This morning, a Monday, I did what I almost always do on a Monday morning, and went for a long run (anything over 15km counts as a long run for me). Sometimes it’s with my friend Erik, other times it’s just me and an audiobook. The long run is a staple of any runner’s week. Most runners tend to do that on Sunday mornings seeing as they are as irreligious as everyone else and therefore not thinking about attending church. Monday is my day off and a long run is a perfect way to both recover from the weekend’s activities and to set up the week ahead.

The goal is not to run hard but to run long, taking it easy. You should be able to converse with a friend the whole way around. If I’m on my own it’s time to pray and make some serious headway through whatever book I’m listening to. A couple of hours pass and I’ve made a serious dent in the book.

If I’m with Erik, it’s an easy catch up, a way of sharing in the experience of being out in nature and keeping a couple of middle-aged dads healthier than our desk bound jobs might otherwise make us.

I also read about running and up until recently books about running fell into two broad categories. The first sort are the coaching books about how to run better, faster, further and preferably all three if you follow this particular book’s formula. The second type of running book are running exploits. The memoirs of fast runners, ultra-runners, Kenyan runners, ultra-fast Kenyan runners or some other combination. These Born to Run tales of inspiration give the ordinary runner (like me) a sneak peek into the world of elite running that I will almost certainly (although one can still dream) never otherwise touch.

But now there is an interesting third category, the philosophical reflection about the act of running. For me, What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami was the first and probably most well known of this kind of running book. Increasingly I’m seeing more and more reflections that see running as a kind of spiritual discipline. So for example Mary Grace Mangano writing for Plough says,

In so many ways, running is like prayer. At least, it’s one of the ways I pray – cor ad cor. The long run is a holy hour (or two, or three). I have to show up for it on days when I’m tired, when it’s cold and raining, or when I don’t feel like it. It trains me, and shapes my heart. In fact, my heart has literally slowed down since I started running marathons. Oftentimes, people will exclaim to me, “I don’t know how you do it, running all those races!” I don’t know how I don’t do it. I need to. I need prayer. I need community. I need solitude. I need to run.

The Chapel of the Road

On the other hand some, like Sabrina Little, see it as something that can make us better people:

Too often we have a precise plan to develop our athletic abilities, and then we throw up our hands when it comes to moral character and hope for the best. 

Developing a good character will not happen by accident. If you want to become more excellent in a given respect — more patient, more kind, more perseverant — you need to practice these traits until they define you in a stable way. 

You can be a more excellent person, and it’s on your initiative to become so. I hope that is the big takeaway.

‘The Examined Run’

Of course comparing life to running is not a new idea, the apostle Paul wanted to finish his race and saw discipleship as akin to training in some ways. But it intrigues me that the more goal and technique centred approach to running that predominated perhaps over the last generation is perhaps giving way to a more meaning centred approach to running. People seeing running as a way and means to find meaning. For some running is the way, the truth and the life but it will inevitably only get you so far no matter how much you examine it. It will certainly help you cultivate virtue but it cannot atone, forgive, redeem and that may be a need that humanity will never be able to run away from.