I was out walking one morning last September when I remembered the milestones soon to arrive in my life. I repeated to myself “10-20-40” so I would remember them when I got home. I wanted to celebrate them all, hoping they were lead-ins to more and greater. Here’s what happened.
Ten: 2025 is my 10th year anniversary using after-market knees. I celebrated with an 8-day backpacking trip on a section of the Appalachian Trail.
Twenty: 2024 was our 20th year of Iron Men, and we celebrated as a group with a raucous dinner party.
Forty: I calculated I would cross the 40,000th mile of running and walking (since I first started in June 1978) in the summer of 2025. I didn’t know how to celebrate this milestone. Should I enter a big race – like a marathon? Or ask people to join me as we walk the last mile together?
Well, last Friday afternoon, August 8th, I walked in 98* heat and pushed my lifetime cumulative to 40,000.76. I ended up walking it by myself, which was fitting since 95% of my miles have been alone. Afterwards, I had a vanilla milkshake to celebrate.
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Leonard Sweet wrote about stories and how they form the “deep structure” of our life. Another writer, Penelope Lively, used the word “ballast” to describe those stories.
Running is one of my deep-structure, ballast stories, one that I told in my first book,Running With God:
In May 1978, after I completed my first senior year at the University of Oklahoma, I came home to Hobbs, New Mexico to work as a summer engineer for Getty Oil Company. Within my first week home, I realized my plans were in trouble: the girl I’d dated the previous summer, who attended New Mexico Junior College in Hobbs, and whom I’d hoped to date again, had been seeing a track-and-field jock during the school year. He was a javelin thrower, of all things. How could I compete against a guy like that? I needed something besides good grades, a slide rule, or a trombone, to win her back.
So I did something uncharacteristic for me – something that shaped the rest of my life. I decided to go for a run. If I had to compete with a jock for the affection of this girl, I knew I had to do something physical. Running was the easiest thing I could think of.
I was never an athlete as a young boy. I simply wasn’t interested, and I had no skills. I didn’t play baseball, or football, or run track, and I didn’t learn to swim until I was a junior in college. So my first day on the roads was also the first voluntary run of my life.
I ran almost every day that summer in Stan Smith Addidas tennis shoes (a big mistake) and Levi cutoffs (an even bigger mistake). Eventually, after beating my knees and chafing my legs, I realized how important it was to buy real running shoes and better shorts.
I continued running when I went back to school in September and even went to the mall to buy a pair of shoes. I was so nervous about which shoes to buy that I made five trips to the athletic store before finally settling on a pair of Brooks Vantages. I was a student with very little money, and the $35 I spent on shoes specifically designed for one thing was a difficult commitment. But I stuck to it; I ran four or five times a week that entire school year.
Back in 1978 I never imagined that running would become instrumental in how I lived my life, how I planned my time, where I traveled for fun and leisure, how I met my friends, and how I ended up serving in local government. All I wanted to do on that fateful day in late May 1978, when I put on my shoes and stumbled through three miles, was to win the heart of a girl.
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Nowadays, I’m no longer running thanks to two replacement knees and one rebuilt foot, but I’m walking three miles about 4-5 times per week. And, yes, I include those walks in my running log. I don’t differentiate between running miles and walking miles since I do them both for the same reasons and the same purpose.
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But still, why the big deal about 40,000? It’s just round (albeit large) number.
I believe we should find reasons to celebrate our victories whether the celebration is an eight-day hike, a dinner party, or a vanilla milkshake. The world we live in is scary enough, and the Enemy actively distracts us from the things we should be thankful for, so we must make it a point to celebrate. Not as an ego boost, but in gratitude for the gifts God has given.
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PS: Three things I should mention:
(1) This 40,000-mile achievement says more about my ability to keep records for 47 years than my skill as a runner. It’s more engineering than athletics. All those miles works out to only 2.3 per day, nothing outstanding in the runner’s world.
(2) I already know the next set of milestones: 15-17-70.
(3) And that girl I was trying to win back? Her name is Cyndi, and we’ve been married now for 46 years. That’s definitely worth celebrating.
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“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32
Tell Her About It
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