We were a school of fish in shoes
Cultivating community and being of service
During an especially exhausting time, I signed up to run a marathon.
We do things like this, don’t we?
Race day was six months away, so it was still an idea. I heard that effective training was about increasing mileage during the week and extending a long run each weekend. That’s all I knew. A friend suggested I join a local marathon training group. “Follow their schedule and join others for the long runs. They’ll get you across the finish line. Oh, and you’ll love it, too,” he said.
The following Saturday morning, I met up with a few hundred runners. While I stood around sizing everyone up, I noticed we couldn’t have been more different. Old and young. Husky and lean. Fast and slow. First-timers and veteran marathoners. It felt awkward standing around at daybreak with no one I knew. I almost abandoned the scene to run alone. Somewhere behind the strangeness of it all, amid the physical differences and alongside our common purpose, I heard my friend's words again, “Oh, and you’ll love it, too.”
The organizers called us together and outlined our training regimen for the next eighteen weeks. They separated us into pace groups and assigned each group an experienced marathoner who would keep us on track. Other volunteers would handle the aid stations along our routes – supplying the Gatorade and fruit slices. All we needed to do, they said, was focus on our running and take care of each other.
After brief introductions, our slow and steady ten-minute-per-mile group set off on the first of our long runs – a reasonable eight miles.
26.2 still seemed like only an idea.
Our first few Saturdays were pretty quiet. We focused on our running and mostly asked questions of our leader. On race day, is it best to maintain the same pace or start fast and then slow down? Or start slow and speed up? Is Gatorade better than water? What’s better – bagels or bananas? He told us he’d run nine marathons. Vancouver, BC, was his most memorable – his worst but most picturesque race.
By the fourth week, our guards were down. Reduced to shorts and short sleeves, un-showered and sweaty, and joined at our hips for two hours, there wasn’t anywhere to hide. In our pod of fifteen, two were newlyweds – one starry-eyed and one scared sh*tless. Seven of us were divorced, two of us twice. One of us had a successful IPO. Three of us suffered business failures. Most of us longed for job changes but lacked the courage to act. Those of us who were parents felt like failures most of the time. Our lives were as up and down as the hills on our routes, and I discovered the sources of my exhaustion were hardly unique to me. We were a microcosm of life.
In week ten, the wheels blew off – almost literally. Somewhere around mile six – while trail-running under the canopy of old-growth oak trees, the biggest personality in our group – the twice-divorced IPO victor, exclaimed, “I can’t hold it anymore!” and hurried over the hillside and took refuge behind an oak.
We ran in place for what seemed like several minutes. Mr. Big reemerged and wondered if any of us had some toilet paper. Big potty.
Turns out there was somewhere to hide.
“To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the family has to become, in a special way, the servant of the others.”
– Pope John Paul II.
Communities are a mainstay in our lives. Our first communities are circumstance – starting with our family of origin and evolving to the small communities that follow – classrooms, teams, and clubs. Later in life, as we discover our passions and exercise agency in how we spend our time, our communities are our choice – coalescing around our interests and the people we choose to be around.
Running groups, writing groups, and hiking groups. Book clubs and bridge clubs. Tennis leagues, basketball leagues, and softball leagues. Fishing clubs and flying clubs. Music groups, travel groups, and birding groups.
If close friends are the siblings of our choosing, these special communities, not confined by geography or limited by an inherited family, are the families of our choosing. If we are willing to open ourselves emotionally, if we are willing to be vulnerable, and if we are willing to be servants of each other, with the critical yeast of time, these families can become the source of great joy and meaning.
Our slow and steady ten-minute group met for our final long run before race day. There was a touch of seriousness in the air. As if twenty miles in front of us weren’t enough, it was windy and rainy. This morning, we were joined by a new face in our group – Amy. She told us she’d been training with the 9-minute group but had struggled on the last two long runs, failing to finish and walking at the end. She’d been putting in the mileage during the week, so she was hopeful a slower pace on the twenty-miler would be just what she needed.
We welcomed Amy, along with her spunk, and enjoyed getting to know her during our first ten miles – when conversing didn’t compete with rhythmic breathing and seemingly scarce oxygen in the back half of our run. She told us she was newly divorced, a mother of four, had just switched careers and had signed up to run a marathon because she needed another challenge.
Amy fit right in.
Shortly after taking a break at our final aid station – about mile seventeen – Amy’s stride started to shorten. Her shoulders began to hunch. Given her 9-minute-per-mile conditioning, she’d been running near the front of our pack all day, so while we noticed the change, we couldn’t tell if she would be able to push on.
After laboring through another ½ mile, Amy dropped back, head down, and motioned for us to go on. We didn’t. She told the woman next to her she’d be OK, again telling us to move ahead. With only the sounds of our soles slapping against the wet pavement, we slowed to match Amy’s pace. Several of us dropped back behind her, me included. Several others moved alongside Amy. As if we were tending to something wounded, we closed in around her just a bit – a way of telling Amy we were with her.
We were a school of fish in shoes, with Amy at our center.
Amy pleaded with us one more time to maintain our ten-minute pace – that our training depended on it, that our marathon depended on it. No one said a word, and we continued to surround her with our energy, traveling about twelve minutes per mile. As our legs rose and fell in unison, we recognized we’d been in Amy’s shoes before, and any of us could have been in her shoes on this particular morning.
There are infinite ways to serve – sometimes with empathy, other times with compassion. Sometimes with kindness, other times with reassurance. On this particular morning, in a family of our choosing, three hours deep on a wet and windy run, we served by simply slowing down.
So often, I have gone to work on one thing, only to discover I am actually working on something different, to finally discover I am the one being worked on. I signed up with a training group to help me cross the finish line, only to discover the joys of training with a community of runners to ultimately experience the meaning of helping someone else cross the finish line.
We experience things like this, don’t we?
I hope this piece made you smile, contributed meaning to your life, or touched your heart. Please feel free to comment or give any feedback. I would be grateful if you did.
I so LOVE your writing James! I feel I am sitting beside you having a great conversation!!!
I'm inspired!!!!! =+10
This was my first time to read your writing. Marvelous!