Run For Your Heart

So I don’t know where to go with this, but ever since I heard this quote, I keep thinking about it. It’s pretty cheesy and my sister and I love to say it to each other or our significant others when they don’t want to run. I guess this post will have some honesty in it.

I would call myself an active person. I run 6-7 days of the week, and only take a rest day so I can spend the mornings before church with my family and dedicated to God. Also, because the body supposedly needs a break and a chance to recover, okay it DOES need recovery time. If it weren’t for those two reasons, I would probably run every day, no breaks, and I have before. On top of running nearly every day, I chase a toddler around all day, do my strength and love to be outdoors whenever I get the chance. Whether it’s to walk, take little girl to the park or to hike.

So I am a mover of sorts, I guess. But in all honesty my motivation behind running is not to stay healthy and fit. Yes that’s a byproduct of the verb, but it’s not my underlying reason for doing it. I don’t do it for my heart, like doctors prescribe cardio for the heart. I don’t do it to lose weight or weight management. Because my mom doesn’t run and hasn’t for years, and eats whatever she wants and is rail thin. It’s our genetics.

For me running is something more. Sure it keeps me healthy, fit and protects and strengthens my heart, but so does other sports or physical activity.

So where am I going with this? My sister and I do binge watching of Hallmark, especially during the long winter months when I find time outside of running of course. 😉 We watch corny love stories, that are predictable and clean. That’s Hallmark for you. They make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside if only for a moment, and then you realize it’s not reality. We rarely have story book endings. In one Hallmark movie a cardiologist, was trying to convince his fiance (who ultimately didn’t end up with him) that running was fun and important. And the quote that stuck and we’ve adopted was “Run for your heart and your heart will run for you.” 

It’s catchy and cheesy and so Hallmark, but it’s somewhat true. Running protects and strengthens your heart, whether that’s your reason for doing it or not. So by running your helping your cardiovascular system. And we all know that in a race or even those tough mornings we’d rather hit snooze, our heart does the running for us.

How you ask? Well, I think your heart and your mind are connected. If you have it in your heart to complete the marathon distance, to run for slavery, to run for cancer, to run for your children, when the running gets tough, the heart takes over. My mother always said “If you believe it in your heart, you can do it.” Or we can take it one step further to biblical scripture, and find that “Whatsoever a man thinkth in his heart, so he is.”-Proverbs 23:7

Because when you dwell on something, live and breathe it, believe it, think about it daily, prepare for it, it becomes a part of you. So the heart really does run for us, especially in those final miles of a marathon when your body has hit the wall and your fighting not only a physical battle but a mental battle. I believe if you believed it in your heart you were going to finish 26.2 or crush 3 hours, your heart is going to fight for it, even when the rest of your body and your mind is bowing out.

Your heart almost speaks to your mind and says “Go to heck, this girl believed it in her heart, and she’s going to run with endurance to the end. She ran for me, and now I am going to run for her.” Okay, so maybe you’re thinking that’s a little bit dramatic, but I believe it does some fighting for us, not only the physical, by pumping the blood to the needed muscles and organs so we don’t heel over, but a mental and emotional battle as well. Our heart reminds us why we do it. Why we cover the marathon distance, why we wake up at 4:45 a.m. to run every morning. Why this race is so important.

And when our physical and mental beats out the heart, our heart’s there to remind us, there’s always tomorrow and there’s always another race to try it again. So even though my main motivation for running isn’t to strengthen my cardiovascular system, I really am running for my heart, because I know my heart has ran for me. That’s why there’s races when “my heart just wasn’t in it.”

Maybe Hallmark knows a little more than we think. 😉

Until Next Time Be Whole and Be Fit…….and Be running for your HEART

Thoughts….?