What if Humans are Pack Animals?



What if humans are pack animals? It seems like everything I do with another person gets a bit easier. I’m normally one who loves running long-distances alone. Today it was very out of character when I decided to run with the pace team in my local marathon.

I wasn’t so sure at first. The group seemed a little crowded, but there was a lot of energy as we all banged out miles together. I realized about 4 miles in why I had never joined a pace team. I’m a fairly prideful person, and if I followed a pace runner it meant I couldn’t do it on my own. Once I accepted I couldn’t do my goal on my own and that I needed the other runners at my pace, I was able to concentrate on just sticking with them.

Somewhere around mile 6 I started thinking of the group as a platoon, of which I was a member. I have no idea why a Platoon came to mind, maybe it’s because I finished reading Joker One two weeks ago by Donovan Campbell. It’s a great book about a platoon and its leader in Iraq. Maybe it was because Chad, our assigned pace runner looked like a skinny marine. I don’t actually know his name, but he just looked like a Chad. My mental mantra became “Stay with Chad. – Stay with the platoon.”

Chad didn’t’ just run the pace though, he began teaching us how to run a marathon. This was my 8thth, but he was actually teaching us not to just survive it. I loved the tutelage of Chad and I was soaking in the camaraderie of the group. I’ve been in a dry spot spiritually, is it because I’ve been avoiding help, or pridefully thinking I didn’t need it? Are there Chad like people in my life that could teach me and guide me? I see my college students so often shirk away sincere mentoring from their InterVarsity staff worker or older student leaders.

This is the time of year when at NIU InterVarsity we begin to ask younger students if they want to be developed and taught in a very purposeful way - maybe a weekly leadership class or a one-on-one meeting with a more seasoned leader. I practically I have to pay some students to get on board with this. I always assumed it was because of laziness. This morning, I looked in the mirror and saw my own pride that had kept me from sitting under the teaching of someone more experienced than myself.

Then somewhere around mile 9, Chad turned to one of the other runners and gave her the long stick with our 8 ½ x 11 goal time taped to the top of it and took off. There was a collective, where did he go? He took off down the trail at a much faster pace than the rest of us and out of sight. The group lost its mojo. In less than a minute we began to get further from each other. A platoon of runners in lock step with each other lost their leader and the cadence of our pace.

Had I ever ran off on anyone I had been mentoring? Had I ever gotten bored with them and left? Did I let them stay with me so long as they served my own ends, then surged ahead when they began to slow me down?

In those first 10 miles I was feeling so good, and now began to curse the name of Chad and wondered if our platoon could last the remaining 16 miles without our skinny Marine and his constant encouragement and knowledge? How would I keep this pace I had never kept on my own?

Miraculously Chad reappeared a mile later from behind us. The man was a skinny marine and a magician! Apparently he just needed to stop at the port-a-potty. I was amazed, Chad is a human too. For the rest of the race I stayed at his hip right up until mile 24. Everyone else in our pace group had dropped off, or a few had been able to take off and go even faster. It was just me and Chad from miles 22-24. These are the hardest miles of any marathon and he taught me how to run them. Eventually, I started slowing down and couldn’t keep up with him anymore. Even as Chad held the pace he kept barking encouragement and instruction at me from 25, 35, then 55 yards ahead.

I crossed the finish line at 3:35 with another runner from our group who had seen me just ahead of her and chased me down. We were right on the button of our pace time. Chad knew what he was doing; he had given us a :50 second cushion thinking we might slow down a bit. I hadn’t even gotten the medal around my neck and Chad was pumping our hands and telling us how great we did. Things with others, especially people who have gone before us really are so much easier.

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