What am I running for? In high school and college there was always a clear goal- get into shape to beat people from the other teams and make sure I wasn't embarrassed on the first day of practice; now I finish a painfully-early morning run soaked in sweat and wonder to myself what the point of it all is. I recall swimmer friends of mine who had finished eligibility referring to themselves as 'swammers', but that doesn't fully encompass me anymore. I'm not a 'ranner' because I still run, but what do I- or anybody else for that matter- run for?

Running in the most basic sense is primal. We've all heard the stories about how our ancestors had to run down animals for miles and miles so they had food to eat. Our bodies as humans are better prepared for covering distances of 50+ miles moreso than almost all other animals of the world. In that sense we can literally chase our food to death. Because we don't live that way in America, we pursue passions of ours in much the same way, but events like ultrarunning (as long as it sounds) are gaining- dare I say- traction in many communities now. Due to our lack of actually struggling for food, we now have to find ways to challenge our bodies physically, thus the introduction of cross-fit, ultrarunning, and adventure racing. Because our bodies are so adapt to taking a beating, we have to make our big and long events even bigger and longer. I recall a few weeks ago I was running on a trail in the badlands and I came upon two mule deer eating peacefully on the prairie atop a butte. Silently I was able to approach them within 15 yards, but eventually they spooked and ran off. My first thought was to watch them go, but instantly after I wanted to chase them. I wanted to go off trail and run down the butte. I wanted to cross river and valley in pursuit of the animal that seemed faster. I wanted to keep going until I could stand next to my exhausted prey, it ready to concede defeat. I wanted to leave feeling satisfied. Instead I ran back to the campground and got ready for a 13-hour drive. But the instinct remains.

I think running goes even more primal than this. In my now six summers of working at a youth Bible Camp, I've seen my fair share of kids from all over central and western North Dakota. One thing I've noticed in the kids is the propensity to run everywhere they go. If they need to go to the bathroom, they take a buddy and run. If it's time for lunch they want to run to the lodge. If it's time to swim they run to waterfront. Everywhere they run, and yet it's something we take for granted. Take a moment to think about what goes on in your head initially before you run: you don't really say to your legs 'move faster and stride farther'- you just do it (not a nike sponsored post). Almost all of us are born with the eventual ability to run. It's like heartbeat in the sense that sometimes you can't even control it. For some reason, as we get older we don't run with the kids to places anymore. We walk or jog behind and reason that as long as they don't get too far away we are fine. We lose a little of that primal sense along the way. Our lungs forget how to breathe. Our legs forget how to take a little pressure. We forget the sound of the breeze flowing past our ears, not because of a tight pressure gradient after the passing of a low pressure system, but because we are moving faster than the air.

Wow, we are moving faster than the air.

One of the ways that running is most relevant now is through companionship. Running for many has become a means of finding like-minded people to share experiences with. There are thousands of different running groups, all with different purposes and inside quirks. Running a race has moved past winning and turned into a way to say that you ran and finished, which then becomes something to share with another person over a beer or a water. This sense of community is felt at all levels. Some professional runners claim to prefer training on their own, but many pros have training groups in order to successfully push each and have a little humanity. I myself can get weary some days when I have little reason to push. I wake up early enough that my primal instinct is shut off still, and with no other person to join, I could just as easily set the alarm for an hour later, roll over, and go back to whatever dream I was enjoying.

In this reason for running we tap into an inescapable fact about humans: we need other humans. Of course, there are hermits and loners among us, but at the human core is a desire to share time with other humans. Even in the story of when God created man, there was also a woman for companionship. School, work, camp, sports, camping, driving, singing, gardening- almost all we do is better with people to share it with. Running is no different. Many groups that run together find that secrets can be shared that nowhere else can allow. Something about sweating next to another person for miles and miles open up the heart a little and people can truly bond. I have had many runs with teammates where after we finish I will look at them and wonder to myself, 'did we really just talk about all of that?' Maybe being tired helps to break down walls and barriers, maybe staying mad at another person is harder when you are fighting your body to keep moving, and maybe sharing something as sacred as running can open you up, but life talks with runners while running is a real thing. Companionship keeps people moving.

