In the new year of 2021, I began training for a marathon. Although I had been running for about 15 years, I had never even once considered making a marathon a goal. I had actively ruled out ever doing so. Whenever I came to the finish line of a half-marathon, I knew without a doubt that I would never ever be able, or want, to run another 21.1km on top of what I had already run to complete a half. That was a feat too extraordinary to even contemplate.
But 2021 dawned with all of us still in lockdown, the second wave of covid wreaking havoc on all of our lives. There were third and fourth waves on the horizon too, although now we just call them “the next wave.” The first half of 2021 was mostly spent under stay-at-home orders in the province of Ontario.
We were allowed to go out for exercise though. Running has, throughout my time in church leadership, been a mainstay of my spiritual well-being, not to mention my physical and emotional well-being too. It’s where I feed my inner introvert; it’s how I step back from situations in order to reflect rather than just react; it’s my stockpile of endorphins that provide a mood passport for when I need to be a person of strength and calm in the emotionally-fraught situations of others.
To say that 2020 was a rough year for me sounds ridiculous. Few of us got out of 2020 without being shaken and bruised in some way. I began this new year looking for ways to lick my wounds and embrace again my calling to ordained ministry.
So I made a plan to run.
Although I run alone, and although I love running alone, I don’t really ever run by myself. Julie, Janice, Janine and Jeff are my go-to running friends who helped me with training, stretching, and nutrition plans for the months ahead. (Apparently your name needs to start with a J in order to be my running buddy!). They checked in with me throughout to encourage and motivate and advise. My non-running friends did too. My marathon goal became a goal that my circle of friends and family invested in too.
I signed up for the virtual Saskatchewan marathon. In 2020 and 2021, most races that were held were virtual ones. This means that you run your race where you are, you use a running watch or running app to track your time and distance, and you post your own results afterwards. Although I live a multiple-day drive from Saskatchewan, I could nonetheless be part of this racing event from my own Niagara community. At the end of May, my race bib, t-shirt and finisher’s medal arrived in the mail. I set June 19th as race day.
The training was intense, which seems like an obvious statement. About two-thirds of the way through, when all I seemed to be doing was running and recovering from running, it felt impossibly hard. On Jeff’s advice, I planned out five 30+km runs over the course of training in order to prepare for the final distance of 42.2km. On my 34km distance run, my mind went to some dark and fretful places. I clocked the 17km mark, and realizing I was only halfway through, nearly gave up. When I finally stumbled home at the end, I agonized about how I could possibly add on another 8km beyond that to attain the required distance on race day.
It was around this time that a number of people started reaching out to me to ask if they could help on the day of the marathon. Julie and Janine and Britt offered to run part of the way with me. Tom and his daughter, my goddaughter Ivy, wanted to have some music playing at the finish line. John and Ann and Beth realized that I would need water stations along the way, and Ann took it upon herself to organize and staff these for me. Paul and Sue committed to being at every water station from 5:30am onward, and in between water stations, to circle by my route in order to cheer me on along the way and photograph this momentous event.
June 19th was a hot, humid day. All week, the forecast had promised rain, and instead, the sun came out after an overnight thunderstorm, creating circumstances that felt a lot like a steam bath. I had planned my sports drink and my fueling needs very carefully based on my training, but my plan fell short of the actual needs of the day. When I got to the last water station, with seven kilometers left to go, I realized that I didn’t have enough fluid to address my wild, sweaty thirst.
Paul grabbed an extra water bottle from his car and gave me that to top myself off.
Brian had come to the last station on his bike, feeling that it might be a good idea if he cycled behind me for the last leg. When he had suggested it the day before, it had sounded unnecessary to me, but Brian’s ideas are usually good ones, so I said “yes.” Again I ran out of water on that last stretch, and this time it was Brian to save the day, refilling my water bottle from his own. He also passed over to me a few energy chews, which gave me the added boost I needed to keep going and to knock out the last few kilometers. When I was rounding the corner into my neighborhood and the promised finish line, Brian cycled ahead to tell everyone I was on my way. About twenty masked friends and family cheered me across a ribbon finish line held by my Mom and the kids. Ivy had “The Girl is On Fire” pumping over a little karaoke machine. John placed a laurel wreath on my head. And Gordon went to fetch me a big icy-cold glass of restorative chocolate milk.
I know how privileged I am to have people like that show up for me. I know the blessing of being able-bodied and training for a marathon as a way of attending to my emotional and spiritual health. These are specific and incredible blessings.
And also, that marathon finish line is exactly an image of what human community can be and should be—this is who we really are and why we need to figure out how to show up for one another.
We are people who don’t run alone, who actually can’t run alone.
We are people who can fill in the gaps for one another, who must fill in the gaps for one another.
We are people who are charged with figuring out a makeshift finish line and homemade water stations when all of the rest of the world has been over-turned.
We are people whose small bits of belief, insight, dedication, and training don’t add up to a whole lot on our own, but together we can get somewhere.
It is in that togetherness that we can see a truth and a power that is greater than us, greater than the sum of our parts, that embodies life and death and new life and hope and healing and the beauty of the finish line and all of the water stations along the way.
Covid has certainly taught us that we are infected with each other, that there is no way of caring for our own selves individually without attending to the collective and how we actually set up and structure our communities toward the wellness and health of all of us. This is the truth. We are in this together, like it or not.
There is an even deeper truth though, which is that we can embrace one another. We might be stuck with one another, but we can also choose to be together. This embrace can look a lot like cobbling together some water stations along the marathon of life. This embrace looks like an admission: we can’t do this alone and there is a truth and power that is far bigger than the sum of our parts. “No matter what happens,” the late author Brian Doyle famously wrote, “This happened.”
No matter what happens, there is this circle of people who made a point of showing up for me.
I wouldn’t have crossed the finish line without them.
Martha Tatarnic currently leads a thriving urban church in St. Catharines--the Niagara region of Ontario. Her book The Living Diet: A Christian Journey to Joyful Eating explores the relationships between food, body image, community and spirituality.
