Nun running Chicago Marathon hoping to raise $200K to renovate Our Lady of the Angels School building

  By JAVONTE ANDERSON,

 CHICAGO TRIBUNE   |OCT 08, 2019

Sister Stephanie Baliga no longer runs for herself, but for her community and for God. So she was undeterred as the predawn thunderstorm rolled in.

The thunder roared, the sky flashed a bright blue and the obliquely falling rain whipped across her glasses. But she didn’t flinch. She only smiled.

“Why wouldn’t I smile?” she asked. Running gives her time to meditate, an opportunity to clear her mind and talk to God.

It’s a form of prayer, she said.

Sister Stephanie Baliga, a former long-distance runner at the University of Illinois, gives instruction to clients waiting outside of a food pantry at Mission of Our Lady of the Angels in Chicago on Oct. 1, 2019. Baliga started a running team for the Archdiocese of Chicago to raise money for the mission. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Sister Stephanie Baliga hands out numbered tickets to clients waiting outside of a food pantry at Mission of Our Lady of the Angels in Chicago on Oct. 1, 2019. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

A sanctuary in a violent neighborhood

From running to serving: Sister Stephanie Baliga moves produce and products to be stocked prior to clients arriving at a food pantry at Mission of Our Lady of the Angels in Chicago on Oct. 1, 2019. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
  

That’s why she doesn’t listen to music when she runs outside. This early Sunday morning, the falling rain and her thoughts were her soundtrack.

And just before 5 a.m., with an American flag bandanna tied around her head and an Illinois track and field jacket shielding her from the rain, she took off running through the Chicago streets.

Each practice run is precious as she prepares to lead the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels charity team in the Chicago Marathon. Baliga is the organizer and co-founder of the team, which has run in the Chicago Marathon since 2011 to raise money for the mission and raise awareness of its community work.

This year her team is running to raise money to complete the renovations for the three-story school building adjacent to the church. The team, which includes more than 100 runners from across the country, is hoping to raise more than $200,000, Baliga said.

Six decades ago, a tragic fire swept through the parish’s Catholic school and killed 92 children and three nuns. Today, the mission uses the building that replaced that one to provide social services to the community, including a weekly food pantry, free community meals, after-school programming and emergency assistance.

“Jesus asked us to be able to help our neighbor and treat others the way we want to be treated,” Baliga said. “And we believe that’s what we’re doing here in West Humboldt Park, being able to bring the hope of Christ through the love of Christ to a neighborhood that’s in much despair and difficulty and incredibly difficult circumstances.”

There have been at least 24 homicides in the Humboldt Park community area so far this year, more than any other area except the adjoining Austin community area, according to Chicago police data.

“We’re trying to bring the presence of Jesus to this neighborhood that needs a lot of hope, and a lot of love,” Baliga said.

One recent Saturday morning, dozens of neighborhood residents filled the wooden pews of the church sanctuary. Every week the mission holds a prayer service followed by a community lunch.

Baliga led the service this morning, with peace as the focus.

Dressed in her religious habit, she read Scripture to the crowd before posing a question.

“When you hear the word ‘peace,’ what do you think of?” Baliga asked.

“I think of no gun violence and no killings,” a young girl answered.

“I think of love,” Kelly Longstreet, 51, chimed in.

Longstreet, who said he’s lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years, said the value of the mission goes beyond the services it provides. Amid the chaos, it’s a place where people can find “peace and tranquility” and not worry about anything, he said.

“Look what you’re surrounded by,” Longstreet said as he gestured to the saints etched into the blue stained-glass windows.

“Angels.”

The cosmic shift in Baliga’s life started with an identity crisis.

As a University of Illinois distance runner, she measured her self-importance on her running and academic achievements.

But when she broke her foot sophomore year, she was forced to reevaluate who she was.

“I started to contemplate my life,” she said. “Who am I? What am I doing? My main identity could not be running anymore.”

During her sophomore year on a spiritual retreat, she had an awakening.

It took Baliga a few years to figure out exactly what God was asking her to do, she said. But soon after graduating college in 2010, she joined the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago at the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels.

