Faith plays a big role in the life of a runner. I’m not talking about God, although He’s present every time I lace up. I’m talking about the faith it takes to start at point A and know that you will make it to point B. The faith required to look up a rocky hill after 25 miles and still put one foot in front of the other. The faith that makes it possible to ignore the exhaustion in every fiber of your body because there is no option but to cross the finish line. Faith is what makes great runners able to keep going.
When running in the mountains, you will trip and fall. During a race, adrenaline, determination, and a streak of self-loathing make you keep running on injuries that would ordinarily make you phone a friend or limp/crawl/hop back to the car. Training season injuries, however, are different. Training season injuries require a different kind of faith that for most of us is infinitely harder than reaching the finish line on a mangled knee. I haven’t run a step in 14 days thanks to a separation in the fibers of my Achilles’ tendon. Running on the trails, you ask? No. Rugby? Wrong again. Playing with the dogs in the snow? Bingo. Turns out an old pair of snow boots will damage you worse than getting flattened on the pitch or careening down a rocky slope… Self-doubt, the enemy of every distance runner, seduces me every day. Faith in reaching the starting line seems much harder to come by than faith in reaching the finish. Every day, I cancel more training runs, more matches, more races. I am sitting on the sidelines of my own life, watching time go by. Some days, dark insecurities from years past break through my thin barrier of self-confidence and I wonder how long my friends can still love or respect me when I can’t earn my place through speed and shared experiences on the field or trail. Other days, faith returns and it’s not so hard to look ahead; I just entered my first 50 mile race, scheduled for December.
Today, I have faith that I will run again. I will play rugby with my team and the pain will be nothing more than a few hard-won bruises. I will run to the top of the hill and turn around to wait for the rest of the guys to catch up before we sprint home. I will make it to the starting line again and again…if I can start, I know, by faith, that I will finish.
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