2319: Threshold

This past week brought a kind of clarity that I did not expect, and it arrived in a place I have come to know well. The track. I joined the Fleet Feet fast 5K training group for our weekly workout, and the focus was on threshold running. The structure was simple in design but demanding in execution. Three minutes at threshold followed by one minute of standing rest, immediately transitioning into two minutes at threshold and another one minute of rest, finishing with one minute at threshold and one final minute of rest. That sequence together made one set, and we completed three of them.

Going into the workout, I had a clear picture in my mind of what threshold running would feel like. I expected to be gassed by the end. I expected to be searching for the finish, wanting the workout to be over before it actually was. What I felt instead was something I had never felt before in a training session. After the final set, I felt as if I could run another. That was the goal of the workout, but my mind had not caught up to what my body already knew.

For anyone unfamiliar, threshold running is running on the cusp of hard. It is the effort at which your body is producing lactate at a high level but is still able to clear it efficiently. It is not defined by a specific pace. It is best described as comfortably hard. You could go faster, but doing so would push you past threshold and into territory that is no longer sustainable. There is a controlled increase in breathing, a deliberate inhale and exhale, never hyperventilating. The purpose of the workout is to teach your body to hold faster paces in a way that becomes repeatable.

What stood out to me most was not the science of it. It was that I had found my threshold by feel before I ever looked down at my watch. The number was there when the workout ended, but it only confirmed what my body had already told me. That moment has stayed with me all week.

I have been sitting with the idea that we often spend so much time relying on external measures to tell us where we are, when the truth is that we already know. We feel it before we see it. The watch, the data, the validation — those things come later. The knowing comes first.

That lesson has carried into a season of my life that has required a different kind of patience. I finished my post-bac last year, and the time since has been spent working, preparing, and waiting for the next chapter to begin. If I am being honest, I wake up most days wishing school would start already. The excitement is real. The anticipation is real. But so is the in-between, and I have come to understand that this in-between is not empty time. It is its own kind of threshold.

The temptation in this season is to push past it. To begin previewing content before classes start, to try to manufacture momentum that does not yet belong to me, to fill the waiting with effort that looks productive but is really just an attempt to outrun the discomfort of patience. That is running past threshold. That is spending energy that I will need later. The work right now is not to push harder. The work is to stay controlled. To be present. To complete the paperwork in front of me, trust what I have already built, and believe that I am capable of all that is still to come.

There is a passage of scripture that has been on my heart through this season. Deuteronomy 31:8 says, "It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed." That verse meets this moment. The path ahead has already been walked. The preparation has already been done. My role right now is to trust the pace I am on and to not be moved by the urge to run faster than I am meant to.

For anyone reading who finds themselves in a season of waiting, in the space between what was and what is coming, I hope you take encouragement in this. You may already know where you are without needing the watch to confirm it. The effort you are putting in, even when it feels quiet, is not wasted. Comfortably hard is still progress. Staying present is still preparation.

Sometimes the most important work we can do is to hold our pace and trust the road ahead.

Peace,

Zechariah Davis

🎵 Song of the Week

"Butterflies" — Michael Jackson

📖 Scripture of the Week

"It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed." — Deuteronomy 31:8

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