“The Guy on the Top Step of the Podium”

“I believe that God created me to run the marathon and run it well and I will not stop until he tells me it is time, and I will not be distracted unless he directs me to something different.”

—Ryan Hall, Olympic Marathoner

Thanks to RunnerMom for directing me to this heartening interview with Ryan Hall on the Running Times website. An evangelical Christian, Hall is remarkably candid about his faith in a very prudent, likable way. He doesn’t seek to tell others how to live, but seeks to live fully and openly the life to which Christ has called him, and let God do the rest. This is, I suspect, the most powerful sort of witness.

In the interview, Hall fields many of the questions you would expect to come from non-believers: If God is with you, why don’t you win all the time? Has God abandoned you on bad runs? He answers them simply but well, with the observation that God’s measures and ours are not the same:

It was easy for me to feel God's presence when it meant him taking me to new levels of physical performance but it took me years to learn to feel God's presence in my running even when I was struggling or just having an ordinary day…. In a world where it is all about the guy on the top step of the podium and we are defined and define ourselves by the time on our watch, at the end of the day I am trying to spread the word that it ultimately isn't all about that.

Hall cites the examples of St. Paul and the Blessed Mother as people whose lives experience great hardship despite their tremendous closeness to God. Living the Faith can coincide with earthly success, but it’s not about earthly success. And suffering is part of the equation. When Christ says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34), He means it.

I really like the quote that opens this blog post, about how God created Hall to run the marathon … for now: “I will not be distracted unless he directs me to something different.” Unless. Hall puts his running at the service of God, and not the other way around.

Long may he run.