The Long Slow Run

This past Sunday I ran, with own, two, short legs, 16 long miles. It is the longest I have ever run in a single portion of time. I cannot explain what it feels like to run that far. I could use all the quick adjectives like painful, sweaty, exciting, but feel so much would be missing from that. Minus the pain in my sore legs, I myself feel a little odd in saying out loud that I really did run that far. It feels like it was something I meant to do, but got too busy and added it to my to-do list or slept through. I will say this, I did run those miles and will run them again because running is like nothing else except life in general. And this is only a connection I have just recently been able to understand. 16 miles is a long, long way. It would take about 20 minutes to drive in a car. It took me 2:20 to run. You can think about a lot of things during two hours. You can pray about a lot things in two hours. You can plan a lot of things in two hours. But all of that is not why I will run again. The reason I will run again is two-fold. One is that two hours is a long time to make yourself believe in the "small, slow, next step". I need to believe in that. My whole life has been and still is millions upon millions of both real and proverbial "small, slow, steps" and it is and has been hard for me to make it to the next one. On Sunday morning in the early morning, I saw my white car waiting for me and I knew and got to see first hand that the next, small, slow step does eventually lead in the right direction and does eventually lead you to your goal. And the second reason is real simple, I love food and I burned 2300 calories while running and that is a lot of food. That is a lot of brownies. Not such a bad trade-off. So...if you need me next Sunday morning, you'll find me running and training for my next chance at an eating contest; making it there one small, slow, step at a time.