Is It Time For a Fresh Start?

Monday morning my laptop disavowed its own touchpad and I had to borrow a mouse from Cyndi. (It was purple, with flowers, very girly.) Next, my laptop refused to recognize either of the two wireless networks in our house. It was an unsettling trend. What might fail next? I turned the laptop over, pulled the battery out for five minutes to give the electrons time to stop spinning, reinstalled the battery, rebooted, and everything worked. All it needed was a fresh start.

And so I’ve been wondering about that myself these past weeks. Do I need a fresh start?

Several friends have commented about my recent bike crash and my perpetually bad knees, and the comments go like this: “Maybe God is telling you to take up something else. Is it time to move on from running and cycling?”

I was asking myself that same question a few years ago, in 2008 to be precise, when I ran the Austin Half-Marathon.

My training had been marginal, more walking than running, and not much of that, because my knee was still sore. Too much body mass and too little running made it hard to motivate myself to hit the roads every day. Yet, I wanted my love of running back. I wasn’t ready to put that phase of life behind me.

I knew the half-marathon would either make me hungry for more, or tell me it was time to move on to something else. Would I step in or step out? Would I say, “I’ll never do that again,” or say, “When is the next race?”

And now, five years later, I’m wondering the same thing.

I’m currently under the care of Midland Memorial Hospital’s Wound Management Specialists - a lingering effect from the bike crash on March 4^th - and they won’t let me do much of anything until I’m healed.

It’s OK. I am more than willing to stay away from running or cycling or hiking or backpacking or yard work or manual labor in order to let this wound heal, but at the same time I am ready to get back as soon as possible. I am hungry to move.

The question of fresh starts is bigger than running or cycling, wounds or arthritis. I don’t want to squander my life holding on too long to something I should leave behind. How do we know if we’re bravely hanging on or merely being delusional? It isn’t always easy to know the difference.

So one morning this week I read this from Psalm 20, “May He give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.” (Ps 20:4 NIV)

I saw in the margin of my Bible where each year I had written the desires of my heart in response to this promise. However, I also noticed my desires kept changing. I held on to some, let go of others. How could God give me my desires and make my plans succeed if I kept starting over again and again?

But my core desire stayed constant: I want to impact the lives of people. My heart hadn’t actually changed; it just takes a life time of digging to uncover desires from all the debris thrown up by daily life.

Later that same day, after reading Psalm 20 and praying for insight into fresh starts, I received two clues about the true desire of my heart:

I was listening to an audio book by Rich Roll, titled Finding Ultra, about how he turned around his life after discovering ultra-endurance sports. He described an epic endurance event in which he and a friend decided to do five Iron Men-length events in five days, each on a different Hawaiian Island. His description of the effort was brutal, but the more he talked about his suffering, the more I wished I could do it, too. I realized that was an indicator of my own heart, that it has many more miles in it. Rather than think Roll was crazy, my heart wanted to be with him.

And then I saw some photos of another local cyclist who crashed while riding in the Texas Hill Country, and his injuries looked significantly worse than mine. Again, rather than scaring me away from cycling, I couldn’t wait to get back on the saddle.

I suppose I have a life-time of fresh starts still ahead of me, but for now the one I’m most looking forward to is moving down the road again. I can hardly wait to get started. In fact, I’ve already started planning future races.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

 Find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

Transforming Moments

So Monday morning I watched the live internet feed from the Boston Marathon on my computer. It was fun. I could feel myself swaying in my chair, trying to run with the leaders. In my head I was running the Newton Hills smoothly and quickly just like those tiny Kenyans. It was amazing. More than that, it was inspiring. I wanted to change into my New Balances right then and hit the road.

So I went home for lunch pumped full of adrenaline. I didn’t have time to run, but squeezed in a 13-bike ride. It was windy of course, especially riding west on Mockingbird, but fighting the headwind felt like solidarity with those runners on Heartbreak Hill. Even on my bike I was one of us.

It wasn’t until after lunch that people in my office started asking me about the bombs. I had no idea. I had to catch up on the news. And then, staring at the videos on my computer, I sat stunned, awash in my own vulnerability. These were my people. They were where I wished I were. They were winning their day. They were finishing a year-long, life-long goal. They could have been me. If my knees didn’t hurt, if I could run faster, they would have been me. I could hardly breathe.

Over the course of the afternoon, I was surprised how many phone calls, texts, and emails I received about the marathon tragedy. Friends wanted to know if I’d heard about it, if I knew anyone running, and even if Cyndi and I were running the race this year. The entire incident felt more personal than I’d expected. It felt like my own tribe was under attack.

I wasn’t alone in feeling that way. Blogger Peter Larson wrote, “In talking with other runners over the past 24 hours, the common thing we all feel is that our family has been attacked. It’s a family that includes not only those of us who run, but also those who gather to watch us achieve our goals.”

My daughter, Katie, texted: “It’s a sad day when the most passive athletes are targeted.”

She got that exactly right. Marathon runners don’t hit people, they don’t try to knock the ball out of your hands or steal it from you, and they don’t yell at line judges or referees. They’re self-contained, often introverted people willing to put in long training hours on the road. The only person they hurt is themselves.

I’ve been around a lot of marathon finish lines, either because I was running myself or because I was waiting for someone I love to finish. My first finish was in 1983 at the Golden Yucca Marathon in Hobbs, NM. It was raining when I crossed the finish line, and the entire area was deserted. A man and woman jumped out of their Airstream trailer, scribbled my name and race number and finish time on their clipboard, scrambled back inside out of the rain, leaving me standing alone in the rain, so proud of myself I couldn’t stop crying. I would have pounded my chest and howled at the sky but I was too exhausted to lift my arms.

I knew I was a different man from that moment forward. I was transformed into a marathon runner, and I could claim that privilege for the rest of my life. I knew my future would be different than predicted. I knew I was amazing.

All marathon finishes are like that. Even crossing my most recent finish line at the Crossroads Marathon, October 2010, was transformational. Once again, it changed my image of what was possible. It opened my heart and expanded my vision. Even exhausted, I knew I could do anything. I was indestructible. I was a mighty warrior who could not be stopped.

That is what marathon finish lines are like. They are joyful. They are emotional thin places. They are transformational. They are magic.

But Monday, in Boston, the finish line turned tragic.

The first thing I wanted to do after seeing the bombing video was to find Cyndi and hold on to her. I was soft and hungry for her touch all afternoon. I needed physical confirmation that we were OK.

John Bingham posted on Tuesday: “What we learned from the New York City Marathon is that runners are not immune to the power of the universe. Hurricanes don’t care how long you’ve trained. They don’t care that running a marathon is a life-list dream. They don’t care that you are a runner.

Yesterday we learned that we, elite runners, charity runners, young, old, male, female, runners are not protected from the dangers, the horrors, and the hatred that are in the world. We aren’t. If we thought we were yesterday morning, THIS morning we know we’re not.”

Through the years, Cyndi and I have run so many races together, running and love and longevity have intertwined through the years. It was my love for Cyndi and my desire to snatch her back from her track & field boyfriend that started me running back in 1978. But Monday morning my favorite sport reminded me that even something as benign as running comes with risk to the one I love most.

You can’t love someone without accepting the risk of losing them. Sometimes the threat of loss is only tangential, as in my fear of losing Cyndi because of Boston. We were both in Midland and far from danger.

But it felt more real than that. It was a reminder that the commitment to love someone is risky and can end badly. Tragedy can strike anytime, even in the middle of life’s best moments.

But to be transformed by love, you have to accept the risk and love deeply anyway. You have to cannonball in with all you have. You have to love with all of you, all day, all the time, right now.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

Practicing

For the past evenings I’ve been reading Natalie Goldberg, and she always starts me thinking about how I spend my days. I’m especially drawn to her use of the word “practice;” how her life centers on writing practice and spiritual practice. Her daily practices influence everything she does and writes. I’m talking about practice in the sense of daily regular activities done for the purpose of doing them. Not out of rote or mechanical repetition, but knowing there is benefit. For example, maybe you start off practicing piano every day to become a better player, but eventually it becomes part of your identity. You keep practicing because it is who you are.

This makes me ask, “What are my own practices?”

My longest running practice (sorry about the pun) is running.

Friends often ask why I’m determined to keep running on sore knees when there are other exercise choices. I don’t usually have a good answer. It feels pretentious to say running has become a spiritual practice for me, so I keep that answer to myself. Still, it’s true.

I don’t expect other people to get the same benefit from running that I get, and I don’t think badly about them if they don’t become life-long runners. We’re each drawn to different activities, and I don’t expect anyone to be drawn to mine.

Still, I’ve had people tell me they were inspired to run after reading something I wrote. But then they tried it for a while and gave up because it was too hard. I can’t blame them. It is hard.

I started running in June 1978 in order to win the heart of a girl, to lose weight, and get fitter. It was hard work all summer long. In fact, I ran miles and miles, maybe a year to two, before I found any benefit. Certainly before it became fun. I had to push through discomfort and stress in order to find mental release on the other side. It wasn’t quick, it wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.

My second-longest practice is reading from my Daily Bible.

I have read through the same copy of The Daily Bible in Chronological Order year after year, almost every day, since 1993. I started because, as a Bible teacher, I wanted to learn more things about God. However, after I few passes through the book my motives evolved - I wanted to change who I was and how I lived so I could love God more.

It became a daily practice for me, a spiritual thin place. It grounds me, brings me back home to my base relationship with God, settles my wandering mind, and keeps me from rambling too far from truth. Just the physical act of doing it is peaceful. In fact, a day feels strange and empty until I have my reading.

The thing about spiritual practices is they’re not easy or fun every single time you do them. Some days are hard and cranky and I have to remind myself there is real value in continuing.

Last week I posted, “Is a hard cranky run when I’m struggling with every step better than no run at all?”

Yes, it is, but it isn’t obvious. Even a bad run slows down my day and anchors me to the present. Nothing settles my brain floaters better.

Practice means going out anyway, whether hot or rainy or cold or snowy or early or late. The regular repetition is as important as each actual mile.

Practice means digging my Daily Bible out of my backpack and squeezing today’s reading into a busy day even when the passage is nothing but a long genealogical list of unpronounceable names. Putting my attention to God’s Word centers me.

So why bother? Surely we have enough on or schedule already without adding more things to do.

Because our heart, soul, and mind are influenced by what we hear, read, and do. If we don’t have daily practices that intentionally bring us toward God, the Enemy will pull us away from God. Over the course of our lifetime, it is our practices that make us who we are.

What are your practices? Sharing them may help someone else who needs grounding in their own spiritual life.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

Performance Enhancing Drug

The first thing I want to say is that chemical intervention in the human body can work like magic. The second thing I should say, or rather, finally, spit it out - Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhcckk-PTOOO, there, much better - is this: I have a performance enhancing substance in my body.

I know, I know, you’ve probably seen me running or cycling and your first thought is, “Performance Enhancing Drugs? No harm no foul,” considering how below optimum my enhanced performance can be. I would have to use every PED known to the UCI in order to be even slightly competitive.

However, since about 2004 I haven’t taken a step, or run a stride, without thinking about my knees and how to extend them a few more miles. People ask me often, “Are you limping today?” and I always answer, “Yes,” knowing that limping has become my regular walk.

The diagnosis is osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease that leads to loss of cartilage, resulting in decreased movement. The main symptom is pain, causing loss of ability and often stiffness.

You might suspect the cause for my condition to be all the miles I’ve run since 1978, but according to current scientific research, you would be wrong. Running has not been found to increase one's risk of developing osteoarthritis. In fact, regular exercise delays onset of symptoms and extends the life of the joint. As in, use it or lose it.

So back to my opening confession: last Friday I got a Synvisc injection in each knee. It’s an artificial substance (made from rooster combs) which acts like a lubricant and a shock absorber in the joint. In the short term, it relieves pain and restores movement. In the long term, it delays knee replacement.

My only complaint about Synvisc is that the FDA only allows injections once every six months. I would install a portal in my knee for continuous feed if I could get by with it. Like a grease zerk.

There is no use whining about my running career cut short by disability. I was never competitive. For me, it has always been about meditating on my feet. Still, I had dreams to go further more often.

Just this week I read from Donald Miller’s Storyline blog:

It’s an aching truth we are not guaranteed our dreams will become a reality.

Dreaming is one of the things that make us human. We imagine a better future and then design a plan to make it happen. For me, I wish I had worked this particular dream a little harder back before 2004.

Donald Miller continued:

I believe a human being has more than an ability to dream. We have a responsibility to dream. And when our dreams don’t become a reality, we must realize our dreams have power all the same. They can motivate those around us. Our dreams can inspire generations who will keep the work going. We must understand the realization of the dream is not so much the gift as the dream itself.

And so, with the help of a performance enhancing drug, or maybe I should call it a dream enhancing drug, I am back to running longer and cycling further. It isn’t a huge change, more of an incremental improvement, but it still counts.

How about you? Do you have dreams still waiting for action? What enhances your performance?

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Find me at http://berrysimpson.com and learn more about my books. Or find me at  http://twitter.com/berrysimpson and at http://www.facebook.com/BerrySimpsonAuthor

Life-Changing Moments

“Before I could convince myself otherwise, I paid the entry fee and changed my life.” - Martin Dugard Martin Dugard, author of To Be A Runner, wrote that about entering his first race, the opening move in a life of running.

My guess is that Dugard had no idea how important that first entry fee was when he paid it. Most life-changing moments are subtle when they happen. In fact, if we knew they would change how we were going to live we would probably get scared and back slowly away. It is usually better NOT to know the future.

One of my life-changing moments happened when I first started running, in the summer of 1978, between my first and second senior year of college. At the time, I could never have imagined how many years I would keep doing it, or how it would change my life. I had no idea of the greater running community or the existence of races or training or anything like that. All I knew was that I needed to do something physical to lose some weight and win back the affection of a girl who’d left me for a track-and-field jock. It was the first time in my life to do anything physical on my own initiative.

Those first few miles in Stan Smith Adidas tennis shoes and Levi cut-offs were the beginning of a practice that has lasted 34 years and covered over 36,000 miles. Who could have anticipated that?

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a Runner’s World magazine and caught a glimpse of the bigger running community. I saw photos of people in races who looked like me, and that planted a seed that I could do it what they were doing.

I entered my first race in the summer of 1980. A Lubbock radio station was pitching the Cap’n D’s five-mile and ten-mile race as a (joking) alternative to the Moscow Summer Olympics, which President Jimmie Carter boycotted due to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

The racecourse consisted of two five-mile loops. I entered the ten-mile race, having run nine miles a couple of times in Brownfield, thinking I was ready for the big time. However, it was a mistake to try to run so far. I knew nothing about racing and I lined up at the front of the pack, oblivious to the differences between my body shape and the bodies of the other guys who belonged on the front. Caught up in the adrenaline of the moment, and being stupid, I ran too fast the first lap. I had to pull up and finish after only five miles. I felt miserable, I almost threw up, but I was so happy I couldn’t stop telling my story to Cyndi. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was a changed man.

Not long after that first race, I discovered running writer, George Sheehan. I bought his first book, Dr. Sheehan on Running, at a grocery store in Duncan, Oklahoma, while at a two-week oilfield school, in the fall of 1980. Every evening I read a few pages from the book and then went outside to go out running. I noticed that it was possible to write about life and spirituality around the framework of running. It was a seed planted.

Running races led to new friends, and those friends led to my twenty-year involvement in the running club in Midland, Texas. I eventually served a couple of terms as club president, but more importantly, I served for several years as newsletter editor. And it was with that newsletter I started writing stories about running and life. Many of those stories ended up in my first book, Running With God, published twenty-five years later.

The thing is, I wonder what would have taken over my life if I hadn’t started running back in 1978. Would I be a writer if not for that newsletter? Who knows. It’s impossible to know such things.

But those first few miles down Sanger Street in Hobbs, New Mexico changed my life. And those miles are still changing me - I’ve run three times this week, and here I am writing about it, again.

So many things happen to us in the course of our life and we can never know in the moment how important they will become. Usually, we are just happy to have lived through it and survived. It is only when looking back that we see how our life was changed.

I have been reading the story of Abraham these past few days, and few of the events of  his life pointed toward the great man he would become. What seems to be random and unfocused action on his part was used by God over the course of Abraham’s life to turn him into the father of a nation.

I believe God works that same way in our own lives. It’s hard to see the importance as we live through the moment, but later we see how his grace turned us into different people. Life-changing moments are a gift.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

What Is Your Quest?

His personal trainer rendered him speechless by asking, “Are you sure you don’t want to do more?” I was reading To Be a Runner, by Martin Dugard, one of the best running books I’ve ever read. A longtime runner and coach, Dugard had reluctantly recruited a personal trainer to help him break out of a long, sedentary spell of sloth and weight gain. In the opening interview at the gym, The House of Pain, his trainer, Terry, asked, "What are your goals?”

Surprisingly, for a trained athlete, he didn’t have a goal. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from the workouts other than to be better.

But Dugard also had a philosophical problem with the word “goal.” He preferred “quests.” To him, goals sounded pedestrian, but quests were quixotic.

The distinction between goal and quest was not so obvious to me; however, I could see the difference between setting a goal to lose twenty pounds and being on a quest to hike the Appalachian Trail. Or the difference between setting a goal to read twenty books versus a quest to write twenty books.

Goals seem to be about what you do (or what you want to do), while quests seem to be about who you are (or hope to be).

Therefore, a quest should be bigger than life, something we cannot accomplish on our own. A quest should be an epic adventure.

(Of course, to be honest, I cannot use the word “quest” without hearing Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail in my head. That’s probably why I seldom use that specific word, even though I talk about the concept of epic adventures often.)

Martin Dugard told a story about running up a long set of steps to the top of an Italian mountain, near the shores of Lake Garda, to see the ruins of a fifth-century castle. The route got progressively steeper the further he ran, but he was not tempted to turn back. He didn’t know what he would find at the top, or whether it would be worth the struggle, but he had wasted too many weeks without running so he kept moving up.

Dugard’s life aphorism is, “Keep Pushing - Always.” He described  it as a reminder “not to settle but to dream, to live, to sing, to let go of the past and fulfill your destiny. Sometimes a single run can make your whole life come full circle - or maybe just make sense of the things you never understood. That run up an Italian mountain banished my fear of settling.”

His last phrase, “banished my fear of settling,” caught my attention because of my own tendency to settle. I’ve taught myself to seek adventure, movement, and journey, but my natural, organic, inclination is to seek equilibrium, to find a place to settle whenever possible. I’ve learned to schedule runs, hikes, and rides - hard ones and long ones - to keep this tendency at bay.

I’ve also fought my tendency to settle by becoming a goal setter. I don’t claim to be a great goal achiever, but I try to set a sufficient number of goals so if I only achieve a few of them I still make real changes and feel good about myself. And some of those goals have now become habits so deeply engrained I no longer have to think about accomplishing them - they’ve become part of my daily life.

And so, as a goal-setter, I hate to waste a January. If you’ve been in any of my classes, you’ve heard me preaching the value of New Year’s Resolutions (except that I would rather say “goals” than “resolutions” since resolutions are usually about stopping, while goals are about doing. I think most people would rather do than stop. (Maybe I should consider New Year’s Quests!))

Back to the book - my favorite part of Martin Dugard’s story comes at the end. After several rounds of give-and-take between Terry-the-personal-trainer asking about goals, Martin giving wimpy noncommittal answers, and Terry making fun of him, Dugard finally said, “I want to look better in my author picture.” He hoped this would end the questioning.

Terry asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to do more?”

What a great question for January 2013. Are you sure you don’t want to do more?

Not necessarily more things, or more goals, but taking a few goals deeper into the quest?

Do you have a goal to lose ten pounds? Why not do more, and commit to running your first 5K? Or half-marathon?

Maybe you have a goal to start cycling? Why not turn it into a quest to complete a long-distance group ride?

One goal I want to start is learning to draw. My quest is to be a better writer, and I think drawing will help me to see better.

How about you? What are your goals, or even better, what are your quests, to begin 2013?

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Honoring a simple tradition

Our traditions are like our stories; they illustrate who we are, the kind of people we’ve become, our values and priorities. And behaviors become traditions only one way, through repetition. And that takes intentional action. So Wednesday, in honor of tradition, I ran twelve laps on the track at Memorial Stadium, starting at 12:12 PM. A tiny handful of runners - two others, to be exact, and one run official to certify the activity and hand out water - joined me to celebrate the numerically symmetrical date December 12, 2012, or 12-12-12. Why? I had to do it. I could not let it pass by.

This tradition began more than 24 years ago when I was running early one morning and realized that August 8, 1988 was coming up and we should do something with it. The running club came up with the Crazy Eights 8K, to be run at 8:00 PM, the evening of 8-8-88. One club member welded some crooked figure-eight trophies and another, Frank, made wooden mounts. We gave the trophies to the 8^th place finisher, and 18^th, 28^th, etc.

Being proud of ourselves, we started planning for the 9-9-99 9K. Eleven years later, we ran at 9:00 PM on the cart path of the new nine holes at Hogan Park Municipal Golf Course, and Chuck, the Parks Director, gave old nine irons to the 9^th, 19^th, etc., finishers.

The opening decade of the 21^st-Century provided more frequent opportunities for similar races. My favorite was the four-mile race on 4-4-4 near Stonegate Fellowship church. Much to everyone’s surprise it was cold and rainy that afternoon, and we Texans had already packed away our winter gear. We all froze in the cold rain.

But the reason that race is my favorite was what happened at the finish line. We saw an experienced marathoner, Andy, racing with a young high-schooler, Derek. Andy pushed Derek the entire four miles, and he made the boy hurt in a fast finishing sprint. As soon as Derek crossed the line he threw up in the street. He then collapsed into the gutter, still retching, cold water rushing past him, carrying the mess away. All the guys working the finish line and those who’d already finished were amazed, impressed, and proud that a young man would give that much of himself in a race. We stood around for several minutes bragging about him until some women ran over to give him love and comfort and help him inside. We men were so moved by his example of courage it never occurred to us to help him. That young man is now a U.S. Marine. Go figure.

After that, we ran every year, 5-5-5, 6-6-6, etc. We even duplicated the original Hogan Park 9K at the golf course by running at 9:00 PM on 9-9-9.

So with 12-12-12 approaching I wanted to finish the series in style. Some traditions are more fluid so that you have days or weeks to observe them. We take leeway with birthdays, holding parties on days when it’s most convenient rather than insisting on the exact day. But the 12-12-12 thing wouldn’t work on any other day. The very reason for the tradition is the symmetry of the date, and running on the 13^th or 11^th instead of the 12^th just doesn’t swing. Unfortunately, the 12^th was a Wednesday, and since we had to run at noon or midnight, that was a problem. Neither twelve miles nor twelve kilometers made sense in the middle of the day in the middle of the week.

And not only that, the hustle of the holidays stole our attention, and there was a fire in our church, the race sponsor, and soon, the initiative to put on a race was gone.

Without an official race, I knew I would do something twelvish on my own, but didn’t think anyone would be interested in joining me. Then another of my road-warrior friends, a past president of the running club, Carla, now a letter-carrier in Colorado Springs, Colorado, stirred me into action. I sent out emails and posted on Facebook about running twelve laps at the track at noon on Wednesday, 12-12-12.

I understand that to many people the whole symmetrical date thing sounds more like an obsession than a tradition. I can’t explain why it is important to me, except that it’s fun.

I also understand, or am beginning to understand, or maybe learning, that it was more important for many of my friends to know I observed 12-12-12 than it was for them to actually participate? Why do I know that? I got a lot more feedback from the announcements than participation at the actual event.

That’s OK. I didn’t mind. In a weird sort of way I’ve learned to appreciate the expectations people have of me. It feels tribal.

We often laugh at traditions; especially baby boomers who think we carry the rebellious sixties in our hearts, wondering why we have to do what we’ve always done merely because we’ve always done it. As I’ve gotten older I realize that the fact we’ve always done it is often reason enough to do it again. In a fast-changing world it is even more important to hold on to simple traditions … especially the simplest traditions.

And so, let me be the first to invite you to join me for a two-mile race on Wednesday, February 2, 2022. You have ten years to train, so get started. You’ll have fun. It is a tradition you don’t want to miss.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Simple things

Just as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so go on living in him—in simple faith (Colossians 2:6, Phillips) I asked my friend, Randall, “When do you reach the grandfather stage when you don’t have to do every single thing your granddaughter asks?”

He said, “Well, can you say no to your daughter, yet?”

Good point.

Our Thanksgiving week started Sunday afternoon when Cyndi brought our 2.73-year-old granddaughter, Madden, to our house in Midland, from her home in Mansfield. We had her all to ourselves until her parents, Drew and Katie, drove in Wednesday evening.

Madden is delightful. She talks all the time in (what seems to me to be) highly complex sentences. And she wants me to do everything with her. “Pops, let’s hop across the street together.” “Pops, come sit beside me and read to me.” “Pops, I want some cheese” “Why did you switch cars with Gran, Pops?” “I want to do it myself.” “Pops, can you make a funny face?” “I want to do it myself.” “Let’s go down the big slide together.” “Pops, watch out for the goose poop on the sidewalk.” “I want to do it myself.” “I want you to do it with me.” And, like that. It was great, but exhausting. I haven’t been on two-year-old duty since 1985, and I’ve lost most of my endurance. But simply hanging with Madden simply made me happy.

The thing is, because I wanted to spend as much time as possible with Madden, I didn’t go running or cycling all week. It was a good trade, but I missed moving down the road. I also missed Cyndi’s Wednesday morning Body Pump class, staying home in case Madden woke up.

I finally got to run Thursday morning, in the Midland Turkey Trot 5K.

My daughter, Katie, won the women’s race outright. Of course she did. I didn’t win anything. For one thing, I’m slow, but also because I was in the same age group as Popcorn (Boston qualifier) and Craig (Ironman triathlete). So there was no pretending I had a chance. I did finish ahead of the woman pushing a stroller, so I had that to brag about.

I could have gone to Cyndi’s Body Pump class Friday morning but instead I opted to stand in line outside Sam’s Club with daughter Katie. We tricked my son-in-law, Drew, into going to Cyndi’s class. It was satisfying to see him sore the rest of the day, being the workout beast that he is. It made me feel better about my own soreness from chasing Madden.

To maximize family time, I put all my exercise thoughts toward Sunday afternoon, hoping for a long and fast bike ride. It would be my big comeback, my reentry into routine. My chance to start moving again, as well as burn off holiday snacking.

So when it was finally Sunday afternoon, I got dressed to ride (after some premium time with Cyndi), but when I grabbed my bike from the ceiling hooks, I discovered the back tire was flat.

Not a problem, however. Still excited about finally moving, I quickly changed the tube and raced away down “A” Street.

I was about a mile-and-a-half from home when I realized the shimmy in my back wheel wasn’t from gravel in the road but from another flat. I had to creep back home, keeping my weight forward on my front tire. I changed the tube again.

My second time to leave home, I made it a half-mile before feeling the same unstable shimmy. Bummer, another flat. I was starting to lose my excitement about this Sunday afternoon ride.

When I removed the tube, I saw it was doubled back over itself, overlapping about three inches near the stem. The folding had caused the flat, and it was the second time I’d seen the exact phenomenon that afternoon. The tube must have crossed back on itself while I aired it up. Both flats were my fault; I was in a hurry. I’m not exactly sure what I did wrong, but I suspect I should have put a bit of air into the tube before fitting it between rim and tire.

By then, my brilliant Sunday afternoon had morphed into Sunday evening. It was too dark ride safely, no matter how much I wanted to log some miles. I was quite disappointed. All I needed to top off my excellent week was a simple bike ride, but now the opportunity was gone. I didn’t know what to do with myself except to drive downtown to check my post office box. A weak cure for frustration, I know, but I had to move myself somewhere, even if in my truck.

Later that evening as I told my sad story to Cyndi, I wondered where I had gone wrong with my plan for cycling Sunday afternoon.

But I hadn’t gone wrong (other than poor flat-fixing technique). I had invested my week in the best things of life; the simple things, like chasing my beautiful granddaughter around the house, and standing in line at Sam’s making obscure wisecracks with my daughter. Those simple things bring me the most joy in life.

So I started making plans for Monday. I was certain I could squeeze twelve fast cycling miles into my lunch break. What could be simpler than that?

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn about Berry’s books, “Running With God,” go to ww.runningwithgodonline.com , or “Retreating With God,” go to ww.retreatingwithgod.com ,… Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson or on Facebook … Contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org … To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: www.journalentries.org