Connilee Walter. (Fit People).

Tiffany was the "homecoming queen kind," according to her cross-country running coach, Connilee Walter. But life can squeeze tears out of the sunniest students, and in fall 2002 the high school senior found herself hunched over, sobbing, and silent after running a five-kilometer race as if hobbled by an invisible ball and chain.

"She's one of the top runners on our team and in the state," Walter said of the tall, lean competitor. "But she had a really tough race. She ran terribly."

Yet Walter said the disastrous event opened a new chapter in her relationship with Tiffany as she shared something of her own fitness and faith perspectives on racing.

By day Walter works at Young Life, an international youth ministry headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado. But as an information technology staffer, she concentrates on Web page enhancements, not face-to-face ministry. That changed when she volunteered at Tiffany's public high school two years ago.

"I've never been outgoing," explained Walter, 29. "But through coaching, I have an opportunity to touch kids' lives."

With the distraught Tiffany, she said that meant reviewing the mind-body-spirit triangle.

She began by assuring the student that the physical fitness piece of the success equation was there. Walter runs up to eight miles with Tiffany's women's team six days a week during the August through October cross-country season.

But a race well run comes from focusing just as much on the other two elements, Walter explained.

"What happens in a race is your body is telling your mind to quit," she said. "In a race, you don't let your body psych your mind out like that."

Many athletes key into this mental side of peak performance. But Walter said she took her training advice one step further by noting how a spiritual focus has helped her tackle the most intimidating mountains--literally.

In 2000 the Pikes Peak Marathon course challenged Walter to run from an already lofty 6,500-foot elevation into the still thinner air at 14,000 feet. She told Tiffany that she had spent 10 months physically preparing by eating right and running long distances, sprints, and hills. Mentally she had formulated a racing strategy to pace herself.

Still, she said going the distance depended just as much on finding good spiritual footing. To keep herself from losing that focus during the steepest sections, Walter wrote Philippians 4:13 on the back of her hand with a ballpoint pen: "I can do all things through him who strengthens me." *

"God has taught me so much about endurance, perseverance and character," she said. "Those qualities have always meant a lot to me both in my Christian walk and in athletics."

A week after the heartbreaking race Tiffany crawled out of her funk to run with her head up again. Seeing such comebacks reminds Walter of why she likes to join the pack of young runners after school--despite her hectic schedule as a wife and new mother and with responsibilities at the office, too.

And it reminds her that time goes by just as fast on the clock as on the stopwatch. She said she accepted Christ at age 8 and grew up in a Christian home. But without the mentoring of caring young adults, she for years dropped out of the spiritual race Christians run.

"Did I really know what I was doing at age 8? I think so, but I didn't have the follow-up to stick with it. So I never hit my next milestone until I was a sophomore in college," Walter said.

That's when she paused to ask if there was anything more to life. Running, then and now, provided a tangible way for her to consider the triangle of health daily and to excel by depending on God for strength and endurance. Participating in sports has given her the thrill of crossing finish lines first and seeing her name listed on the Wheaties box as an everyday champion from Colorado along with outstanding amateur athletes selected from the other 49 states.

But for her, running boils down to more than toned muscles, low blood pressure, and competitive times.

"I wanted to know: What has God gifted me with and how I could use that in return for His kingdom," she explained. "I keep coming back to this running thing and that you don't need more than traditional youth ministry programming to reach kids."

* Bible references in this article are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright [c] 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission.

Pam Mellskog writes on health topics from Lafayette, Colorado.