Finding Momentum

With a City like this, calamities are bound to happen. A elderly man slips down a narrow stairwell and dislocates his hip. Sirens interrupt throngs of hungry shoppers as two ladder trucks rush down the Market. A red-headed biker caroms off a distracted SUV, and snaps his collarbone. Blaring phones put 911 operators on edge. A toddler stops to admire the red-metal monsters. Around the corner, a girl sizes up a pencil skirt through a store window.

 — 

Hungry eyes follow you over concrete bridges. To look away from them is to acknowledge their power over you. To gaze back into them is to compel you into backbreaking compassion. Apathy, it seems, tries to do both and none at all.

Before we begin, let me say THANK YOU to all of you who’ve contributed to the International Justice Mission cause! In the span of just two weeks, we’ve raised over $800! Thank you for your generosity! It’s our hope that we wouldn’t just give and turn away, but our hearts would be more sensitized as our giving solidifies the link between our wallets and our hearts.

 — 

Another big THANK YOU to all of you who had been instrumental in encouraging me to press on in my training for this event. This event was like no other I’ve ever been to.

It struck me on race day what a fraternal sport running is; everybody’s in it together. So when we all gathered up at the starting line, strangers were giving each other pep talks, finishers walked back on the course to encourage stragglers, and a good bunch of three runners stopped running completely to come to my aid after I graciously faceplanted with a cramped calf.

So the weeks before, I’d been sidelined a bit with a knee injury (tendonitis in my left knee). Therefore, I’d been running only gym workouts for a good two weeks before race day. No long, extended distances, which led me to doubt my readiness on race day.

Typical marathon workouts encourage you to run four or five 20+ mile workouts in your training routine prior to racing. I had been averaging 13-14mi on my long runs in the months prior, so I was about six miles short of being a truly prepared runner.

Still — when the starting gun blew, I found myself in this huge sea of people. It was pretty amazing, this sheer number of crazies like me getting out there to run on a chilly morning. I also noticed some stomach pain; perhaps from the weird PowerBar formula I took an hour before.

The Golden Gate was WAY windier than I’d expected, not doing much for my stomach. I ended up pacing behind guys with big muscles. I don’t know why I did; maybe I just assumed they knew what they were doing. I took the first half pretty easy: I ran a 2:03 split (a 9:25/mi pace).

I started to get a bit more into race mentality on the second half. I got it into my mind to break 4 hours, so I knew I had to catch the 2:00 pacer girl (these are runners who guarantee a certain running pace). So the second half was very much a race to catch up to and pass as many people as possible.

People I remember remembering: Big Guy with Big Muscles in a Cutoff Shirt, 2:00 Pacer Girl, Girl in Blue Shirt Who I Couldn’t Pass The Last Six Miles, and Tony the Popular Guy in a Purple Shirt (everybody he passed was like “Go, Tony!” or “Hey, Tony!” to which he’d throw up a peace sign and a million-watt grin).

What I didn’t expect was how hard The Wall would hit me at the 19 mile mark. We were exiting Golden Gate Park when my body told me, “Andrew, I think I’m done running” and started Cramping Mode, which I hadn’t really counted on.
The next seven miles were the Longest hour of my life, and it was essentially a lot of awkward running sprinkled with some intermittent cramps in my foot, my calf and my hamstring. They’d usually take turns, just to keep it interesting. My mind didn’t quite appreciate it. Spectators just laughted.

What I don’t get is why I didn’t get it in my mind to stop and take the time to stretch. I guess I was too doggone set on beating 4 hours, so I’d be running through cramps (my body’s obvious way of signaling me to stop). It helped that 2:00 Pacer Girl was in striking distance, keeping me on pace for better or worse.

So it completely befuddles me that despite these cramps and a fall that I’d run my second half faster than the first: 1:58 (at a respectable 9:13/mi pace). What in the world happened there? No idea.

But let’s just say that one of the greatest feelings in the world (well.. it’s pretty up there) is crossing that finish line and just feeling your body scream for joy of Being Done. And is that food on those tables over there? Yeah, I’ll be over there.

Major props to Tony for finishing his half marathon in style and being a great help in IJM fundraising. Of course, Sarah was as patient and amazing as ever in trucking our weary bodies all around SF that morning and afternoon.

All in all, a wonderful feeling, this marathon thing. Really, I’m not crazy. I just like the feeling of moving forward, the inexorable draw toward the finish line and the charge to persevere.

