Fall 25 Running Cycle Kickoff: New Roles

 

Jogging with Friends and Taking on Extra Responsibilities

Today was the first day of another group training cycle with Runner’s World Tulsa.

This is always the longest break between sessions. The spring session ends in April right before the Oklahoma City Memorial marathon. There aren’t any Saturday runs again until mid-July. It's best to put your own plan together for the off season or face hot temps with an out of shape body.

The Price of 'Leadership'

I was asked to be a run lead this year. We get a voucher for new shoes and if you’ve seen the price of running shoes lately, you wouldn’t refuse either. I’ve been a De Facto leader the last few years anyway. I memorize the route every week and show up through any type of weather. The one exception was near the end of the cycle, just last year. Tulsa had a brutal storm come through. I checked out on that one. I’ll run in the rain, but those conditions were nuts. I talked to someone from the group the next week about it. Very few people showed up and the ones that did--cut their distance to just a few miles.

The thinking from Runner’s World is this, we don’t cancel because races don’t cancel. You’ll have to run in difficult conditions so get used to it.

The second marathon in Fort Worth that I ran had a similar storm the night before. It was bad enough for them to push the start time back a few hours. That seemed like the best option. Marathons are fund raisers after all. Without tornadoes and lightning it’s not likely they’ll cancel. About the best you can hope for is a delay. We did eventually start and finish the race. The course was soaking wet and sloppy, but also clear. On sunny days it’s packed full of pedestrians walking the path and getting in the way. A clear, albeit messy, track was a silver lining to a race that a lot people didn’t show up for due to poor weather.

A summer rain on a Saturday morning isn’t the worst thing anyway.

The Price of Being Out of Shape

The summer heat is rough on new joggers especially. Starting early helps, but eventually it slows you down if you aren’t acclimated. I’ve spent the last few months staying in running shape. I’m not in the kind of condition needed to run a marathon yet. I’ll run more during the season and get my mileage above 20 for the week. But I kept at it all summer. Conditioning your legs to hold up in the heat and your lungs to breathe will pay off. I told someone today that I enjoyed the heat. It’s only partially true. I enjoy the results that come from training in the heat. There isn’t a good way to replicate that on a treadmill.

Whether jogging indoors or outside, I’m busier this year than ever before.

 I have a full schedule of clients for my personal training position. For the last couple of months I’ve been doing part time work through a gym. This is in addition to my regular 9-5 at the sporting goods store. I’ve had this idea about working sales and doing personal training on my own at some point. I mean working for myself of course. For now I just need to experience practicing with various groups and putting together work out plans for them. Gyms are good places to find a mix of people of all ages and stations. Some need rudimentary functional exercise and others need a high intensity challenge. Others are retirement age and hoping to increase muscle endurance. It allows me to do a little research and practice techniques and sharpen my methods.

Conclusion

For now at least I don't have time for anything else. In previous years I would've have passed on the chance to be a run lead. But it’s not a lot of responsibility and I’ve been halfway there, responsibility wise. Besides, it feels like I’m in a season of new responsibilities across the board. From the new accounts I’m managing to the new people I’m training. It’s all moving toward larger roles. I won’t make more of it than that. It’s just an interesting development that I’ve noticed. Some people collect responsibilities the way others collect seashells. Organization is practically their love language. Not me. I’ve never been one to take on projects or teams on a voluntary basis. That’s probably more a function of not wanting to be bothered, than about some lack of organization. Maybe that’s finally changing.

I am finding out that I prefer to be busy than have a lot of free time. Weird.

 

 

 

Love Day 25: God Works Through Community

 

We Grow in Community: Love Day 25

Today was “Love Day” for Church on the Movers in Tulsa. 

Love is a Verb

It’s an annual community serve day in July where we offer help to our neighbors. Opportunities exist all over the city to clean up, renovate and remake a lot of our common areas. Not everything is about hard, manual work though. Some require prayer and relational help. Most Love Day serving requires gloves and elbow grease. I signed up for the Food on the Move nonprofit that grows vegetables for the community. They have a lot of indoor and outdoor farmland. It benefits the residents who often, don’t have enough money for basic groceries.

