I remember circling the track… before the race even began. We’d done our warm-up exercises and were taking a little jog. Or so I thought.
“Why are we running a mile before the race even starts?” I panted at my dear friend. A friend who got this non-runner running this thing.
Stretching me into spaces of life I was sure I didn’t belong. Runners.
“Well, you know how that first mile is the hardest? We run that hard first mile and get it over with… then when the race starts, it’s out of the way and only gets better from the start!”
Huh.
Actually… that makes some sense.
It’s definitely true that the first mile of a run is the most painful, hard to endure, frustrating mile of the race. At least in my opinion. And though everything in me wanted to say, “don’t add an EXTRA mile to an already long race!” her words made sense. Why not get that yucky one out of the way and start the race ready to go?
I had also struggled with this concept in our trainings. Warm-up? WHY? Sometimes the stretching and warming up was as hard as the workout! Why not just skip the stretching? Or skip the workout? Shoot, a nice cold Pepsi in a hot tub sounded great.
But alas, week after week, we stretched, trained, and prepared for the race.
So here I was, running a mile before the race even began… doing all things in opposition to my brain’s complaints yet compelled by love for Haitians, orphans, and my Glmores. 🙂
The race began… and to date, it was my best run ever. No joke.
That doesn’t make it a good run by any professional runner’s standards… I think I was in the bottom ten… but it was my best time ever.
My reflection on that whole experience has been foundational in much of my non-running life since.
The importance of stretching. The warm up. The preparation.
It gets the “yucky” part of the journey out of the way… so that when the real deal comes along… the move across the world, the new job, the new language to be learned, the new child to parent, the new spouse, the loss of a loved one… whatever it may be…. everything leading up to it has been a chance to stretch, to warm up, to prepare.
If we’ve refused and rejected those times of stretching… brushed them off and opted for the easy, comfortable, and tangible… then we’ve skipped the training and jumped right into a marathon without building up our muscles and body for the task given to it.
But when we’ve embraced the difficult, even in the small things, and practiced perfecting our positive attitudes, made choices that lead to good and healthy change, and dealt with feelings for what they are… then we are prepared for the bigger challenges that come our way. We’ve built up the endurance we need for those deep valleys.
To stretch and be stretched.
Painful in the moment… priceless during the race.
