Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Sport and Faith

A couple of years ago, I was at Anytime Fitness, preparing for a run in the Indianapolis Mini-marathon. They have a stepper there, and I was stepping away. One of the workers told me she had entered a race in Indianapolis that year, not going horizontal, but going vertical, up one of the high rise buildings in downtown Indy. I was quite amazed. She said she loved it. At that point, it was the “in” thing with some. I had not really heard of it.
My age checks me from doing something silly with my body. However, my mind still can easily excite when it comes to such matters. I have been exercising since I was around 18, and I have not stopped. I do not intend to stop until I have to do so. It has become I enjoy so much.
Yet, I found a mini-marathon too much this year. I hope I can do it one more time. I have never had running a marathon on my bucket list. 13.1 miles is plenty for me. I have also come to realize the hazards of running. You have likely heard them as well. The beating the body takes is one. If you run a marathon, it can become monotonous.
One article[1] a few years ago said that some marathon runners were shifting to running up the stairs of tall buildings. One reason is the importance of cross training. You strengthen a different set of muscles as you train for different sports. You can actually make yourself better in one sport by training in another.
Welcome to the sport of professional stair climbing.
Kristin Frey (b. 1984) is a 32-year-old environmental scientist who turned to stair climbing (also known as tower running) after qualifying for the Boston Marathon 10 times and running a bunch of others. She turned to vertical racing after a friend encouraged her to try it, and she became hooked on running up the stairs instead of pounding the pavement. Kristin is now the best female U.S. athlete in the sport and ran a groundbreaking 24-hour endurance event in Jacksonville where she and three fellow climbers repeatedly scrambled up the Bank of America Tower's 42 floors. By the time they were finished, they had logged 123,480 steps and 5,880 floors -- the equivalent of scaling Mount Everest two and a half times. She has run up most of the tall buildings in the United States, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Empire State Building.
Most of us would consider running up 5,880 floors to be, well, insane. After all, that is what elevators are for, right? Indeed, Kristin says that the recovery time for running all those stairs, mostly two at a time, is longer than that of a marathon.
 
"Sometimes I'll feel sick for two or three days afterwards. A few times, I've tasted blood near the top of a race, and I've seen spots in some races when I was just five floors from the top. Once I pass the timing mat, I usually fall and will crawl out of other people's way, trying to catch my breath. I've stumbled when my legs are Jello-y but have never fallen. And I've gotten blisters on my hands from grabbing the rails, so I bought football gloves that protect the skin."
 
            And you thought that walking those three floors up to your office was tough.
Point is, running vertical can be tough, but it is also a great way for all of us to achieve good health, a sense of satisfaction and a stronger desire to keep moving. It can help us keep going in the race of life.
The American Lung Association has more than doubled its number of stair-climbing races in the past five years, from 25 to 57 (many American stair climbs benefit some sort of lung or respiratory disease).
The ALA wants to promote stair climbing not just for these athletes but for the rest of us as well. The health benefits from doing some vertical walking are many:
- It requires less time to achieve the same workout intensity. For example, if you run 30 minutes a day, you could achieve the same benefit from running stairs for 15 minutes.
- It's a total body workout, involving the legs (obviously) and the arms since grabbing the handrails is encouraged.
- It requires no special equipment. Anyone can walk, jog or run stairs anywhere from your office building to the library to your church. Even a few steps a day can make a difference. You do not need to be tasting your own blood!
           Paul refers to the analogy between sports and faith, especially in II Timothy 4 and I Corinthians 9. To be in sports is to suffer and struggle in order to attain a goal. It requires training, dedication, and commitment. It requires giving your life and time to it. Pondering what it takes to be good in a sport can teach us about living our faith, if we let it.


[1] Goldman, Leslie. "Kristin Frey on fast climb to the top."

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