"Double Booked" OR "The Plate-Spinner"

I used to hate winter. I self-diagnosed myself with Seasonal Affective Disorder a long time ago. And yes, it's occurred to me that the winter depresses me simply because I believe winter should depress me. But I think it's simply the cold, the dark mornings, the dark evenings, and the gray sky that doesn't budge for three months.

But, as I've gotten older (and gotten in better shape), I find myself liking winter more and more. Winter, I've found, has some of the best running weather of the year.  

Yes, running in the morning is out because of the extreme cold (or at least the perceived extreme cold), but I can run pretty much any other time of the day. I'm never forced to stay inside because of rain. In fact, when it starts snowing, that's when I want to lace up my shoes and get out the door.

But, although I've grown to somewhat like winter in the last few years, I'm never sad to see it go.

The weather for the last week has been downright phenomenal. Sunny. Mild. The sound of birdsongs in the air again. It feels like spring is right around the corner. And that means, for me...

RACE SEASON.

This spring's race season looked to be the same as almost every year past. The Shamrock Shuffle 3K in downtown Lexington. Run The Bluegrass Half Marathon at Keeneland. Derby Festival Mini-Marathon in Louisville. And, of course, The Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati, Ohio. My standard spring races, and all my favorites.

It's also Lent, which is one of my favorite times of the year.

For those of you who don't know, Lent is the forty days (not including Sundays) leading up to Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday and, of course, ends on Easter. It's celebrated in remembrance of the forty days before Jesus' crucifixion, when he returned to Jerusalem one last time to preach and teach, even though he knew it would lead to his death.

Growing up, I was never a big observer of Lent (actually, I was never a big observer of anything in church). Even when I got older and started growing in my relationship with Christ, Lent still seemed like something only for Catholics. But a few years ago I went to my first Ash Wednesday service, and it really struck me just how significant Lent should be to a Christian's life.

It's tradition to give up something during Lent. Not necessarily something bad, but something you could do without for forty days (not counting Sundays) in order to grow closer to God.

Hillary and I decided to give up social media during Lent. In addition, we also decided to take on a book study. We began reading Breathe, by Priscilla Shrirer. The book is about what it means to live a life with God's Sabbath in mind. Not necessarily living for Sundays; simply living life with a margin of rest around it. It's about knowing what things steal our contentment, our peace,  and our rest and keep us from living life.

Ironically, we've had a hard time keeping up with it.

It seems like the more we try to eliminate things from our lives to make room for time with God, the more we encounter things that simply have to be done. And yes, it feels like a trick of the Devil, trying to suck away our time with our Creator, but I'll be darned if it's not effective. It's not like I can just decide not to grade tests, or create lesson plans, or do all the other little non-classroom things I have to do for my teaching job. And Hillary can't simply stop seeing patients, or stop completing long, irksome charts for those patients. Couple that with time with the kids, time to maintain our own relationship, cooking dinner every night, and various other commitments, it feels like every minute of our days are spent simply preparing for the next day. Just so we can wake up the next morning and do the whole cycle over again.

I want to let some things go. But how?

Yesterday, I was writing all my spring races on a Runner's World calendar my brother, Aaron, and his wife got me for Christmas. I was thrilled to find that two of the races I had signed up for were actually pre-written on the calendar!

But I was less thrilled to see them on the same weekend.

The Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati and the Derby Festival Half in Louisville. It didn't even occur to me to check, because the two have NEVER been on the same weekend in the past. The Derby Fest is always the weekend before the Kentucky Derby (thus, the last weekend in April). And the Flying Pig is always the first weekend in May. Consecutive weeks.

Not this year. This year, May 1st is on a Sunday. The stars have aligned in such a way that must choose between two of my favorite races. I'm double-booked.

Neither of these races are bad. In fact, they're both great races, and the proceeds for each go to great causes. But I simply can't do them both. I'm going to have to make a choice.

It seems that God's trying to teach me a lesson. It's no coincidence that this perfectly mirrors my current dilemma about making quiet time for Him.

Like one of the races, something is going to have to go. Maybe I have to change the way I'm thinking about my lesson planning. Maybe I have to look for other ways I waste time (although, objectively, I can't see what else I could cut and still maintain sanity). Maybe He'll simply give me some grand revelation about the whole thing, I'll find the answer I'm looking for, and it'll be so simple that I won't believe I didn't realize it in the first place.

I personally hope He goes for the grand revelation. When it comes to discernment, I'm pretty dense.

Until that happens, I'll keep spinning the plates.

"The Long Run", or "Local Wildlife"

It's been just about a month since my last entry. I don't mean to have such a large hiatus between posts. It's not that there's been nothing going on in my personal life and running life; far from it. It's just been difficult to convince myself to make time for blogging. 

Here I am again: King of Excuses. All hail. 

