Dare To Take One Step

This past summer I signed up for the annual Alpine Marathon in Switzerland. It is actually an ultramarathon of 78km (49 miles), with a challenging 2300m altitude change and a time limit of 12 hours. It was not my first Alpine Marathon, but it was my first experience trying it with chronic bronchitis and a lung weakness. I was therefore 100 percent or more dependent on grace, and I kept chanting "Supreme" and "gratitude" all the way.

Suddenly, after about 30 km (19 miles), the pain in my lungs from which I had suffered for the last two months was gone. After the 26-mile mark, up to which we had covered only about one-third of the altitude change, I felt fine but more exhausted than usual. One part of me was just about ready to give up. The other part of me, however, continued chanting and commanded my lips to smile.

Meanwhile, another runner who was walking behind me as I tried to run uphill started to advise me on how to save energy, and he also knew the new route of the race and how to manage the upcoming mountain range in the most effective way. As a result I had enough energy for the last 18km (11 miles) downhill from 2800 meters above sea level to Davos at 1500 meters. This chain of grace enabled me to finish 40 minutes before the cut-off time. Most amazingly, the lung pain I had started with had completely vanished.

This experience reminded me of earlier challenges: swimming across the English Channel despite my small shoulders, running the Marathon des Sables in Morocco despite once being a weak runner, and climbing Mount McKinley with only two years of training and a bronchitis problem. Such experiences have proved to me that these and greater inner goals can be achieved by the same grace—the grace that comes towards us one hundred steps if we just dare to take one step!

Ursi - Geneva.