I Heart Pain

The most common response I got to pounding out 26.2 miles one chilly Sunday morning in Austin, Texas?

“That’s Insane.”

There was even a sign drawn by a spectator that read: “You are all f’n insane.” Mr. clever-sign-writing-sitting-on-the-sidelines-spectator guy, you’re probably right. But what if you’re wrong?

I thought I would feel 2 different things from running a marathon: pain and accomplishment. I was right but I was also very shortsighted. My legs went numb at about mile 19 and the last 7 miles were basically my mind screaming at my body. They were my body testing my mind to see what I was made of.

The feeling of accomplishments is nice. It lingers, but I left most of it in the fingerprints wrapped around the circular piece of metal hanging from my dresser mirror that says I ran a long distance in Austin on Valentine’s Day in 2010.

I was shortsighted because I didn’t realize I’d be overcome with emotion while still in motion. I started imagining my family and friends at the finish line around mile 16 and I had to swallow hard to keep from getting choked up. I have no idea why.

Maybe there was just something about 14,000 people gathering 200 yards from the state’s capital on a wispy Sunday morning with nothing on our minds but winning. And don’t kid yourself, if you finish, you win.

For this is the city that produced the guy who lived the story that taught us what winning means, from an earthly perspective anyway.

I kept scouring the throngs for Lance that morning. I wanted to run with him for a few meters, just to tell him how many times I’d been inspired by what he’d done. And maybe to tell him how much more he could do if he had Jesus. Or maybe I would have just run with him silently for as long as I could keep up.

I never saw him.

It’s OK though. I was caught up in the irony that on the day you’re supposed to be celebrating the things of the heart I was putting mine in quasi-jeopardy by running for 4+ hours in a row. I put that thought aside quickly too. The mixture of so many emotions rising and falling with each lengthy stride on the Texas pavement is something that overtook me. It’s something I’ll own forever.

I fell in love on Valentine’s Day 2010. I fell in love with starting and I fell in love with finishing. And in between I fell in love with the pain I felt as I sorted out the 14,000 people that ended with just 1. The best part about the pain was that it was real and real is always better than nothing, even when it hurts.

This year February 14 kind of gave new meaning to those famous words from that famous song.

Deep in the heart of Texas.