A Lifelong Runner Keeps Pushing to the End
By Peyton Tochterman
Somewhere along the course of the Virginia Merikos 20-mile race last March, Christian Lyman found himself sitting in a truck.
This was not part of the plan.
The race included roughly 3,000 feet of elevation gain, the kind of course where runners learn quickly that distance on a map and distance beneath your feet are two very different things. Lyman had taken a wrong turn. By the time he was driven back to where he needed to be, he had been sitting for nearly 10 minutes.
Now he had to start running again.
Fourteen miles remained.
His legs were tightening. His foot hurt badly, an injury, he later learned, brought on in part by increasing his mileage too quickly. For one of the rare times in his 26-year-old life, Lyman had to walk portions of the course.
Everything in his body was giving him permission to quit.
He didn’t.
For people around Middleburg who know Lyman as the guy who seems to fly through local races, that determination might appear to be the product of natural athletic ability. But Lyman’s relationship with running began much more quietly, years ago, with a third grader who simply wanted to feel better.
Running was a a family pursuit. His parents, Hunt and Sue Lyman, were both runners. But Christian had struggled with Lyme disease and several food intolerances when he was young. He also readily admitted he had developed a fondness for video games and junk food.
Then a friend told him about a new after-school running club.
Lyman joined.
The group met twice a week and ran two or three miles. At first, what struck him wasn’t how fast he could go. It was how he felt afterward. He liked sweating. He liked his heart pounding. He liked discovering that something that had been difficult one week could become slightly easier the next.
“I felt that I was becoming a new, better, and healthier person,” Lyman recalled. “And the older, lazier, less healthy version of me was fading away.”
He also was playing basketball, baseball and golf, but those sports often frustrated him. Each required skills and mechanics: shooting form, pitching technique, the countless moving pieces of a golf swing.
Running offered a beautifully simple alternative.
Push harder.
That made sense to him.
His first glimpse of just how far running might take him came at the Hill School Mile in fourth grade. Lyman finished in seven minutes, eight seconds, a good time for a fourth grader. What intrigued him most was the possibility hidden inside it.
He could go faster.
His father introduced him to interval training. Improvement did not arrive immediately. Lyman remembers getting winded and discouraged. But he kept working. The summer before sixth grade, father and son joined a gym, and twice each week Lyman attacked interval workouts on the treadmill.
By the end of sixth grade, that mile time had dropped nearly a minute to 6:15. He finished fifth in Hill’s cross-country meet. And people noticed. Classmates cheered him. Teachers encouraged him. Older students offered affirmation. For a young runner, it all mattered.
By the time Lyman entered Highland School as a freshman, he was the fastest runner on the track team. And these days, Lyman, a personal trainer, also competes and often wins races ranging from five kilometers (3.1 miles) to half-marathons (13.1 miles) and occasionally longer events.
His preparation involves far more than simply piling up miles. There are tempo runs and threshold runs, recovery days and speed work. There is strength training two or three times a week, along with stretching, balance work and massage. For longer races, nutrition and hydration become part of the equation.
Yet Lyman has no particular ambition to become a professional runner.
He runs because he needs what running gives him.
It’s physical, certainly. But also emotional. Before races as a youngster, Lyman remembers being filled with anxiety and nervous energy. Running taught him that he could take those feelings and put them somewhere.
Into the legs.
Into the lungs.
Into the next mile.
Eventually, discomfort became something he no longer feared. On his best days, it gave way to that elusive sensation runners spend thousands of miles chasing: the feeling that the body has become almost weightless.
“Joyful, free, light and fast,” is how Lyman describes it.
Sometimes, he said, running even feels like connecting with something greater than himself. That may be why his thoughts immediately before a race are surprisingly uncomplicated.
“Go run fast and have fun.”
And then: “Leave it all out on the course.”
Which brings us back to those final miles of the Merikos race.
Lyman was hurting. But other runners were hurting, too. So he kept moving. And he completed the 20-miler, a personal triumph in itself, finishing in fourth place.
For all his speed, Lyman has never really been racing the person beside him. His competition is the clock and, more importantly, the runner he used to be. Run a little faster than last time. Handle the course a little better. Understand his body a little more.
Then do it again.
“There’s always room for growth,” Lyman said.
Perhaps that’s the real reason Christian Lyman keeps running.
The finish line tells him how far he has come.
But somewhere beyond is the person he might become next.
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