Well-marked Trail

The instructions for last Saturday's trail run were simple--"keep the orange markers on your left.  If the orange marker is on your right, you are going the wrong way."  That is really all we had to remember.  It was clear and the only way to have trouble was to forget which side is the left.  Of course, that we the easy part.  The rest of the run involved keeping going over 15.5 miles of hilly terrain.  The course elevation map looked like an EKG.  Nevertheless, at the end both Abby and I determined to be back next year for another go at this one.

As followers of this blog would know, I love to run.  I am not very good at it.  I am not very fast (or at all fast).  I don't look like an ad for a running magazine.  In fact, I may look more like an ad for someone who needs to get out and run.  But I just love to run.  I also love the outdoors.  Hiking, backpacking, just being outside in the woods.  But Saturday was really the first time to put these two passions together.  And it was wonderful.  (Plus, this morning the hills I ran around home felt like nothing.)

The disorienting thing about Saturday's run was not really knowing how much of the race remained.  I have run a lot of routes around town, so I know exactly how long those runs are.  I also have a pretty good idea of how fast I run on the roads, so can gauge how far I have gone pretty accurately.  But for most of Saturday I didn't really know how much of the race was left.  Ordinarily that would not be a problem, but I needed to make sure that I had enough gas left in the tank to make it to the end.  Next year I will know.  This year I did not.  I had seen a map of the course and could see where the run would go, but seeing a line on a flat piece of paper bore little resemblance to the reality of Afton State Park.

The point is that my main job on Saturday was to keep following the marked path.  It was not my responsibility to determine where the orange markers went--but just to follow them.  My task was not to consider whether I might have set out a different race course, but to follow the course that the race director had marked out for us.  This was a trail run, not an orienteering event.  In fact, I would have been disqualified if I had set off on a course of my own choosing.

One thing that I believe is that I have been made by a Creator who has marked out a course.  Sometimes the markers are close together and sometimes they are farther apart.  But someone else has marked out the course.  My task in this life is not to chart my own course or to determine what is the "best" way to get from point A to point B.  My life will primarily be assessed on how well I followed the marked path, and secondarily on the effort and determination that I bring to that following.

The writer of Hebrews said it this way: 

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Pressing On!
-Ken