Running

“Are you running in the marathon this year?”

“I am,” the customer replied while Josiah Akinyombo waited on him at the farmer’s market yesterday. I knew that the customer ran two years ago, but last year he did not. Maybe he couldn’t secure a spot. A record 59,226 runners ran the marathon on the first Sunday in November 2025, but that was only 1 % of the applicants.

We continued discussing the marathon. I told the customer about the runner from Mexico who we’d seen pounding the pavement in Forest Park. He replied that this time of year the runners are realizing the marathon will soon be here, and so they’ll be seen training in many parts of the city, including Roosevelt Island where the market is.

I woke up too early this morning, the marathon on my mind. Sleep didn’t come, so instead I went to the kitchen and started the coffee pot. I took my Bible and read: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. [25] Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. [26] Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. [27] No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27 NIV).

Yesterday’s weather would have been good for running the marathon. It was a good day for the market – quite different from a week ago when a nor’easter came through. That was the weather for surfers. Laurence and I watched them riding the high and wild waves of the Atlantic Ocean from the boardwalk on Rockaway on Saturday evening.

Summer weather swooshed in again this past Friday, a day too hot for running. I remember watching a marathon during an unexpected heat wave. The crowd poured bottled water on the runners to cool them.

Friday was a lovely day for eating tacos by the bay on Governor’s Island with friends. We rented a bike for three and pedaled around an island where the views of the harbor, the Statue of Liberty, of Brooklyn, the bridges, and the Manhattan Skyline are amazing.

However, I digress. Today is the day to “run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).

Berniece Penner