BE READY TO ENDURE

As a runner, I endured heat that baked the soles of my shoes and feet, cold that caused ice to form on the hairs of my nostrils and darkness that often put my life at risk. As a cyclist, I have battled winds that attempt to push my bike out from underneath me, rain and hail that pelted me with stinging indifference and traffic that often puts me and others on the road in immediate danger.
In any distance sport, the participant must endure. Not just the distance involved, but everything along the way. In a race, there also are the other competitors to watch for, to pick one to chase down, to hear another's labored breath in your ear as they slowly pass you. Or, at least in cycling, to feel the "whoosh" of a peleton go flying past as if you were standing still and only this mass of wheels and bikes were moving.
Each tests your resolve, your strength of will, your ability to endure. That is what endurance sports are all about. They are far less about time and distance, about winning or not winning, as they are about the inner test of man(woman) vs. self, of mind vs. muscle, of will vs. weakness.
Sometimes love is an endurance test.
You may think it is a sprint, that you are in a hurry to get from the start to the finish and to finally be with the one you love for the rest of your life. But the race is not over when you finally are together. Instead, it has just begun. But where you once ran, rode, raced alone, now you do this together, with the one you love. And, like a team, you can only run, ride, race as fast as you are able to do together. For, much like a sack race, you stride with her, ride with her, race by her side, bound to her to the very finish.
Sometimes, though, the endurance test begins at the very start. Sometimes, what you must endure is waiting, the waiting for the time to come when she notices you, or realizes you are even alive. Sometimes you must endure and wait for the time when she finally will put love and your relationship first. At other times you may have to endure the test of time, and, like the mountain climber, seek that correct route to the summit that holds her love and her heart.
And sometimes, like the steeplechase runner, you have to not only endure the distance and the waiting, but obstacles life puts in both of your paths. Sometimes you have to be patient and wait for God to clear the way for the two of you to finally be together.
You can try to sprint to the finish, but you will tire and fall by the wayside if you do. Only with the mindset of the distance athlete, the endurance participant, can you find the will, the strength and the patience to wait for love, to endure for love, to be ready for love when it finally arrives.
To finally have love, a love worth waiting for, you must be ready to endure.