A Marathon with the Amish
Dutch Country. I drive two hours from my home in Bethlehem through rolling hills, past tidy main streets lined with diners and craft shops. I pull to the side of country roads on the outskirts of New Holland, or Bird-in-Hand, or elsewhere in Lancaster County, and get out of my car to stretch and breathe in the crisp air and the rich, loamy odors.
I like to watch corn being harvested, which looks just as it does in the tourism brochures: A man wearing black pants held up by suspenders over a white buttoned shirt, with a straw hat, follows a slow, heavy draft horse pulling a corn-picking machine. It seems difficult and simple and inefficient and clean.
My mom and dad brought me to the harvest when I was a kid, and when I could drive I made the trip myself—which was just as well, because for a time in my teens and early 20s, I wasn't getting along too well with my family, or anyone else. I drank and got into trouble. The idea of a nine-to-five job filled me with a dull fear, but I wasn't sure what other options I had. I had long hair and, I suspect, a look in my eyes that would have alarmed any of the farmers had they bothered to look my way.
Eventually I stopped drinking and, for the most part, stopped driving. I don't quite trust myself to remember exactly what I was thinking when I was that young man—I'm 56 now—but I think it had to do with the world being a dangerous place. I rode a bicycle everywhere—to the grocery store, the hardware store, and just about everywhere except Lancaster.
Through the years, I may have changed, but that annual trip didn't. Even as I grew older and began traveling more often, even as I began my career as a marathoner, then a race director and, for the past 25 years, as an ambassador for long-distance running, serving as this magazine's chief running officer, I kept returning for the corn harvest. Had I stopped to think about it—which I didn't—I might have admitted that the trip served as restorative pause in a life increasingly complicated, a life filled with texts and tweets, hotel lobbies, and air miles. Had I stopped to think about it—which I didn't—I also might have noted that the qualities I had been preaching as essential to any great long-distance runner were right in front of me on those fall pilgrimages: a love for the land, strength, endurance, and an appreciation for simple, productive labor. Had I stopped to think about it—which neither I nor anyone else I ever met had ever stopped to think about—I might have wondered what would happen if a community of inward-looking, healthy-living, labor-revering, modernity-shunning, tradition-bound religious people who looked really, really fit and strong ever got serious about athletics, ever committed themselves to winning foot races.
I started thinking about it because of my wife. Laura returned from the Bird-in-Hand Half-Marathon last September, where she won her age group and was as excited as I had ever seen her after a race. (Which is saying a lot, as she's run in 90 ultras and 128 marathons, in 17 countries on three continents. ) She raved about how sweet everyone had been at the race, how polite, and how different the race was from any other. She said the race organizer, Jim Smucker, had asked if she was related to me, and when she told him she was my wife, he asked if I might be interested in coming to deliver one of my talks about running to some of the local citizens. He mentioned a regular run under the full moon, through something called the Valley of No Wires. The next one would occur the second week of October.
And that's how I ended up running with the Amish.
I like to watch corn being harvested, which looks just as it does in the tourism brochures: A man wearing black pants held up by suspenders over a white buttoned shirt, with a straw hat, follows a slow, heavy draft horse pulling a corn-picking machine. It seems difficult and simple and inefficient and clean.
My mom and dad brought me to the harvest when I was a kid, and when I could drive I made the trip myself—which was just as well, because for a time in my teens and early 20s, I wasn't getting along too well with my family, or anyone else. I drank and got into trouble. The idea of a nine-to-five job filled me with a dull fear, but I wasn't sure what other options I had. I had long hair and, I suspect, a look in my eyes that would have alarmed any of the farmers had they bothered to look my way.
Eventually I stopped drinking and, for the most part, stopped driving. I don't quite trust myself to remember exactly what I was thinking when I was that young man—I'm 56 now—but I think it had to do with the world being a dangerous place. I rode a bicycle everywhere—to the grocery store, the hardware store, and just about everywhere except Lancaster.
Through the years, I may have changed, but that annual trip didn't. Even as I grew older and began traveling more often, even as I began my career as a marathoner, then a race director and, for the past 25 years, as an ambassador for long-distance running, serving as this magazine's chief running officer, I kept returning for the corn harvest. Had I stopped to think about it—which I didn't—I might have admitted that the trip served as restorative pause in a life increasingly complicated, a life filled with texts and tweets, hotel lobbies, and air miles. Had I stopped to think about it—which I didn't—I also might have noted that the qualities I had been preaching as essential to any great long-distance runner were right in front of me on those fall pilgrimages: a love for the land, strength, endurance, and an appreciation for simple, productive labor. Had I stopped to think about it—which neither I nor anyone else I ever met had ever stopped to think about—I might have wondered what would happen if a community of inward-looking, healthy-living, labor-revering, modernity-shunning, tradition-bound religious people who looked really, really fit and strong ever got serious about athletics, ever committed themselves to winning foot races.
I started thinking about it because of my wife. Laura returned from the Bird-in-Hand Half-Marathon last September, where she won her age group and was as excited as I had ever seen her after a race. (Which is saying a lot, as she's run in 90 ultras and 128 marathons, in 17 countries on three continents. ) She raved about how sweet everyone had been at the race, how polite, and how different the race was from any other. She said the race organizer, Jim Smucker, had asked if she was related to me, and when she told him she was my wife, he asked if I might be interested in coming to deliver one of my talks about running to some of the local citizens. He mentioned a regular run under the full moon, through something called the Valley of No Wires. The next one would occur the second week of October.
And that's how I ended up running with the Amish.
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