Marathons and the Essential Knee-Brace

It must be confessed, I am not athletic. I've admitted such before, and I need to do it again, to underscore what I'm about to write. I often have "runner's envy;" that is, I watch joggers run along the roadway or a track with fluid grace and stellar form, their heels kicking up to exactly the correct height for "running," and their arms pumping alternately in perfect right angles. Usually, they're covered in athletic gear: sporty-looking reflective clothing so no one mows them over in a vehicle, sweat-wicking paraphernalia on their foreheads or their wrists, shoes that just ooze "aerodynamic" when you look at them.

Rarely is there a knee-brace to be seen.

My parents and I head over to our local school's track about once every other day to complete -- as I call it in all honesty -- a "trot." That is, I trot (my parents walk). And when it comes down to the speed difference between the two movement styles... it doesn't vary widely. To use a quote from one of my favorite old Disney movies (Blackbeard's Ghost), "I'm as slow as molasses in January."

Anyway, when my parents and I began this discipline several months ago, my goal was to become re-comfortable with jogging the distance of a 5K (3.5 miles), so that I could possibly sign up for our local Dayton Muddler this fall, an annual race/obstacle course 3.5 miles in length and guaranteed to make its participants come out of it covered from head to toe in water and mud. 

My first experience in a Muddler race
 (pre-knee-brace)

My husband and I have participated in this Muddler a few times before. But there's a difference from the first time I competed in it to the latest time -- this last time, I wore a knee brace. Age and deterioration were having its impact on my knees, and in order to complete that race and win my cheesy prize lanyard, I needed stabilization for one of them.

When I picked up "trotting" again this year, I'd forgotten that I was no longer 20 the first time I went to the track. I spent the next two or three weeks managing the pain that resulted from running without a brace: resting, icing and elevating my knee, limping, and generally wishing I had a memory slightly superior to that of a goldfish (Tamara, you are 41. 41. Hey, Tamara, remember, you're forty-ONE!).

My knee eventually healed, and I tried again, this time, securely fastening my knee-brace before beginning my trot around the track. Voila, no pain! My lungs still didn't like me during the battle, and my whole body groaned its way through the two mile workout... but my knee beneath its brace may have been the only part of me that said: Hey, no worries, my buddy Brace and I have got this.

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul uses a metaphor he repeats in Philippians 3:12-14 and in 2 Timothy 4:7-9, and which another unknown writer mentions in Hebrews 12:1: Running a race with excellence. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27: "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets a prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize."

The Olympic games are coming up, and I like watching the track events. I look at Usain Bolt and others like him who make it all look so easy (although I know they train and train and train and train). Still, I wonder if "real" runners struggle as much as "non-real" runners (like me) to overcome the mental obstacles to running before they ever get on the track.

Here's an example of what happens every single time I head back to my bedroom to grab my running shoes, fighting my inner thoughts the whole way:

I don't feel like it. Point of fact, Tamara, you will never feel like it. I've got too much homework, no time to run. It's 45 minutes you'll probably spend on social media anyway. My lungs are going to throw a fit. So much the better; they'll be more able to handle it next time for the exercise. My knee might hurt. Your knee has a knee-brace. I look funny when I run; what if someone sees me? Maybe it'll encourage them to try to run, too; it's pretty hard to look funnier than you do.

This discipline, for discipline it is, is something I do not do because I love it (I hate it), but because I know the long-term benefits far outweigh the "feeling" of the moment. Knee pain, heaving lungs -- I once wrote a post years ago on my resemblance to a T-Rex at the track amid the fit runners who sprinted by me: Here comes Tamara, clear the track! Thud THUD, thud THUD, thud THUD!

A couple of years ago, when knee pain became so intense that it made it impossible for me to continue this discipline without help, I purchased my knee-brace. In many respects, I was discouraged. A knee-brace is a sign of weakness. A knee-brace means I need help. A knee-brace means I am faulty, flawed, and imperfect.

The essential knee-brace, halfway up

Here's what happened the last time I ran the Dayton Muddler. Our group reached the final obstacle: a tower of hay fifteen feet (or higher) tall. It was layered in hay bale "steps" you could climb up and over, but each step was chest height, and it took considerable strength and a good deal of assistance from others to conquer that thing. 

Not far away from the final obstacle was the emcee of the event. This man held a microphone and his voice projected out through speakers across the crowd that milled near the starting area as he began races and ended them. Between times, he razzed and teased many of the mud-splattered competitors jogging through to finish the race. 

As I came to the tower of hay and began to climb, I heard the man with the mic call across the field for all to hear: "Look at that girl; she's got a knee-brace! All the rest of y'all think you're hard core, but I don't see any of you running this thing with a knee-brace!"

I was, naturally, embarrassed and self-conscious, so I got over the stack as fast as I could to hide behind it, but the man's point stuck with me. As much as I had been looking at that brace as a detractor, as a crutch in my journey...

That brace became essential to me completing the race. It held me up in my area of weakness and allowed me to cross the finish line to win my chintzy lanyard. 

Now the spiritual application (which y'all had to know I'd bring into it): We get so caught up in running our race by ourselves, under our own power, eyes on the prize, beating our body to make it our slave, as Paul says. We train and discipline ourselves (our quiet times with the Lord, our "good works" we do to serve others, our accountability measures, and our ministries). Our goal is ever the finish line, and our prize is going to be far more than a cheap lanyard. 

But... injuries happen. We grow tired, we get old, we slack off and become unfit, we've traveled this track for so long that we feel like we've been running in circles without any finish line left to find. Our joints ache, our muscles spasm, our lungs shoot alarm signals to the brain: No air! No air! No air! We're going to diiiiieeeeeee.

That's when the angels come. Not just the fiery warriors of heaven seen in 2 Kings 6:17 and other places, but the angels who take the form of praying friends, encouraging sympathizers, people who listen without interrupting, pastors who preach the exact words you needed to hear... friends. They are our knee-braces. We can't finish the race without them.

More importantly, where friends fail -- as inevitably at some point in time, they will, because they're human -- Christ is our ultimate "knee-brace." Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9-11, "But He said to me: 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 

My knee-brace is hiding behind my prize lanyard.

My lesson for today, for me and for you, too: Go on, climb that hay tower with confidence, and praise the Lord that we have a knee-brace that allows us the ability to complete the race. It would be so easy to unstrap the thing, turn off the course, and head for the car, but because of that brace, we can finish the race and win our prize.

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day -- and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing" (2 Timothy 4:7-8).