And through the Catholic Church, Baliga discovered the answer to the one question she had been searching for.

“I learned my identity is a daughter of God, and I’m loved by God," Baliga said. "And as I discovered that, I found that God was calling me to dedicate my life to the church, and I discerned that was by becoming a sister.”

Now, Baliga has merged her passion for running with her love of God to serve her community.

When the fatigue inevitably kicks in, and the finish line beckons during the 26-mile run Oct. 13, she’ll draw inspiration from within.

“All of the work that we’re doing is for the greater glory of God, so when we’re running, and it starts to hurt, we’ll make that last charge to not slow down for the mission and for Jesus.”

Chicago Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com/

Chigcago Marathon:https://www.chicagomarathon.com/

Too Much Training Can Tax Athletes Brains

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September 26, 2019

Heard on Morning Edition

JON HAMILTON

Triathletes who trained too much chose
immediate gratification over long-term rewards,
researchers found.

Markus Büsges/EyeEm/Getty Images

Too much physical exertion appears to make the brain tired.

That's the conclusion of a study of triathletes published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

Researchers found that after several weeks of overtraining, athletes became more likely to choose immediate gratification over long-term rewards. At the same time, brain scans showed the athletes had decreased activity in an area of the brain involved in decision-making.

The finding could explain why some elite athletes see their performance decline when they work out too much — a phenomenon is known as overtraining syndrome.

The distance runner Alberto Salazar, for example, experienced a mysterious decline after winning the New York Marathon three times and the Boston Marathon once in the early 1980s. Salazar's times fell off even though he was still in his mid-20s and training more than ever.

"Probably [it was] something linked to his brain and his cognitive capacities," says Bastien Blain, an author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at University College London. (Salazar didn't respond to an interview request for this story.)

Blain was part of a team that studied 37 male triathletes who volunteered to take part in a special training program. "They were strongly motivated to be part of this program, at least at the beginning," Blain says.

Half of the triathletes were instructed to continue their usual workouts. The rest were told to increase their weekly training by 40%.

The result was a training program so intense that these athletes began to perform worse on tests of maximal output.

After three weeks, all the participants were put in a brain scanner and asked a series of questions designed to reveal whether a person is more inclined to choose immediate gratification or a long-term reward. "For example, we ask, 'Do you prefer $10 now or $60 in six months,' " Blain says.

The answers showed a clear difference in overtrained athletes. "Those people were, in fact, choosing more immediate gratification than the other group of athletes," Blain says.

The scanner also revealed a difference. There was less activity in "a very little brain area, a little spot of the left prefrontal cortex that's impacted during decision-making," Blain says.

When there's lots of activity in that area, athletes are able to ignore signals from screaming muscles and focus on winning, Blain says. But when an athlete trains too hard, a sort of brain fatigue sets in and the activity level remains low and the person has less ability to push their body, he says.

Other research teams also have found evidence that physical exertion can affect both decision-making and brain activity.

"We find that people as they have repeatedly exerted effort over time, they tend to be less willing to continue exerting effort for rewards," says Tanja Mueller, a graduate student at the University of Oxford who wasn't involved in the study of triathletes.

But the brain may not be simply choosing between long-term goals vs. immediate gratification, Mueller says. The calculus may be more about cost and benefit.

Research by Mueller and Matthew Apps suggests that when the body becomes physically depleted, the brain begins to experience "motivational fatigue," which affects decision-making. When that happens, the brain "may not consider it worth it anymore to wait for higher rewards."

The brain appears to be constantly reassessing the value of a goal, says Todd Braver, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

"So your brain is doing these kinds of cost-benefit trade-offs all the time," he says. "Is it still worth the effort? Is it still worth the effort?"

And the answer to that question may change as the body's level of fatigue increases. "The brain might have this kind of built-in mechanism to say, 'Hey, it's time to shift from this goal to another one,' " he says.

For an athlete, Braver says, that could mean abandoning the goal of winning a race and embracing a goal that will let them recover.

NPR Website: https://www.npr.org