Races Worth Finishing

Our cousin, Tom, just finished the Cocodona 250 — a 250-mile ultramarathon that runs through the mountains and desert of Arizona.

Tracking his progress throughout the week and seeing him cross the finish line early Saturday morning on a YouTube livestream was absolutely incredible. Like an instant chills-and-tears kind of moment. Because it is, after all, a grueling race. Competitors have to go with little sleep for several days to finish, slogging through the terrain of the course nearly around the clock. A runner even died, sadly, on the course this year.

The winner was truly elite, finishing the course in about 56 hours — a record. But in races like this, for most of the competitors, being the winner isn’t the thing that matters. For difficult races like these, the victory is maybe to hit a new personal best, but most of all just to finish. Victory is simply to finish.

And the way so many people come together to get these athletes across the finish line is astounding. There are the race organizers and an army of volunteers. There are support crews and pacers. Then there are friends and family there in person cheering the racers along the route, hugging them at the finish. So many people come together to get a few hundred athletes to go a few hundred miles from one end of the Arizona desert to the other.

Mind you, this is not a transactional thing. Whether it’s an ultra, the Olympics, or even just a local marathon, people care deeply about helping these athletes finish the race. To me, this is humanity at its best — when a community comes together to help someone do what they set out to do, to help them finish the race. This archetype of a race, where the goal is finishing rather than winning, is a special type of journey to be part of — whether as a racer, the crew, or a cheerleader.

These races are also beyond athletics. We are part of them. We can be part of them without having to be or know elite athletes.

It is the race where the village is getting a child to read, graduate, or finish college. It is a community of faith walking together and helping each other lay down their arms and find peace. It is the web of friends and often strangers who pull together to get a family that is grieving tragedy back onto their feet, or to get a friend past a cancer diagnosis and into remission.

It was in the Apollo and Artemis missions to send people to the moon and return them safely back. It is helping our elders age and die with dignity. It is in the long arc of a true artist’s journey, where they toil and sacrifice to make something that tells a truth that hasn’t been told. It is in the journey of someone injured in the line of duty learning to walk again, or someone brokenhearted learning to love again. It’s the journey of couples struggling with infertility finding a way to start a family, finding one, or at least finding acceptance for what they cannot change. This is every journey of recovery from addiction. It is every race that starts with failure and ends with becoming whole.

It is a race that Robyn and I are running to finish with a marriage that is beautiful, loving, and sacred. This is why lots of us cry at weddings. We are there to witness the beginning of a race that we want someone we love to finish. And it is a race with each child in our life that we care for. Some set out to change the world. Some set out to be good people or to create a family of their own. Some set out for exploration and adventure. And for those kids with the deepest needs and the brightest light, they set out to live the fullest, healthiest, most independent life they can. They too are on a journey where the goal, the triumph even, is simply to finish a complete life as a complete person.

This is the point in drafting where I take a break because I’m weeping. Maybe you are too. And why do I weep? Why do we weep about these journeys of finishing?

Because these are the races that matter. The lion’s share of all the love, joy, living, dying, growth, lightness, and beauty happen on these types of journeys. These are the stories that, if we are part of them — whether we are the racer or the crew or just there to cheer — help us feel like we were ever truly alive. That we were here for something. We need something more than just to “win” to have honored something so small, but so sacred, as a life.

It is a blessing to be here for these journeys, to be part of these races, whether closely or from afar.

Congratulations to the finishers. To those who finished the Cocodona 250, and those who tried but couldn’t. Most of all to our brother, Tom.

But a toast, too, to those who came to a starting line, whether as a racer or to support someone who was. To everyone who saw a difficult journey ahead and decided to be part of it — not to win it, not for applause, but because it was a race worth finishing.

Thank you for your courage and your spirit. Thank you for letting me be part of your journey, and for being part of mine. And thank you most of all for starting something that makes a sacred, human life come alive.