Every year my husband’s family participates in a 5K race (3.1 miles) in our city. I had run in the race the previous couple of years for fun, not paying attention to the time it took me to finish. But this past year I decided to set a goal for myself. I wanted to complete the distance in 35 minutes or less.
I knew that would require some training, so a couple of months before the race, I started running about every other day for at least three miles at a consistent pace. The training was going well until my left foot began to bother me about a mile into each run. At first I didn’t turn to Christian Science to heal this problem, but instead decided that the cause of my pain was using an old, worn pair of running shoes. I bought a new pair, and those helped for a bit, but after a while the pain in my foot returned each time I ran.
Then it occurred to me that I was dealing with the pain in the wrong way. I was putting my faith in a material remedy—new shoes—for relief, but the issue that needed to be addressed was in my thinking. I had an underlying fear that I lacked the strength and endurance to run the 5K, and I realized that this belief was the problem.