One of the more profound reasons for running deals with the aforementioned fighting and pushing your body. Many can recall the horrors of living on the North Dakota prairie, because the lack of tree cover or mountains makes the land seem barren at times; you are perfectly exposed to all of the elements, all of the time. I am currently reading a book titled "Dakota: A Spiritual Geography" by Kathleen Norris, and in it she quotes a Pastor who says that in Dakota you "feel like everyone in the world can see you, but nobody is watching". This extreme exposure is a lot what being a runner is like- there is no hiding. I remember in my baseball days I could have a good game where I had a few good hits and pitched well, and to the casual observer who watched one of our games, I may have even seemed like a good ball player. However, even though runners can have their good days and bad days, there are limits. You can't have a 'good day' and run a 17:00 5k if you physically can't do that. If one person is faster than another, the faster person will win the race. The farther the race is, the more obvious this can become. Being one second faster than another in the mile can turn into 10 minutes in a marathon, and a close finish in an ultra is being 5 minutes apart.

The moral of the story is that racing is a fight against not only other races, but the clock. The track or the road can be a tragic and unyielding force of painful exposure of your fitness, but so can the clock. The clock is the most unforgiving of all things a runner faces; the clock could not possibly care any less about your training, your injuries, or how busy you've been. You either hit the time or you don't. You either beat others racers or you don't. You either finish your run or give up early and walk back home, head down and tail between legs. You either hit the alarm or hit snooze. You either run or you don't. How you do this doesn't affect the race course, competitors, or the clock. In other more team-oriented sports, these could be huge decisions, but in running they belong to you. And once you find companions to go with, all of your decisions immediately become obvious to all. In this year's Boston Marathon, the temperature spiked higher than people had expected, and many northern climate runners had little way to prepare for the heat. As a result, people blew up and struggled even to finish, and then the times were not even close to goals. There is no hiding at that point. You can't pass it off on teammates- it's on you.

This feeling can drive people away, but it can also pull people in. Knowing that running is a sport where the more you put in, the more potential to get out is comforting. How will you do when push comes to shove? Running is the great equalizer: once the run starts, all differences pass away. The more I learn about people, the more I come to not only understand our differences and struggles, but to love them. Running is something all people of all races, creeds, codes, ethics, religions, and genders can agree on and understand. Yet this drive cannot get me out of bed at 6am on a meager amount of sleep. I still want to sleep.

I recently had the privilege of spending a few hours with some youth who have not had life easy so far, and they make most of my daily struggles seem light in comparison. Some of the things that they would turn to in order to cope with life's stresses were things I would never consider doing, but everybody needs something like that. Every single one of us has things in life that we need some freedom from. Relatives, co-workers, work, cold- you name it and someone probably seeks asylum from it. We look for this peace in different things: drugs, alcohol, food, religion, relationships, nature, etc. For me, I've come to notice more and more than I can attain a deep peace from finding time to run and get away from everything currently going on. I honestly cannot count the number of times in college I came to practice stressed out and angry, and by the end of the practice I had forgotten about what I was bitter about. Yes, after practice everything would come back, but it never seemed as bad as before practice.

In the summer I've been able to see early morning sunrises and feel the fog lifting from the cool ground. I've been able to escape the camp for a short amount of time in order that I might have a place to breathe, to get away. Even where I proposed to Ingrid was someplace that we ran to, where we could be truly alone. I've been able to flee from the sound of big cities on running trails and gravel roads. I've been able to literally run from scary people or situations. I have went into corn fields to sit down and pray while listening to the wind roll across the leaves. I have been able to use running as a mental and physical form of rest, no matter how paradoxical that may seem. Many others have found the same peace, and that can also foster companionship. Running can be a natural way to flee something, but also to search for anything. We adventure and we seek, and the harder we look, the more beautiful what we find. If we let our minds go, pray, and seek peace, we can find it. No matter how much you run, the world still seems like a huge place. God's creation has little bits and pieces that are meant to be found only by the most diligent seekers, and running can take you there. Trust me, I've tried.

We are moving faster than the air.

An Ode to Heat

Anybody from the Northern Plains understands cold. We know what rosy cheeks and snow blindness are. We know the pain of having our fingers unthaw once we return inside from walking outside for five minutes with heavy gloves on. We know what it’s like to have icy eyelashes. We understand cold because a majority of our year isn’t warm. We rejoice when the sun shines, the snow recedes, and the warmth returns, but in this climate nothing too good can last for too long. The great plains are the war zone for mother nature to figure out her problems- specifically cold vs warm. No matter what- whether cold, wind, storms, heat, or anything else- we the people end up losing.

