Bill competed in another triathlon this weekend. .5 mile swim, 14 mile bike, and a 5K to finish it off. It’s called a “sprint,” and I guess it is: the race takes about an hour and a half, and it’s amazing, when it’s over, to think of all he just did.
The event was in tiny White Lake, NC, a tourist town not far from here whose biggest draw is the crystal-clear lake that was the site of the first leg of Bill’s race. When the swimmers, released in waves from their starting point, are out there with the morning sun shining off the scalloped water, you can’t tell one from another. On Sunday we caught up with Bill after he’d finished this part, and we watched him take off on his bike.
Then, of course, it was a long wait until he passed us for the second lap, and a long wait after that for him to finish the run.
The children and I camped out on the roadside, waiting to cheer him on. He had long since disappeared around the first bend, and still wave after wave of cyclists came past on their first loop or on their second, and then the runners began coming by. And it didn’t take long for me to begin to cheer them on– each of them– as they passed.
“Mom, why are you doing that?” the children asked me. We knew no one else in this race. No one else knew us. Why in the world would we cheer for them– risking embarrassment, I suppose– when our little cheers and applause would make Absolutely No Difference?
But I was remembering my triathlon, the first one I did back in October, that “super sprint” that I didn’t even train for because I was terrified that, if I were to train, I would only psyche myself out and get nervous. No, I didn’t train at all, but just went into it blindly, trying not to think about distances and instead aiming just to Finish, just to get to the end after all those component parts and not fall on my bike and not twist an ankle running and just find out what in the world it would feel like to do such a thing as this.
I enjoyed the triathlon. Very Much. It was amazing, really, to discover what my body was capable of. I surprised myself. And I loved it– pushing myself this way.
And another thing that I hadn’t thought of much until this Sunday, when Bill was out there on the course: how great it was that strangers cheered me on.
They did. Not everyone along the course had words or applause or a ringing cowbell, but some of them did. And even if I was, at that moment, the lone cyclist going past, or even if my run had temporarily become a kind of walk, still Someone, it seemed, was there to cheer me on. And I was surprised– Every Time– to hear that stranger tell me to keep going, and that I was doing well, and that it was all Worth the Effort.
I thought of these things on Sunday morning as I sat in the grass and watched the athletes go by.
In an event such as this one, you know, the athletes are Entirely On Their Own.
I don’t want to make too much of this. The Apostle Paul connects the dots for us, anyway, with all of his talk about finishing the race, pressing on towards the goal. This is a race, isn’t it?, this run, leap, crawl towards Christ? And some days it’s all about endurance, and the keeping going, and the remembering– always remembering even when I can’t see it– that for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Laying down my life, taking up my cross, groping for his scarred hand in the dark.
And we do have fellow athletes, running running running alongside us on this narrow trail.
And we also have– Paul says this, too– that great cloud of witnesses (my grandparents among them), invisible but present, cheering us toward the Goal.
