Racing Makes All the Difference

Racing makes all the difference. Ask most mesh short wearing, Nike sporting, sweat soaked Joe or Jane chugging down the sidewalk, “Are you a runner?” and they likely respond, “No.” That’s because racing makes all the difference. More so, training for a race makes us feel like runners. It’s not that a race is a magical event, but it does give shape and purpose to what we are doing.

In those moments of training and racing, running becomes more than just a means to control weight, or more than a new hobby. With focus towards the goal of finishing a challenging distance or with a certain time, we get the gift of self-motivation. In self-motivation, we become citizens of a running sub-culture marked with the habits of perseverance and self-control. This is the place and time when someone becomes a runner. As residents of this land, we are able to get out of bed in the morning for a run. When we come home after a day packed with meetings the most restful thing we can think to do is to go for a run.

Racing does make all the difference. It gives the goal, then later the satisfaction of having reached a goal. I think the Apostle Paul must have been a runner. He tells us in 1 Corinthians 9²⁴ “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” He recognized that there is a chasm between jogging just to finish and racing. In jogging I have no direction, no purpose beyond todays goal of just getting the run over with. In racing, the goal is to win, to beat whatever or whoever may oppose the goal.

The difference in this is felt like no other I’ve found than in the traditional 16 to 20 week marathon training plan. In the middle of all these weeks, the best plans have a suggested 10K or half-marathon race that I have never taken very seriously. This is mostly because I was too cheap to enter yet another road race. I thought “I can just do these miles on my own.” A few weeks ago, with a packed schedule and sore muscles, the 16 miler on my marathon prep schedule was looming large. I decided to actually take the advice of my Hanson Marathon Training Plan, and entered a local half-marathon on a whim.

I was the last one to register at 12:03am the night before the race. I got there a bit early for my t-shirt and for the 2.50+ miles I wanted to do pre-race to try and make it an honest 16. These warm-up miles felt a lot like my recent runs, soreness up the quads, stiffness in the calves, and mental lethargy. With my impromptu warm-up complete I made it to the start with 3 minutes to spare. I had no idea how I was going to get through 13 miles that morning, but once the starter’s horn went and the roar rose from my fellow runners a mental switch occurred. I wanted to run.

However, I still had the sluggish habits of Saturday and Sunday long runs engrained in my sub-conscious. These weekend long runs were all about just finishing the distance with a little in the tank so I could be of use around the house when I got home. Fear of not finishing governed my decision on those long runs to hold back instead of push.

That morning, mile 6 clicked by and I was in striking distance of a long sought after goal time. Before realizing what was happening inside, I was racing past mile 7 and feeling good. I remembered Paul’s words, “Run in such a way as to get the prize.” Cranking through mile 8, I realized; I was used to running for survival, I had been treating my race like a long run, just pounding the miles away, not racing for victory. I had been holding back, fearing I would whither and die on the side of the road if I actually opened up and ran. This self-fulfilling prophecy had shaped the attitude and mentality of so many of my training runs that I had forgotten what it was to run with abandon. I started tempting fate, quickening my pace, not worrying about my escalating heart rate, trusting my training plan, to just run. It was much more fun than survival jogging. It hurt, but I was racing.

As I found myself in sight of the finish, it’s as though God used Paul’s words to ask me “How had I also been in survival mode with my faith? You’ve been jogging for survival, not racing to win.” Like my training runs, I had been praying about the undercurrent of lethargy I felt in my faith. That morning, God used Paul and a half-marathon to show me the difference between jogging and racing to get the prize. Of course the prize Paul speaks of is one he describes that will never fade; it is the gift of life that continues into eternity. If I wasn’t careful, my lethargic faith, ruled by a desire to just make it, would whither and die on the side of the road instead of catching the rear breeze of God’s grace and run.

Where are the races that sharpen our faith and remind us what it is to run, and not just survive yet another long run? How would my faith become more of what Paul was talking about if I opened it up and went for the prize of victory rather than just a finisher’s t-shirt? Paul had to be a runner, only a runner knows the difference a race can make.