A question I have not heard for some time lingers with me. “What is the hardest part of running a marathon?”
After my first marathon in San Francisco, I had a viewpoint. With a second one in New York completed and firmly resident in my memory, I had an opinion anchored in experience.
“Resolve.”
The hardest part in running a marathon is deciding you are going to run, and repeatedly deciding again you are going to run up and through the finish line. If there was one word which captured the answer to a repeating call to decide, it is the word “resolve”.
The decision was, for me, easy at first. I was young and excited by the challenge. Friends were planning to run in the same event. As I talked about the possibilities, my father reminded me that “if, no, when you crossed the finish line, you will join a very small group of people across history.” The sense of his pride and confidence in me in that discussion is still with me.
The sense of resolve which manifested itself in training, disciplined eating, recovery, participating in the race, and finally crossing the finish line is still tangibly real. In my case, I was not looking to come in ahead of others. I wanted to participate, thrive, and take the finish line on into the next day. I saw others in the event as collaborators. We were working alone, helping each other in ways that we could, and trusting that each would do what was required to reach the finish line. In each race, someone from the outside played a crucial role. Howard with water and words of encouragement at mile marker 18 in San Francisco. John and Carroll with praise, admiration, and a power bar at the Queen’s half-way point in New York.
Today I am on a quest for collaborators with resolve, willing to answer a call for empathy, compassion, and action. To each, “for the sake of the house of our God, God, I’ll do my very best for you.” (Psalm 122.8)
