A Running post

It's really a love hate relationship. It all started freshman year when my friend Joy and I decided to do cross country. More accurately I decided that we were going to do cross country. See it was at that point in your life where you can't do anything without your friends, so after using a little peer pressure I made her sign up with me. I'm not sure she's recovered yet... (just kidding). Anyway so off we went to our first cross country practice where we huffed and puffed along through the hot July sun. A typical cross country race was 3 miles long. Joy and I were fairly certain we couldn't run that far so we asked our team captain if we could take walking breaks during our race......our poor team captain probably didn't think there was much hope for our team winning when two of the "runners" were asking if it was ok to be "walkers". She encouraged us on though and the rest of the summer passed in countless hours of running, running and running. Oh our coach would call it different things and say things like, "today we're going to do an Indian run!", but no matter what he called it we knew if would end in our shoes pounding the pavement. To our great surprise we actually ran our first race without stopping and went on to run at the state cross country meet at the end of the season. I thanked God for the ability to run, but eventually said good-bye to the competitive aspect and choose to do it for fun. No more practices, meets and crack of dawn workouts. No now it is just me and the outdoors. It's a time to think, find a rhythm and just enjoy. The good thing about running is that it doesn't take a whole lot of skill. You don't have to be good at catching a ball or hitting a target.

We Care 10K...enjoying running for a cause together :)

Enter Marissa. We became running buds probably a year ago and I'm fairly certain we've worn down the streets of Goodfield and Congerville (although I do not take responsibility for all the cracks in their sidewalks). I was just thinking maybe we need to move to a bigger town. Or at least a town that we don't lap twice in less than 30 minutes. Anyway this poor girl has probably heard far too much complaining from me while running...."it's too hot, I'm so cold my lungs are freezing, are we done yet? my side hurts, my legs hurt, I think i just want to go eat ice cream".....you get the picture. Nevertheless she puts up with me and we get along pretty swell I'd say. It especially helps that we both went through nursing school/are nurses:) That always leaves plenty to talk about on our runs:)
Now that I've completely rambled on about running for two paragraphs (kudos to you if you read this whole post) I have to say that no matter how nice it feels to finish a 3 mile, 6 mile, 13 mile.....dare I say 26 mile marathon...it means little to be in the utmost of shape if your soul is weak and frail in the faith....

 For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto ALL things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. 1 Timothy 4:8

Have a great week:)