There’s talk of running more races in the fall. Anybody interested?

A Smorgasbord of Pain!

(More on Flickr, of course)

What a feeling: crossing the finish line at 26.2 under the Bay Bridge in incredible agony, a massive sense of relief and food, glorious food waiting for you on the other side.

What a feeling: running in a huge sea of people, making conversation with strangers, wondering what their stories are.

What a feeling: crossing the Golden Gate bridge at 7 in the morning, the wind blowing you about and the North Bay illuminated by shafts of light running through the clouds. The eucalyptus trees frame the coast perfectly and insulate you from the seaside gusts.

What a feeling: high-fiving strangers, gulping down energy drinks and carb gel at random intervals. A random Trojan warrior shows up here and there running in full armor.

What a feeling: running through cramps over the last 8 miles, your face contorted in every possible way (and ruining all of your photographs), your mind turned to mush and all higher-level mind faculties shut down, leaving you to just run and breathe and ignore the pain.

What a feeling: cramping up and faceplanting a mile from the finish and having three guys come to your help. One of them offers you salt tablets, his energy drink and runs with you a short distance making sure you’re all right.

What a feeling: feeding off the energy of thousands, people running with various disabilities, running for causes. You bump into a few other runners with IJM t-shirts and you swap stories.

What a feeling: tears forming in your eyes; you wonder if it’s because of the pain or if you’re just really that emotional.

 — 

To be continued — more thoughts and photos to come!

I’m feeling a mix of anticipation and excitement (“wow! a real marathon!” “wow! SF is cool!”) with a bit of fear as well (“will I make it to the finish line without an exploding kneecap or total quad domination??”) as race day approaches fast!

I’m excited, no doubt. Tony and I are going to run this race and we are going to finish strong.

Some pre-marathon thoughts:

• I need to be hydrating constantly today and into tonight so my body has enough fluids to start the race.
• I’ve been eating lots of carbs lately — wheat bread and pasta and noodles and such. I won’t be overdoing the carb-loading tonight.
• Note to self: no fibers today. Roughage = digestive tract activity = really bad on race day.
• I’m visualizing the course and watching course videos. Also checking out the map and making mental notes.
• When will I hit The Wall? What are my strategies to get through it? I have no idea.
• San Francisco is beautiful. I am stoked.

I just found out that my friend Alvin is the lead cyclist on my wave — how cool is that?!

Fundraising update!

Today is the LAST DAY of fundraising for the International Justice Mission! To-date, we’ve raised over $650 — great job, everyone! Let’s make good on the goal of $1000. Find out how we’re doing, or just go donate now! »

Again, if you’re interested, keep up to date on my pre- and post-race thoughts in my Twitter feed.

Support us as we run for the IJM! I’ve opened up a donation link through an application called Causes. You can go ahead and donate via credit card as shown:

Donate to the cause online! »

We hope to hit our fundraising target of $1000 by race day (August 3rd). That’s only NINE days away. I’ll be keeping you updated as the days go by. Keep track of the cause via Facebook. Spread the word; let’s do this.

Love yuh,
 -Andrew

Bowen asked me a good question on my last post — ”Any reason why IJM in particular?”

I answered to the effect that 1) it was the first organization that my friends had mentioned to me regarding human trafficking and 2) I have an older friend who worked there a couple of years ago.

I want to follow that up with a third reason: IJM “exist[s] within the Christian community and [attempts] to rekindle the social engagement of evangelical Christians.”

I want to clarify this a little bit. I believe that causes to social ends can and usually should be supported regardless of their affiliation. There are perfectly great organizations that do great work. However, as a Christian, I must admit I am partial to supporting folks who have the same framework for social action as I.

I believe that a Gospel-centered Christian framework leads to social action

Christians believe that all of us are sinners and slaves. This applies to us in a moral and a physical sense. We’re deeply broken (far from inherently good). We’re chained to sin. We’re chained to materialism. We’re chained in forced prostitution. We’re chained in abusive relationships. We’re chained in oppressive social structures.

Jesus suffered, and can thus identify with the suffering. He was poor and homeless. Jesus was mocked and suffered an excruciating death. Jesus was “wounded,” “crushed,” “afflicted,” “oppressed”.

God is about justice. There’s a passage in the Gospels that tell of Jesus proclaiming the beginning of his ministry as he enters the temple and reads from the Scriptures:

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound…” Isaiah 61:1-3 (ESV)

God’s heart (and by extension, Jesus’) is right there with the “poor,” the “brokenhearted,” the “captives”!

