Suicidal or Something Else?

Cross Country Season: My favorite time of year. Yesterday I ordered our team t-shirts for this year. I asked the kids to pick their favorite running quote to go on the back. It was not a hard decision, they all immediately agreed that it should be the following Steve Prefontaine quote:

“The only good race pace is a suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die.”

Its one of my favorite quotes too. Obviously it’s meant to be hyperbole and runners aren’t really suicidal, but it represents one of the aspects of running that draws people like me to the sport. It’s that mental component that is always either your biggest asset or your worst enemy. Can you keep pushing even when it feels like death? Can you overcome the discomfort and pain to go faster and faster? When everything in your body is screaming at you to slow down or stop, can you override those biological signals? Because they’re not wrong, pain receptors warn the brain of injury, they protect us, keep us alive. How else would you know to stop doing something that was harming your precious cells? Yet the runner trains to ignore such signals (and they often pay for it for days after a race or hard practice).

So can a person run themselves to death? Every year people attempt marathons and die, yes, people drop dead at the finish line(or before). What breed of people are we that we begin a race with the thought: “today I can die, and I’m going to run anyway.” It’s the same breed of people that call themselves Christ followers: willing to die. “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Runners are willing to tear their own tissues in training (that’s what soreness is) knowing that even though some pain will follow, the muscles will build back stronger. Christians are willing to “gouge out their own eye” to keep from sinning, knowing it is more beneficial to live as Christlike as possible (Mathew 5:29).

Suicidal? No. Crazy? Maybe. But our wisdom is foolishness to the world. Only those with miles to run understand us. Only those with ears to hear and eyes to see understand us.