DOWN HOME: How to run a half marathon

Shame is a powerful motivator.

That’s how I came to be shivering in the middle of Houston Street in downtown Fort Worth early on a frigid Saturday morning.

My buddy Peter got me into this, and he knew exactly what he was doing.

For ages, Peter tried to get me to run a half marathon with him. A marathon is 26.2 miles, so a half marathon—as anybody who went to MIT or who owns a calculator knows—is 13.1 miles.

Running has been one of the joys of my life. (OK, to be accurate, I probably should say jogging is one of the joys of my life. But let’s not debate petty nuances.) In seventh grade, I made the track team and discovered running is something even a little kid with unremarkable coordination can do reasonably well. As I got older, I realized running relieves stress, keeps my blood pressure down and makes me feel like a kid again.

For me, running always meant moving at an accelerated pace for four miles. Or maybe even six miles if I were feeling particularly energetic and/or stressed.

Working my way up to a half marathon always seemed too time-consuming. You don’t just go out and run 13.1 miles when the most you’ve been running is six. You’ve got to increase the distance incrementally each week. So, you run six miles this Saturday, and seven miles next Saturday, and so on, until you get up to 10 or 11 miles, and then you figure adrenaline will carry you the last two or three miles on race day. In-between, you run shorter distances three other days a week.

And I never thought I had the time.

Peter got into running half marathons with his daughter, Kristen, who will graduate from college this spring. That’s not fair. He had incentive—run a half and hang out with his kid. Every time Peter tried to get me to ramp up to join them, my only incentive was being able to say, “I ran a half marathon.” That doesn’t get you up off the couch on a cold January night.

So, that’s where shame kicked in.

Peter is the director of the young-adult Sunday school class I teach. Every week, he sends out an e-mail with prayer concerns and announcements to all the class. One Monday last November, the announcement said I would run the Cowtown Half Marathon with Peter.

The guy had me pegged. He knew I could think up excuses not to prepare, but I’d be too ashamed to back out after he told everybody I was in.

Well, he was right. A couple hundred miles and a bad hamstring later, there I was—shivering in the cold dawn with Peter and our pal Sarah.

After a smidge more than two hours, I crossed the finish line, tired but elated. We enjoyed a brisk run on a gorgeous late-winter morning with 21,000 friends and neighbors.

A little shame goes a long way. Or at least 13.1 miles.