I have always hated running.
That’s a strong word, and I use it here because it’s true. I was a gymnast and then a pole vaulter. My athletic abilities led me to flipping, being upside down, and prioritizing strength and conditioning. At the very most, I needed to sprint less than 100 meters to tumble my way through the air or pole vault over a tall bar. Ask me to run a mile and I would imagine my immanent death.
My hatred of running did not mean I hated exercise. On the contrary, I have always found great joy in lifting and walking and moving my body. Being strong and powerful and able to express myself in athletic feats has been a core part of my identity since the beginning. Running was simply not a compelling way to do that.
When I graduated high school and was without the organized sports it offered, I had to design a new routine for exercise which mostly consisted of going to the UNL gym to enjoy quality time with barbells and dumbbells. My roommates were runners, however, and they would drag me out for a couple of miles from time to time. We did a couple 5k races together, which felt like marathon distance to my body. They would train for half marathons, and I would giddily watch from the sidelines completely at peace that I was not subjecting my body to such a horrible practice. I had ample opportunities to train with friends for races, but always firmly responded with “I would never run a half marathon,” seeing no possible joy that could come from it.
Then the pandemic came. I lost my gym. I had no way of lifting weights. I lived in an apartment that was not going to fit an at home gym in my living room. Walks with the dog weren’t cutting it. I needed to move. My soul yearned for exercise. I wanted to push myself. It was the only way I was going to survive.
Exercise has always been my most effective anti-depressant, and I needed it then more than ever.
So I started running. 3x/week with my friend and former colleague, Adam. We met at the same time and place, running the same 3 mile loop. It was routine, a practice we did together and to which we held each other accountable. Something that got me out of bed in the morning. We did this for months and months until the Nebraska winter came and we got lazy and chose not to run in the freezing cold.
On an unusually beautiful January day in 2021, I texted Adam to see if he’d join me for a run. I emotionally wasn’t doing well. I hadn’t exercised in three months. Deep into the winter months of another surge of the pandemic, I thought that reaching out to a friend might help. He said yes and we met up at our usual spot.
We were both out of running shape so it was more of a run-walk mix of our usual loop. Around 2 miles in, he asked me, “You want to train for the Lincoln half marathon with me?”
Like muscle memory, I immediately responded with a hard no. Of course not. Let’s keep the lovely 3 miles 3x/week thing going. Why do we have to ruin it by adding 10 more miles?
I returned home from that run feeling uplifted and connected once again, a little more in tune with myself. I sat down to dinner with my husband and told him what Adam proposed, but then surprised myself with, “I think it might actually be good for me.” I couldn’t believe I was saying it, but also couldn’t deny it anymore.
Training for this half would give me a goal. A purpose. Something to look forward to in our strange covid world where everyday was just like the last. It would jumpstart the running routine with a friend again, and I could feel how much I desperately needed that. I texted Adam that evening and said I was in.
We spent the spring training, nothing too fancy and both battling pain and injuries from really not knowing what we were doing. Life got busier. We stayed as committed as we could. We had great conversations about my own discernment on our long runs. We found new trails. We ran negative splits.
I ran the Lincoln half marathon on May 2, 2021. I didn’t reach my secret didn’t-know-if-it-was-possible goal—I had no idea what I was doing and it was 10 degrees hotter than anything I trained in—but I ran the entire thing. I was exhausted and also deeply proud of myself.
However and to no surprise, I said I would never do it again.
When I moved to San Diego, I returned to my gym-loving self. I found the greatest gym in the world—an outdoor gym with an ocean view? Yes please!—and religiously spent every morning there from 6-7am. It continues to be one of the places I miss most from my time in San Diego.
As graduation approached and I began to look ahead at my life, I really only saw unknowns about when I would find a job and where we would settle. Seeing lots of travel in my future, I knew it would be another time in my life where I would not be able to count on regularly having a gym at my disposal. I would need to start running again.
I began to slowly increase my mileage during my final weeks in San Diego and into the summer. Last summer, I ran through the beautiful French countryside while spending a week in silence at Taizé. I ran on a massive boat in the middle of the Baltic Sea while traveling across Europe with my family. I ran in Nebraska and wherever I travelled. My running shoes started to become the most important item in my suitcase.
But running alone is hard for me. I had only ever done it with friends that would distract me from the boredom and keep me accountable. Running for running’s sake was a different beast. For me to sustain this practice, I needed a goal, something to work towards and propel me forward.
I surprised myself again and signed up for a half marathon in the fall. Six days after my 30th birthday, I was going to run 13.1 miles in the running heart of the world, Boston.
I couldn’t believe who I was becoming. Who is this person who just signed up for a half marathon by her own will? And why was I excited about it? This was all very strange. People started to call me a runner and I brushed it off, still clinging tightly to my identity as a running-hater.
When we moved to Boston in the fall, I was intimidated as hell by all the runners. Let me tell you, Boston is a running city. Yes, there are the casual runners—mostly college students—but there are even more super legit know-what-they’re-doing runners. Runners with NYC Marathon jackets and Chicago Marathon t-shirts.
After a couple weeks, I figured out why this is: Boston is the most beautiful, wonderful place to run. My months in Boston is where I fell in love with running. When I watched the Boston Marathon coverage a couple weeks ago, my eyes welled up because I yearned to run through that city again.
My fall training block was the most focused running I had ever done. I trained for four months with a very specific time goal in mind, intentionality at the heart of every mile. I was a sponge, soaking up new learning about paces and heart rate zones and nutrition and my body. I did it all while traveling constantly, doing training runs in seven different states.