We forget about heat in honor of worrying about the cold. We all have a story of something outrageous happening on a cold day, but most of us also have a story from a hot day. I remember in high school on a hot summer day, we were cutting up fallen, dead trees at the farm and our water supply ran out. Sweating like pigs on a day with temperatures in the 90s, we decided to go grab some water from the local creek that filters into the Sheyenne River in southeast North Dakota. Fortunately for us, the water was cool and quite refreshing; unfortunately for us there were cattle upstream and we…uh…let’s say we learned our lesson.

I realized today that many of us up north really have no idea what heat is. In the winter we routinely bring our hands close our mouths and blow warm, moist air on them to heat them up. We can often see our breath floating away in the frigid air whenever we walk outside. Today when the temperature was in the 90s and the heat index was into the low 100s I had a thought worthy of revelation: when we put a thermometer in our mouth, we expect something around 98-99 degrees, which was close the air temperature and the air feel at the time. So I decided to hold my hand in front of my face and exhale, and in a moment that I had never experienced before, the air hitting my hand didn’t feel much different than the surrounding air. It was a weird magical moment where something I’ve always taken for granted opened up my eyes; such a small, insignificant idea that gets my brain going on a whole nother level. I don’t understand heat.

Not one hour earlier I was running out on the open gravel and trying not to die. The heat is suffocating because my body simply cannot cool down, and the treeless Great Plains countryside doesn’t offer any respite. My coach told me once that I must have good air conditioning, because I sweat A LOT; sometimes I’ll finish a run on a hot day and my shoes will be making squishy sounds, simply because my sweat has pooled up in my shoes and caused them to become soaked. It’s truly a wonderful life. It doesn’t take long for me to run out of dry spots to wipe off any sweat- I’m covered. It reminds me of a few summers ago when the temperature was again into the 90s and I was on the same gravel road, but this day I stopped sweating. Every quarter mile or so I had to stop and walk because my body was completely done with me, but I managed to make it back to camp, whereupon the food service manager looked at me, horrified. Apparently I was white as a ghost and still not sweating. This was my first and only experience with heat exhaustion; it took me two full days to rehydrate from that run.

I decided with the heat that I should not fight it, but learn instead to embrace it. With my current understanding of wind, I know that the more you fight it, the more you lose. If you use the wind and let it make you stronger, you can grow and become less bitter as a person. I sometimes get quite bitter at heat, so today I tried to simply be at peace with it. I surprised myself how much better this run went compared to any other high-heat runs I’ve done before. That’s how life is though, isn’t it? We push and shove against things totally and completely out of our control, when we could be instead learning from it and trying to make peace with it. I wish there was a word in the English language that could fully encompass this idea: it’s not fully peace because you are still struggling against something, but you recognize the potential that it can bring you and it therefore becomes a means of growth. It then becomes a different kind of peace that Christians know quite a bit about in our world. We know that sin abounds and can be easy to struggle and fight against, gaining no traction, but we also learn from it and learn peace from Jesus’ sacrifice for us. It’s this unique feeling of peace that I found while it was hot.

Because it was.   

Mountain Running and Police Shootings

This moment is going to be stressful. I squat slightly, look at my goal, and explode from my position. In a wave of flurry, my left foot strikes dry, right foot strikes dry, but my left foot soaks a little before I land with a soft thump on the other side. I turn around and see where I came. I just crossed a small creek of rushing water, the recent rains filling up the path with water and making crossing much more difficult than usual. I spend a millisecond lamenting the minute amount of water in my shoe and then take off back up the hill. The uphill portion of this trail started at the trailhead and so far, in 20 minutes of running, hasn't stopped. I'm exhausted from the high altitude but determined to keep going, no matter what my North Dakota legs think of this- usually the uphill stops pretty soon after it starts where I come from. Soon, I am rewarded when I pop out of the thick forest and into a gorgeous meadow. Here, up at almost 9000 feet I am still surrounded by towering mountaintops far above my head, but there is nobody here. There are no houses, roads, or anything unnatural because this is protected wilderness. The only sound is the rushing stream behind me. In front of me is an open area of wildflowers, green grass, and a stunning view of the terrain around me. I stop and soak it in; this is peace.

