Adopt nature’s pace. Her secret is patience. – Emerson

by: Pete Tanguay, Conway Running Club

Running is more than a sport, it is a way of life.  More than a destination, it is a bridge to new life.  Running in our society is as much about relationships as it is about fitness.  I heard someone say once that when we are not running we talk about running and when we are running we talk about everything else.

When we run, we eventually come face to face with simple truths that penetrate us at deeper levels.  We learn to breathe and relax so we can run longer, we realize that speed and endurance are centered in our core strength rather than the size of our leg muscles and we experience how worry and anxiety rob us of valuable energy.  The race is won at the finish line, we can dig deep to find strength in our weakness and that patience is nature’s secret are just a few of the real life lessons we come to know when we run.

People are running for reasons well beyond the health, fitness and personal accomplishment they receive.  Consider the story of Lesley Oslica, who with some of her best friends, traveled to Oklahoma City last weekend to run the 10th Oklahoma City marathon.  A lot was happening in this race and I’m going to see if I can capture some of it for you through Lesley’s experience within the broader context of the race.

For the last 10 years, runners have come from all over to run and remember.  If you run the race, you will never forget the 168 seconds of silence in memory of the 168 victims at the beginning of the race.  Music, energy and nervous activity are instantly replaced with the sound of the wind blowing through the tall downtown buildings and the songs of birds in the air.  168 seconds is a long time, long enough to deeply remember why you are there.  And after you’ve asked your body to give you all it has to complete 26.2 miles you walk through the 168 chairs that signify the people who lost their lives and see the medals from other runners hung on the chairs in their memory.  It’s at this point that you are ready to learn a deep lesson about the value of life and realize at a deeper level how blessed and lucky you are.

Lesley and Connie’s running began as a way to raise awareness for Neurofibromatosis (NF) and hopefully to fund the discovery of a cure for everyone who is living with NF.  Their NF Hero is their daughter Katie.

They have attended many endurance events this year and this was Lesley’s fourth marathon of 2010.  Of all she gives to the Children’s Tumor Foundation, the people who are touched by NF and to those she runs with, she would be the first to tell you that at the end of the day she feels like she receives more than she gives.  She was the leader of and in many ways the inspiration for the NF team who ran the 2010 Little Rock Marathon and raised over $10,000 to fund research at Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

While there are many reasons that we run, those of us who race fully understand the joy of a personal record (PR) for a given distance.  The PR can feel like the pinnacle of our accomplishment and the source of our despair.  Yes, we are running for more than a PR, but deep down most of us have a number in our head that we want to see on the clock when we finish.  Lesley has had a dream to break 5 hours in a marathon someday and has come within minutes a couple of times this year.  She had decided before the race that she’d completely focus on experiencing the race and give up the goal of getting under 5 hours.  “I went out not even thinking about time. I had decided it was just going to be a fun day because the wind was so strong (15-25 mile gusts), and I just didn’t want to fight it all day thinking about my time. So – I never looked at my time – and made an agreement with myself not to look at it until mile 25. If I was close at that point (25 mi), I would give it all I had.”

It was at this point that so many life truths that we learn through running collided and Lesley not only got a PR but she put 15 minutes between her finish time and her five hour goal.  The goal that had eluded her time and time again.  The expressions in the pictures below tell the story of accomplishment, patience, friendship and joy on many levels.  People often ask why we run.  We run for our health, for our friends, for people we don’t know who were killed in a horrific bombing incident, to raise money to find a cure for NF and to learn many of the deeper things in life first hand.  Oh yes, and also to get a PR.  Way to go Lesley, you did it!!!!!!

Pete Tanguay is also a NF Endurance member. He participated in the 2010 Little Rock Marathon, raising more than $4,000 for NF research. He currently resides in Conway, AR and is the  founder and president of Rock Pond Solutions.