Jesus claimed to be God himself, accomplishing God’s mission on earth: salvation and redemption (whether that is a ridiculous claim or not is a separate and interesting discussion!). That’s the point of the Gospel itself: that there is a new order. The Kingdom of God is rapidly advancing and it means Good News to sinners & slaves.

I know I’m in theological deep waters here and there are a lot of things left untouched and unspoken. Feel free to question me or ask for elaboration on anything and we can start a conversation.

Personally, experiencing Grace lends me to action

My friend once told me her experience working with social justice causes on the Berkeley campus, noting how many activists work out of bitterness or anger, letting entitlement or hurt be their motivation to act on social change. Some activists work out of a rosy desire to change the world, believing in the power of the human spirit.

In the end, she noted, it can be tiring and frustrating because these actions lead to a focus on the self, sapping energy from the self and allowing results to dictate one’s effectiveness and worth.

I believe that Christian activists are different. Christians believe that God activates social movements. When Christians see God’s ultimate plan for restorative peace and justice — Heaven on earth, no less, they get excited.

(Of course, there are criticisms of faith-based initiatives. I encourage you to read “Jails for Jesus,” a Mother Jones article spotlighting the effects of a faith-based program in a Kansas prison.)

I’m just getting started. I’ve got to be honest with you: six months ago, I barely cared. It’s easy to get caught up in yourself and the small minutae of your life.

A little while ago, I got thinking of the Big Picture of my life. If my faith in Jesus is well-founded, then my belief of what the Kingdom of God looks like needs to expand. Jesus’ death and resurrection means Grace and forgiveness for me, and freely given to every living being on the planet, captive or free.

What does Grace look like to a woman kept under sickly terror by her pimp?

What will justice be to a American executive who visits the driving range three times a week?

The answer to both questions is one and the same. The ultimate Judge who promises Justice came to earth to redeem the past, present and future. And in reflection of Jesus’ revolutionary life, death and resurrection and the new framework of Redemption, I feel ever more the freedom (and the driving impulse) to act.

The International Justice Mission is a Christian organization that fights modern-day human trafficking. I’m going to spend a little bit of time introducing them to you and tell you why I care about this cause.

The modern-day slave trade

Last semester, a few friends of mine taught a DeCal course on “The Modern Slave Trade”. I had the privilege of attending one of their sessions on modern-day sex trafficking, its roots and how it rears its ugly head today. On that day and through some subsequent research, I learned:

• Women and children of little-to-no-education are the most common victims of the slave trade.
• There are 1.2 million child sex slaves, according to UNICEF. That’s just the children.
• The sex trade depends on visibility. Thus, one solution is simple: prosecute hard, drive it underground and starve it.
• It could start with kidnapping: drugged food or drinks. It could start with deception: a promise of a better job in another city.
• Deception is key: you could be tricked by somebody you trust.
• Victims often become perpetrators in this twisted world
• Slavery can be fought with education

In the course of that session, we watched an NBC Dateline episode that sent a crew with a hidden camera along with IJM investigators to bust a sex trafficking operation in Cambodia. A brief summary of that episode:

Why I care

I was feeling all sorts of things after watching the video: shock, utter disgust and anger. I think what particularly riles me about this issue is the utter helplessness of the victims and the cruelty of the perpetrators. What is even more disgusting is how rampant human trafficking is today (it’s in our own backyard, for heaven’s sakes: Raj Properties, anybody?).

The heartless exploitation of another human being is something that we should hate with a passion. We should despise it, condemn it, get all riled-up when we hear of it. But we can’t stay there; we need to do something about it.

There’s more to come

I haven’t told you yet how I plan to fundraise for this cause. There’s some plan to do some online fundraising, as well as some sort of word-of-mouth work I’d love to have you involved in. I hope to continue writing to further flesh out my thoughts and feelings about this heavy topic.

But I’ll open this up for discussion: what are your thoughts about human trafficking?

At Apple, where we like to work in the dark.

Last night I lost my keys somewhere between Berkeley and Fremont BART station.

To this hour I have no idea where they are. I stood out there on the Fremont terminal for a good fifteen minutes emptying my backpack, patting my pockets for those elusive keys. I ended up calling my Dad (at 12:30AM) to pick me up from the BART station. When he arrived I kept apologizing. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, “it’s small stuff.”

