It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

--Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

The Spirit of Gettysburg 5K starts across the street from a Lutheran Theological Seminary just outside the downtown area of this small Pennsylvania town. The rolling Shenandoah Mountains form a scenic backdrop to the peaceful, checkered farmland, belying the events on the summer morning in the last century when two great armies clashed in fierce battle to determine the fate of the United States.

The dissonance between the bucolic countryside and the unseen and unimaginable conflagration and decimation mark all that is Gettysburg. Through innumerable visits to the battlefield, I have always felt the part of an interloper among the spirits of men more worthy than I. Could I have endured their hardships, unhesitatingly filled a breach in the lines, or raised and charged with the regimental colors to sure death?

The Confederate Army had marched into Gettysburg from the north in search of the town's shoe supply, the army's own boots worn thin in the long campaigns through Virginia and Maryland in the prior months. From the south came the North, the confluence of favorable roads leading them toward the town and between the enemy army and Washington, DC. I, too, arrived in Gettysburg from the south, seeking succor for infirmities of the spirit and body in a race long on history and short in kilometers. I came to break bread with the phantoms who fought for the ideal of "a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." That my part in the commemoration consisted of running only 3.1 miles did little to ease by conscience.

The single report of a starter's pistol sent me and 1,000 other runners northward from the Seminary and along McPherson Ridge to the point where Confederate soldiers first engaged the Union troops on July 1, 1863. From the middle of a pack of hundreds, I could easily extrapolate the rumbling and roiling noise of the runners to the thunder of cavalry and soldiers as they accidentally confronted one another in the conflict's initial frenzy on this same ridge.

Race-day spectators poised in the cupola atop the Lutheran Seminary surveyed the competition, much as Union sentries observed the unfolding drama of the battle's first day. From that vantage point, runners could be seen jockeying for position along Seminary Avenue, past cannons, statues, and other memorials marking the field where the Northern cavalry met the onrushing Southern infantry.

As I ran past these monuments, I noticed that the bronze soldiers wore faces too young and too innocent to be logical. These warriors were mere boys, half my age. Would these children of another era be insulted that we came to celebrate their sacrifice by racing through the fields in which they fell? Would the athletes among them be flattered? Would they, could they even care?

The same woods that afforded Yankee and Confederate forces shelter during the battle provided the runners some respite from the sun, but the lines of competitors still thinned and stretched as the choking heat and humidity took its toll. As we toiled past the Peace Light Memorial, dedicated seventy-five years after the battle to "Peace Eternal in a Nation United," a water jockey hustled to replenish the wearying masses. Oh, for such a Gunga Din to relieve the wounded and dying here 131 years ago!

The runners charged along Doubleday Avenue, where Northern troops fought desperately to slow the incessant Confederate incursions upon still forming Union ranks south of town. Throughout the day, thousands of fresh blue and gray troops joined the pitch. As the fighting escalated, the Southern army forced the action, and finally routed the outnumbered federal troops toward the town.

Other Union troops retreating from McPherson Ridge were driven pell-mell through the town proper and south to Cemetery Ridge, where they finally regrouped and rallied on the high ground. That ridge, ironically part of the local cemetery, became the foundation for the Union army's successful defensive positions and phoenix-like resurgence in the decisive battles of the next two days. Months later the same cemetery, grossly expanded, served as the site for "a few remarks" by the President on the occasion of the dedication of a national cemetery at Gettysburg.

The modern day heroes in singlets and shorts likewise rallied up Seminary Road and back into town to complete their sojourn at the Lutheran Seminary. There, among the food, drinks, and camaraderie, reigned an aura of accomplishment and satisfaction with work well done. And more, by competing in and across that historic battlefield, the runners momentarily transcended time and participated in a drama played out in both a psychic and communal stage.

We each compete in running, as in life, on our own terms. Any attempt to equate participation in a five-kilometer road race with soldiers who unflinchingly gave their lives for an ideal more than 130 years ago is sacrilege to the memory of those honored dead.

Still, to exude life, in the fullest and finest way we know, over the same ground consecrated with the blood of our forebears, is to celebrate all that we stand for on Lincoln's terms, without shame for "our poor power to add or detract." Only a few sacrifice their families, their futures, and their very selves for their country, and it remains for the rest of us to recognize and remember their deeds. If while struggling and dedicating our selves to complete a short run across sacred ground we grow better able to appreciate and understand sacrifice, freedom, and equality, the dead of Gettysburg will not have died in vain.

Editor's Note: Jim Hage was inspired to write this essay after running the 1994 Spirit of Gettysburg 5K.