When the race came, I was nervous. It was a hilly course and I had a meaningful goal. It was colder than anything I had trained in and my legs felt it. I didn’t know if my body would be able to do it. I was filled with doubt the entire race, taking one mile at a time.
Until I came around the final corner and saw the finish line, looking down at my watch knowing I had two minutes to finish within my goal. I began to cry, but stuffed the tears reminding myself I hadn’t done it yet—finish, Jenna!—and crossed the finish line with my arms raised in pure joy and relief.
Crossing that finish line was euphoria like I had never felt before. There is no feeling like PR-ing at a race.
We live in a world designed for immediate satisfaction, seeking dopamine hits in every moment. Marathon training is not that. It is far from immediate. It requires you to show up, day after day for months and months, all to put yourself through intense physical and mental anguish so that you can feel that moment of overwhelming pride and joy when you cross the line.
It is honestly the dumbest thing in the entire world. It makes no logical sense. And yet, November 12th was the day my running-loathing self was fully converted. I was dunked in the baptismal waters of running culture and there was no going back.
I wax poetically about my running conversion—thank you for reading this far—because something I’ve said a lot over the past year is that running has saved me.
The past 12 months have been a dark night of the soul, a phrase coined by the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross. Jim Finley explains that a key element of a dark night of the soul is when the spiritual practices that you have counted on to sustain you no longer meet the moment of despair and desperation in which you find yourself. This has been painfully true for me since graduating seminary.
Reading the Bible has become uninteresting. (Except my bestie, Job. Thank God for Job.) I have no words on my lips or heart for prayer. I have been too nomadic to have a regular worshipping community. I have had no pastor. I have struggled to connect with sermons that feel like they inadequately meet me in my suffering.
It’s in this place of nothingness where running has found me. This sport has only ever entered my life when I have nothing else to sustain me. When all my spiritual practices come up empty, running fills the gap. When pandemics come and I live an itinerant life, running becomes the only constant I have.
Surprisingly, illogically, against my many years of adamantly saying 'NO!’, running is the thing that has literally kept me going when I had nothing else to propel me forward.
In my editing of another Fellowship post, I was listening to the recording of my interview with Pastor Samm, the prison pastor at New Beginnings in the Denver Women’s Prison. I asked her how she cares for herself in this ministry when she hears the stories of trauma from her community on a daily basis. She said this:
“I think an underrated part of our spirituality is our own hobbies, and that if we don’t make space for our own hobbies, then we just aren’t sustainable as clergy, as pastors, or as humans. My hobbies are a huge part for me.”
When she said this, my entire soul screamed, ‘YES! THIS IS IT!’ Finally, someone helped me name the connection I’ve been experiencing this past year.
Yes, running has (obviously) become a hobby of mine. However, it is more than self-care or a side project—the things we usually consider hobbies to be grounded in. It has felt much deeper and more profound than that.
Running, a simple hobby, has become one of my most important spiritual practices. It has shaped my very soul. This sport I once loathed with my entire being is how God has sustained me through the hardest year of my life. I am not exaggerating when I say that running is the reason I’m still here today. It has been my meditation, my church, my foundation.
When there was no other way for God to care for me, God gifted me with running shoes and cared for my body’s need to move. When I was struggling to wake up in the morning, feeling the dread of the unknown, God comforted me with beautiful runs along the Charles River. When I did not feel God’s presence at church or prayer, God filled my soul through the sun on my skin. When I knew nothing about my future and saw no path forward, God gave me races on the calendar that gave me hope for the days ahead.
Running has taught me grace in a way that I’ve never been able to understand grace. It’s been a meditation, a routine, a way of life. It’s been a celebration of my body and the gift and privilege it is to move this body of mine that God so beautifully created.
As Pastor Samm alluded to, this hobby is not some separate part of me that’s disconnected from my spirituality. It is intimately woven into my very nature, the way God created me, and is God’s gift of sustenance.
Hobbies are gifts from God, profoundly spiritual ways to express parts of ourselves that are unique to us and important parts of who God created us to be. They allow us to create, push our limits, be in community, move our bodies. They lead us outside to enjoy nature, learn about this fascinating and complex world, and try new things.
And sometimes, in our dark nights of the soul, they step up to the plate to save us from the very depths of despair.
My husband can confirm that I am deep in the rabbit hole of this sport. I am obsessed with the science and process and the ability to push my limits and watch my body adapt to it. I am inspired by athletes who do the work and make it a priority along with all the other demands on their lives. I am energized by the strength that this sport demands of me. I am bought in to the tempo-interval-long-recovery run schedules. I love exploring new cities on runs; in the past year, I have run in California, Arizona, Nebraska, Minnesota, Texas, Washington, Ohio, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. I am training for a PR in the half marathon on June 9th and, depending on how that goes, hope to train for a full marathon in the fall.
All of this from the girl who hated running and said (multiple times) she would never run a race.
I can’t help but laugh at how God transformed this thing I once loathed to a hobby that has sustained me during the hardest times in my life.
All of this long post to say—
Hobbies are such incredible gifts, friends. May we celebrate them in our lives. May we make time for them and see them as a priority. And may we honor how deeply spiritual they are.
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What are your hobbies? How has God sustained you in mind, body, and spirit through them?
I will forward this to my DH who has discovered that same connection to running. He jokes that he has so many people to pray for (which he does at the beginning of his runs) that he needs to run longer distances. The NYC Marathon is still "his" race but he did a fund-raising run in Boston one year in memory of a departed work colleague. Be well, Jenna. Although I will probably (never say never) will not ever be a runner, I enjoy card making for the very same reasons. I am creative, I am amazed at what my body and mind can do, it is a meditation of sorts and it inspires others. You, my friend, ARE a runner!