When I arrive back at my car, I don't even bother turning on my phone because there is no service here anyway. Ingrid and I are meandering through the back side of New Mexico and Colorado on our way back from a trip to Northeast New Mexico, and the views are amazing. We stick to FM radio to listen to music, and our phones do us little good out here. We spend days camping and sleeping under the stars, living out of a vehicle, running trails, and exploring places we've never been to before. It's a new way of living that I've experienced for this time, and it's exhilarating. I don't check my email, facebook, twitter, or really anything connected with the 'real world' for days, and it's freeing. Living in Creation for now is great.

We finish up our trip with a final push across western South Dakota and western North Dakota to get back to the camp. As we arrive, the sun is slipping beneath the horizon and coolness sets upon us. The smell of the grass fills the air and the wind is calm. Some staff play games outside with nobody to bother or interrupt them. We spend time catching up with them before they take off into the sunset, canoeing to find Pokemon for the new PokemonGo app that everybody apparently is raging about. We kick back and relax from a long and exciting trip. We already miss the mountains.

I open up my computer to check on my neglected emails. Upon finishing that, I find my way over into the social media realm. After seeing the flashing red news, I am immediately flooded with information I don't want to see. Two separate cases of police shooting black Americans. A protest in Dallas over the insanity. Execution-style murders of police officers at said protest. I watch the live streams from the major news stations- police were literally gunned down because they were police. I watch the youtube videos and hear the absolute fear in the voice of the Minnesota cop when he realized what he had done and that the lady was videotaping the whole thing- he knew his life was forever changed. I think about the families that lost loved ones this week. I think about the fact that this isn't even a surprise to us anymore. Ingrid and I were driving towards Denver and we noticed the sign for the exit to Columbine, which she then mentions as the place with the shooting. That's how we identify places now. I can't sleep because I don't want to. It's 12:56 am.

I was reading through facebook comments on one page following the Dallas shooting, and it was a person asking for a leader to stand up and actually change things. I hope that at this point we can all agree that no amount of gun control will ever solve our current problem. Yes, there are little things here and there that we could call 'common sense solutions' in regards to weapons, but those won't solve the main issue. We have people in this country who are afraid to get pulled over because they run a risk of getting shot. We have officers in this country who wonder if the person they just pulled over is a maniac about to kill them. We have leaders standing up and saying that we need to do something, but nothing gets done because that's the world we live in- everything is talk. We will sit down and have a sound discussion. We will contact to the appropriate people to determine the proper course of action. We will introduce legislation (that deep down we know will have no chance) and hope that -insert political party here- will address the issues we present. People are fed up.

You know what? This person was right- America is currently in desperate need of someone who is willing to grab the reins and say enough is enough. That isn't Trump, and it isn't Clinton. We've hit the point where we really NEED a leader for the history books. This isn't a problem that bickering back and forth and procuring laws can solve- it's something in all of our hearts. Jesus embodied these virtues when he spoke of loving your neighbor and letting people with no hope or money have a spot at your table. It would be easy for me to say that we need Jesus, but some people wouldn't go for the whole 'Christianity' thing. No, what we need is a leader who acts, talks, and lives like Jesus did. We need someone to love people, but also hold them accountable. We need someone who people can look up to but not blindly follow off a cliff. We need someone who will not be afraid to do what's right- even if that is hard.

I had an interesting thought this weekend while trekking up and trying to summit Harney's Peak in the South Dakota Black Hills: perhaps being away from it all while running on a trail is peace. I mean, I'm breathing like a darn work animal, but all of my problems disappear completely for a time. Life becomes adventure and exploring a wilderness still pure and untouched. Life becomes a lot simpler where you cannot be bothered by outward problems. Perhaps this is why mountains have always enthralled us so- a glimmer of hope and peace in an otherwise unrelenting and chaotic world. We test ourselves against a nature that wins every time, but we learn more about life through the process. If we all took a chance to stop and breathe fresh air from time to time, our bitterness might temporarily subside and our joy may abound. We are want to look for problems in others, but God has given us a playground in our midst. We have the ability to not only genuinely pray for others, but to take care of them and lend them a helping hand. Maybe, just MAYBE, our world can become a better place. Lord help us all.