Reversal

In my own experience, and that of many friends, March was a long month. The swelling minutes of dusky evening glow often meant little more than some more daylight by which to work before turning on the lamp beside my desk. Freedom from classes during a week of spring break– which featured nothing but winter weather– meant long, interrupted stretches of time that I eagerly exploited to achieve serious progress on researching and writing a 20-page term paper. Once again, the stretch of my Boston Marathon training schedule with the highest mileage– including a grueling 22-miler on a chilly Saturday with some patches of black ice to dodge– fell squarely in the middle of March, and as most of the country knows all too well, a winter that just wouldn't quit. A friend in Michigan told me that March had its metaphorical lamblike departure there today; here in Boston, it managed to rain, snow, sleet, and even hail within a two-hour period. Having seen occasional glimpses of, and halting progress towards, the long-awaited spring on the horizon, it seemed we were instead sliding back down a slippery slope into late January.

On the other hand, this morning I experienced a reversal that, in contrast to the dread and anxiety with which I'd been anticipating it, turned out to be insightful and refreshing. One of my weekday running routes typically carries me westbound through the Newton Hills, then north through a residential neighborhood, and finally back east to my house along a route that features one sharp climb and two long, gently sloping downhills. On good mornings, with gravity as my aid and the fiery predawn glow beckoning on the horizon, I can roll down those hills with delusional thrill. But today, with Patriots' Day three weeks away, I finally worked up the courage to run this route the other way around, thus facing the Newton Hills in the same arrangement that I'll face on race day. I'll admit that I was also nervous about what those long drag-racing downhills would feel like in the other direction. Would it be like a slow trip up the chairlift instead of a quick run down a pristine slope?

I found some surprises in seeing this course from the other direction. For one thing, the 50-minute difference in daylight highlighted differences in streetlight coverage that I'd somehow overlooked during the long months of total darkness. Even with few cars on the roads, I felt slightly more nervous about hugging the curbs for left turns instead of right turns; even in a town with so many runners, most motorists seem genuinely surprised– or not sufficiently caffeinated– when they come across someone like me staking a claim to the shoulder and putting in some early miles before a day of work. And Heartbreak Hill proved even more mystical with a rosy hue at the top that silently heralded a glorious new day.

In this time of Lent, there's an encouragement to turn back to God. I've certainly found the past few weeks to be a welcome– and often uncomfortably prodding– motivation to discern the ways in which my prayer, habits, and relationships might have gone astray. Some of those wanderings have led rather narrowly to dead ends; the logical solution is thus to reverse course and return to the place where I abandoned the proper route for my ongoing spiritual journey. What if I reversed my prayer schedule and made sure that I did this first thing after breakfast... or even my post-run stretching? What if I rearranged my evening work schedule so that after-dinner leisure became a meaningful session of reflection and journaling at the end of the night, and I instead got to work right away instead of closing the books mere minutes before closing my eyes? In what other ways would a turnaround– however daunting and contrary to routine it may seem– be just the thing that this stretch of my lifelong training plan needs?

I can't say that I know any of these answers... only that I'm grateful to have discovered some new angles from which to seek them. And even if I wind up retracing steps I've previously taken, I'll surely see some of the surrounding terrain as if for the first time.