july 15/14 MILES

74 degrees
77% Humidity
mississippi river road path, south/minnehaha falls/minnehaha parkway/lake nokomis/minnehaha creek path/lake harriet/return

14 miles! The longest that I’ve ever run! It didn’t feel too bad. I ran the 7 miles to Lake Harriet without stopping then stopped a few times on the way back to walk and fill up my water bottle. Even though it was hard, I felt good and was enjoying it. It helped that for the first 50 minutes I listened to an On Being podcast about running as spiritual practice. 10 runners talked about their experience with prayer, faith and running. Since I’m interested in the idea of running and breathing and paying attention as forms of prayer, I found this podcast to be fascinating. One of the runners, Sarah Khasawinah, had this to say about running:

In the Qur’an, multiple times, God puts thankfulness up there after believing in God, and being thankful is constantly one of the most important things. And when I’m running, I feel like I’m actively expressing that gratitude — first of all, by being able to use my limbs and the faculties that God gave me to run. And also, I’m outside, and when my strides are comfortable, and I feel like nobody’s looking, sometimes I’ll sort of spread my arms out and just think, “Thank you, God. This is beautiful.”

While the something greater that orients me and motivates my gratitude is not God with a capital G, and is not connected to an organized religion, I really appreciated what she said. I like to express gratitude when I’m running and I have wanted to spread my arms out and embrace the world! I haven’t done it, but I’ve thought about it.