As anyone not hibernating will be able to tell you, this last winter has been pretty much the worst winter in memory. When I was in middle and elementary school, circa 1994-96, eastern Kentucky was routinely buried under two feet of snow at a time. But the snows weren't as frequent, as cold, or as long-lived as this year. That's put a real hamper on my training for what is shaping up to be a very active spring season. 

Last Saturday, Hillary and I ran the Run The Bluegrass Half Marathon at Keeneland Race Track. Well, she did the 7-miler, and I did the half. But we shared the common thread that the race distance was the longest distance that each of us has run in months (since the weather turned foul, as a matter of fact). 

Despite warm weather earlier in the week, the high that day was 42 degrees F. And it rained. For pretty much the whole race. 

And, despite this, here we are, smiling like lunatics when all was said and done. 

The picture quality is so poor because my hands were shaking from the cold. 

I posted a time of 2' 16", a full two minutes faster than I did last year, despite the strong headwind pushing against me, the old, worn-out shoes I was wearing (didn't want the rain to ruin my good shoes), and, of course, the cold and driving rain. Even Hillary said she felt like her time on the seven-miler was her best racing time in months, even though the crappy weather had kept her inside, too. 

So we both are optimistic about our future spring races! Take that, winter! 

But we're also both still sore, six days later. 

Let me make one thing clear: I'm the least responsible runner ever. I run simply because it's fun. I rarely record my speeds and distances, NEVER keep training logs, and never follow training plans, even though I want to do better at longer races. And very rarely stretch before races. 

So, when I left on Monday morning for a mission trip with my youth group kids, I may have still been feeling the pains of the race. And then I maaaaay have worked all week around Aldersgate Camp in Ravenna, KY, further exacerbating these pains. 

It was a good week, thought. Without going into too much detail, we spend the week helping the camp catch up on some maintenance projects that needed done to prepare the camp for its upcoming week-long summer activities. Many of my youth kids have had intense spiritual experiences at this camp (some of the even gave their life to Christ there), so being able to give back in a meaningful way was a great experience for them. Not to mention that it got me off my lazy butt during spring break. 

Yesterday, we finished our work a little earlier than expected, which resulted in a little extra free time. My back and right ankle had been killing me all week, and I could think of no better panacea than some road therapy. So I laced up the beaten pair of shoes I had brought, put on the shorts I had worn to pain a fence two days prior, and hit the rural road. 

There was no ATT signal this deep in the mountains of Appalachia (big surprise), so my GPS couldn't create a map of the road. However, the GPS satellites were still able to track my speed and distance. So I ended up with this haunting path, through the middle of nowhere. 

It was a good distance, and I even made a pretty good pace (a little slower than 10min/mile). I was chased by dogs at two different places on the trip (almost no one deep in the mountains of Appalachia ties up their dogs, much to the chagrin of runners). At one point the road wound between two cow pastures, and every one of the beasts watched me as I ran by, which was more than a little creepy. 

And, after about two miles, I saw this big fellah. 

Though you can't tell from the picture, this guy was more than a foot long, from beak to tail. After I showed the picture to my youth kids, many of them asked why I didn't pick up this massive snapping turtle and bring him back to camp. 

Bear in mind: these are city kids, who have never seen what a snapping turtle can do. 

As I've mentioned in previous posts, running is a form of therapy for me. It gives me a few moments to be alone, mull over the events in my life, and put things into perspective. I also consider it an act of worship, because it puts me out in a beautiful world created by God, and gives me a while to simply focus on Him and my own footfalls. 

I realized how short life is, and how my youth kids are, one day, going to look back on that mission trip with very different eyes than I will. I hoped I was able to be a good leader to them (this week, and every week), and I hoped I did something that week that really showed them who God is. 

I realized how much I actually missed Hillary and the girls. Having no cell service all week killed my connection to them, but keeping busy almost every minute of every day had distracted me until that moment. Then, on the road, I realized how much I ached to hold her in my arms again, how much I wanted to curl up with Faith and play Adventures Ponies on the My Little Pony website (it's a real game: look it up), and how much I missed Zoe's tight little hugs and simple requests for more milk or another fruit bar. 

And, after that, I once again realized just how amazing and faithful God is. Memories of the past few years sometimes return when I run, but lately they've been coming in the form of thankfulness instead of regret. Thankfulness to God, for all He has brought me (us!) through in the past two years, and thankfulness for His ability to create beauty from a complete mess. And, of course, thankfulness to Hillary, for being willing to listen to the inklings of the Holy Spirit. Because if we both hadn't been listening at just the right time, I doubt our amazing present (and amazing future) together would have ever happened. 

As I was finishing the run, storm clouds were rolling in over the mountains. I said a fast prayer, asking God to hold off the rain until I was safely back at camp. It seems He was happy to oblige, because the real downpour didn't start until after I had been back in the cabin for around fifteen minutes. 

It has rained for two days straight. I don't really mind. Because there are going to be more sunny days to run, more races to train for, and more days when God holds off the storms until I've found cover.