on being a daily runner and Christian

I find that I feel a lot more like a runner when I try to run every day.

For years, I’ve subscribed to the idea that you take a day off between your runs. But recently, while coming off the flu and an enforced hiatus from my roadwork, I read a book by Haruki Murakami (http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Talk-About-When-Running/dp/1846552206). In that book, he talks about running daily and it struck a chord with me.

So I thought I’d try it. I started slow and short (about 11 minutes a mile and about 3 miles per run per day). After about four of these, I found I wasn’t overly fatigued. My times were improving. Plus I found that my legs and hips were tightening up in a good way. Like I was tightening the strings on an old baseball glove or tuning up an old banjo. Even my lower back and abs were ‘tautening up.’

For now, the daily runs are my approach. They’ve been a pleasant surprise. Before this, I’d scheduled one and two day breaks into my running schedule because my bones and joints are older now (I just turned 50). But I didn’t see the weight loss I’d sought and my body hadn’t tautened up – and I didn’t really feel like a runner. But going daily changes that.

I think there’s a parallel in this with trying to be a “Christian.” I think it's what Josh Christiansen (Associate Pastor at Orlando Community Church http://www.orlandocommunitychurch.org/index.htm) hit on when he coined the term, "daily Christian."

If you’re going to see the strings of your spiritual life "tautened," being a Christian, it has to be more than a Sunday morning thing. Like the difference between reading my Bible and praying daily versus sporadically. And I know that there are other places where being a daily Christian would show too.

Like running daily, it becomes part of what I am. It seeps into my thoughts and my conversation. And like the changes to my waistline and musculature, I find my life slowly tightening up in a good way.