At the start of the day, the director gave the volunteers a short history of the facility. Started by Taylor Hanson, the 90’s pop star from Tulsa, after a Q&A with a former ambassador to South Africa. The diplomat told Taylor to engage the community instead of going through the official channels. Locals needed food. I’m not familiar with how the Apartheid regime handled food, but it sounds like it was withheld because of politics.

Deep Roots

 Whether or not South Africa’s situation on food scarcity is relatable to America, I can’t say. But taking care of those in need is smart policy in any country. Communities thrive when they support each other. Like those vertical planting towers that are so ubiquitous at Food on the Move. Water and nutrients trickle down from the top and feed the seeds all the way down. It's an efficient system when space is limited. 

My task today was to power wash the planting towers. I got a close look at them. 

Eight-foot plastic tubes with holes in them, serve as a plant towers for vertical growing. I included a picture at the top. They're filled with dirt from top to bottom and the seeds are placed in the upward facing extensions. The roots develop inside the tower and the plant grows out the side. The towers get gunked with dirt after a planting cycle and need to be sprayed out. It sounds easy, but the tricky part was trying to pull out the remaining dry roots. They don’t want to leave.

 High pressure water gets most of it, but you need a ramrod to knock out the roots that made a comfortable home inside. It took us a few minutes to finds something like our ramrod, a shovel handle.

Rain Soaked Morning

I had two companions, a father and daughter. We worked outside on a concrete slab and cleaned one after the other, getting sloppy wet and dirty the whole time. At first we thought the volunteer day might not happen. Tulsans woke up to a heavy storm this morning. We've seen too many this year. For whatever reason it’s been a rainy year. The thunderstorm subsided shortly after 7:30 and everything went on as planned. I can’t say that every group went ahead though. 

While filling out the Love Day registration, I noticed a few landscaping options to sign up for. It wasn’t exactly a mowing kind of day. After the first 30 minutes of work, it started raining again. I’m not sure if we were more wet from the power washer or the rain. It didn’t matter in either case, we had a job to do.

Why We Serve

I think we could’ve stayed all day. The farm had more towers that needed to be cleaned. They had a whole trailer full of them. Since it only took 3 of us to share the power washing duties, the other volunteers pulled weeds and harvested some of the vegetables. I would’ve liked to see the operation a little closer. But our washing kept us away from seeing the rest of the place. I’m sure the regulars that worked the farm would’ve been happy to show me around. But after the cleaning and the rain, everyone headed for the parking lot. I didn’t want to be the only one hanging around.

Most of these Love Day’s are characterized by brutal heat. It’s July in Oklahoma after all. If there is a silver lining with rain, it’s that the temperatures stay low (70’s) and the sun hides behind the clouds. It might be humid but it’s manageable. As long as the lightning and monsoon rains don’t overwhelm, it’s possible to do a little outdoor work and not wilt like a daisy.

 These community volunteer efforts make everyone involved feel good about their service. I can’t speak for everyone, but I usually have a pang of guilt over doing this only once a year. It’s not like serve opportunities don’t exist. I think there is even a Saturday serve option available on the small group finder. Without even looking, I can promise it’s the least attended of any of the groups. Not because people are terrible and selfish and uncaring. But because it’s not glamorous. It’s labor intensive and messy. It’s a little too much like real work.

But it’s also appreciated in a way that food deliveries and car service and back to school shopping sprees aren’t.

Conclusion

Some people have a knack for building, repairing and cleaning. Remodeling a person’s home in particular, adds a kind of dignified thrill that isn’t possible any other way. Groceries are great too, but adding a bedroom, a deck or a bathroom is a gift that elevates the occupants. An old home with inefficient windows and paper thin walls can feel luxurious with a decent remodel. Your neighborhood is the same but the place you spend the most time is suddenly new. What could be better?

If it sounds like I’ve been there before, it’s because I have. Members of the church I attended as a kid did a full remodel on our family home. They asked electricians, roofers, plumbers, dry wall workers and general contractors to pitch in on a particular day. It took 2 full days but the result was impressive--a fully remodeled house from basement to attic. I was in the Army at the time, but I saw the full scale of it when I came for a visit. 

God works through communities. I’ll never forget that.   

“Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. 4Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others.” Philippians 2:3-4