From the Starting Line to the Sea- How Growth Happens Step by Step

Running the Miami Half Marathon this past January as part of Chai Lifeline’s Team Lifeline was a uniquely special experience. Most races are about personal goals, finishing, improving a time, or setting a new personal record.  But, this race was different. Every runner on Team Lifeline was running for something far bigger than ourselves.  We were running to support and give strength to children and families facing challenges no one should have to face alone.  And somewhere around mile eight, as the race became harder and the fatigue set in, my mind returned to a concept that had shaped my training in a profound way: VO₂ max.

VO₂ max is the maximum rate at which your body can take in and use oxygen during intense exercise. The higher it is, the more efficiently your body can perform when the effort becomes demanding. What fascinated me most wasn’t the physiology; it was how VO₂ max actually improves.

VO₂ max does not increase through comfortable, steady effort alone. To raise it, you need short bursts of work at an intense level, followed by recovery, and then repeated again and again. Runners call this interval training, where you don’t exert at that constant intensity, but instead visit it in spurts. Each time you push close to your limit, your body adapts. The heart grows stronger and your muscles use oxygen more efficiently. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, your overall capacity expands. In other words, VO₂ max doesn’t improve on race day. It improves in short, uncomfortable intervals that you choose again and again.

Growth works the same way.  Spiritually, emotionally, and physically, we often live well below our true capacity, not because we lack potential, but because we rarely place intentional demands on ourselves. We stay where it’s comfortable and avoid the moments that leave us breathless.

But capacity, whether physical or spiritual, only expands when we push just beyond what feels easy.  As Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler explains in Michtav MeEliyahu, each of us has a nekudas habechirah, a frontier of choice, where growth happens. When we push ourselves at that point, what once felt difficult slowly becomes natural, and our capacity expands. