What do you want to get out of it?

On a message board, in a thread dedicated to running and weight loss, a member linked to an article, asking what we thought. The article’s focus was primarily on fat loss for women, and the tone of it bugged me in a major way, as it unapologetically made fun of larger women (the author remarked upon his own efforts to keep from openly and derisively laughing at one woman who asked for his fitness advice) and then slapped up a picture of an obese woman’s torso (one hand holding an ice cream cone, of course ) in comparison with a second picture that featured a muscular woman in a skimpy gold bikini (“a fat-free you!” it claimed). Those alone were reasons enough for me to want to discount every last syllable in the article, even if it were proclaiming the roundness of the earth or the blueness of the clear sky.

But the message board poster was particularly referring the one of the last statements in the article, and it was to that that I responded. The quote: “Long, endless jogs will get you nowhere, unless you’re a beginner. A more novel approach is required to get you to the next level.”

My response on the forum, in a nutshell, was that “the next level” is something ultimately dependent upon the individual, and for me, as well as for many other runners out there, the “long, endless jog” is a very valuable tool toward achieving endurance. You simply cannot become a distance runner without hitting the long slow distance (commonly referred to as the “LSD”) runs in your training. Of course, that’s not the only tool in my training kit, as it shouldn’t be; in order to be the best runner one can be, one needs to also consider things like speed work, hill work, and other types of runs. It fits together to create a well-rounded regimen.

But the author of that article wasn’t particularly interested in helping the reader become a great runner. If my focus is on a sculpted abdomen and biceps as big as my neck, then, sure, perhaps there are better uses of my time than a 20-mile jaunt. Before you begin, you need to break out the binoculars and take a look at where the finish line is and what it looks like.

That, of course, applies to far more than just running or fitness. That’s life!

As I said before, Eric and I are doing The Love Dare together in the mornings, and one of the facets of today’s exercise involved asking ourselves whether we knew our partner’s hopes and dreams. Interestingly, neither Eric nor I hesitated to say first that the other’s hopes included “getting out of this house.” Beyond that, we were guessing. He guessed that my hopes included becoming an ultramarathoner; I guessed that his included seeing our family settled and secure. (Boy, doesn’t he sound like the better person? ) After we had a little time to think on it, we were able to amend and clarify our own goals. I want my my boys to be able to look back from the last parts of their lives with satisfaction and peace. Eric wants to see them educated as well as we can help them be, preferably through college. I want to be healthy for decades to come, hopefully to the end. Eric wants to get off insulin.

Once you know the goal, it’s easier to piece together the training plan. Knowing that I want my boys to have peace, I do my best to raise them in the Lord. Knowing that he wants them educated, Eric works hard to make sure they see learning as fun and as a priority. I run and eat well to maintain my health; Eric is taking daily-increasing steps to take control of his own health (and I’m so proud of him!).

Lose sight of the finish line, and things get shaky. There’s no happy way to finish a race without knowing the course. A 5K road race could morph into a 50K cross-country event that way, and that’s no way to go. Right now, even though we both know we want out of this house, we don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like or when…and so we flounder without a plan. We’re not saving the money we should be, getting organized for eventually selling it at any point, or working on a timeline. It’s just a general feeling: “Gee, I don’t like it here.” I don’t even know if this is running a race or sitting in a pie-eating contest. Something has to change before forward momentum can be achieved.

Not sure where I’m going with this; I only know that as I was replying to the message on the forum, I heard a little voice in the back of my head, telling me that the running advice I was dispensing to her (“Don’t discount the long run,” etc.) might be advice I sort of ought to be taking myself. Isn’t it funny how clarity hits you like that?