I Love Running on the Weekend

I love running on the weekend. There’s no schedule of places to go or things to do, just get out the door, which can be the hardest part. But once I’m out the door there is no reason to get back home, no appointments, no getting to work. Just bliss on the trail. This is especially the case when I take Esme, my 9-month-old daughter along in her Cardinal Red Joovy jogging stroller. Then I have the added bonus of having the best running partner along, and not feeling guilty about leaving my wife on her own to hold down the fort.

Which is why I would not let a few threatening clouds hold Esme and I back this morning. We were going to have a little Daddy/Daughter time on our trail together. But the overcast clouds that I thought were moving further away from us, by 2 miles into an 8-miler had turned into threatening thunder then lightening moving closer to us.

My first 2 miles had felt like I already ran 18. The previous day I was on my feet most of the afternoon then evening talking with college students at our Pig Roast. I was debating about whether or not I was going to be able to make the whole 8 miles. This wasn’t even supposed to be a difficult run. On the marathon-training schedule it is supposed to be a down week, but it felt harder. The first two miles clicked in at a 9:30 pace, a pace that I usually hit after 18 miles.

Then I turned the corner on the trail, the clouds were on top of us, thunder hit the air and I saw a bolt of lightening bang on the horizon. It took about half a second to decide to get Esme home as quick as possible. My third mile was a 7 minute mile, but wasn’t even hard. I had plenty of motivation to get her out of the path of this approaching thunderstorm. Motivation was easy to come by, listening to Esme gurgle and laugh enjoying the ride still dry, then seeing a random bolt of lightening in the distance. The lightening became more frequent and my pace wasn’t about to let up.

How in the world did I go from limping through a run to hitting my 5K pace like a mad dog? Did I have more in the tank than I thought previously and I was just wimping out with a little soreness? Did I just need the shock of adrenaline? I think it was the motivation. I knew Esme was enjoying the ride in the midst of the storm, trusting me to get her home whenever we got home.

Recently she made the discovery of object permanence. She’s figured out that just because she can’t see her Daddy pushing the Joovy doesn’t mean he has ceased to exist. He’s still there, and occasionally she looks up to see me hoofing it along and flashes a toothless smile for encouragement.

On this morning, I knew she trusted me to take care of her and to get her out of here. It was easy in comparison to a couple of other runs when she has started crying because she wants to get out of the stroller. In those moments of crabbiness, it’s as though she wants to get out and run with me and is tired of being pushed. Even though the storm was barreling in on top of us, today I could hear that Esme was content. All I needed to do was get her home before the storm caught up with us.

In the midst of my 5K pace, trying to outrun a thunderstorm, I wondered how many times I had been in the stroller and my Father had been pushing me through the storm and getting me off the trail before I was overwhelmed by thunder? I know there have been times when I’ve been in the midst of a stormy patch and all I can do is complain and lament the circumstances I find myself in. It’s as though I don’t trust him to get me home; I’ve lost my sense of object permanence. He’s got to stop and readjust my pacifier, make sure my diaper isn’t saturated, or just soothe me to remind me that he is there and is trying to get me where I need to be.

Is it easier for him to push me through when I’m willing to sit back and trust him to get me through regardless of what the horizon looks like? I’m thinking yes. On this Saturday morning run, the Holy Spirit, in the form of Mom swooped in to find us along the trail and brought Esme into the dryness and warmth of her arms and our Camry. We couldn’t fit the jogging stroller in the trunk so I got to finish the run with an empty stroller, but that’s cool. I do love running on the weekends.