I tried my best to not think about it. Didn’t work. I tried to pray and let it go. Kinda helped (I think God just told me “You’ve got control issues, son”). But I my brain was running a million miles an hour as I was driving back from the BART (and if you know me, I was driving 55MPH in the slow lane).

I woke up today and felt like a loser.

Like I can’t describe it. I just woke up and felt low. I woke up and suddenly I heard subtle voices telling me I was an idiot. I should have been more careful. I can’t keep things in order. I’m scatterbrained.

I couldn’t shake ‘em. They followed me to work, where I tried in vain to finish a presentation that I only got half-done before I had to run out to a doctor’s appointment.

They stuck with me as I waited an hour in the waiting room and slept with my feet all over a Brio train set and other assorted kids’ toys.

They were there when I notified the receptionist I needed to leave — I couldn’t wait any longer (I had to get back to work and present), and drove back to the office, feeling even lower.

I managed a less-than-stellar presentation. If I could describe it, it would be “apologetic” and “lackluster.” It was a long walk back to my office.

 — 

It’s days like these that the fight for joy becomes the very last thing you want to do. It takes too much energy, mang. It requires a heck of a lot less energy to wallow in a pity party. It’s times like these you just want to say “well today sucked” throw in the towel and call it a Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Day.

I had to get out of this funk though. This negative energy was sapping me. So I went to the gym and ran.

And ran. And ran. And listened to a sermon as I was running, where the pastor was talking about how Jesus was worth it and his tone of voice told you he believed it with every last fiber in his being and you could hear the warmth and love that this man had for his community. And then I was rereading my journal (yes, this is whilst mounted on an elliptical machine)  and I thought about a living hope in every circumstance. And I thought about running the race with endurance.

Yeah, today was rough, but each stride was good for my soul.

My buddies Matt, Josiah, Tony and I had been talking about running a marathon ever since late April. Matt and Josiah are distance heroes, and Tony’s the only one out of all of us who’s actually run a marathon.

“I’m in if you’re in,” one of us would say.

“I’m about 60% sure I’m in,” somebody else would chime in.”But if you’re running…”

I decided to settle it for all of us. “I’m in.” And that settled it. We were going to run a whole, freakin’ marathon.

 — 

It was only around last year I acquired the goal to run a marathon. I had filed it under “Things I’d Like To Do Before I Die” — that is to say, Things That Are Highly Good But Kind of Far-Fetched. Only around last year because in years past I would have laughed it off as impossible. But then again last year I was looking for impossible things to do, if only for the kick of compiling them into a list.

Sure, in high school I ran track for four years and cross country for three (fully enjoying its ironic, sadistic valor). And I’d been somewhat regular in my running in college (running usually when A: disgusted at my gut or B: stressed out like crazy or C: a lot on my mind), but I’d never imagined myself doing this sort of a feat.

Marathons are cloaked in a lot of mystique: there’s that whole metaphor of the human struggle, the idea of it being about sheer survival. There’s the promise of triumph at the end over a particularly impossible task. And never mind that legend goes that the first guy that ran it keeled over and died.

But ever since the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon we ran, I’ve been feeling like this is a reachable goal. Running 26.2 miles isn’t too hard. You just have to get past the first mile, and the second, then the third…

So for the past six weeks or so, Tony, Matt, Josiah and I have been training for the San Francisco Marathon. We’re all over the Bay Area (Josiah’s in the Peninsula, I’m in the South Bay, Matt’s in the East Bay and Tony’s in Berkeley) and we train separately. But we hope to run this sucker together on August 3rd.

Training’s been good but tough. I’m currently running 30-40 miles a week (five days running, 2 days rest). Over the course of a week, I’ll do a long run on the weekend, rest, three medium runs, rest, and a short run (in that order). It’s kind of hard to roll yourself out of bed at 7:30AM in the morning and get yourself psyched for a run, but I guess it’s part of the package.

We’d love to have some folks (you!) involved in this endeavour:

• If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, I’ve been posting training updates once in awhile, so feel free to follow along if you’d like.
• If you’d like to run with us (or even for either of both half-marathons, which both take place the same day), do let me know!
• Finally, we four runners are going to be running this for a good cause. I’ve been thinking of running to raise money for the International Justice Mission or another human-rights organization, but I’m still waiting on word from the other guys. Watch this space for more details, or let me know if you know any good organizations to fundraise for.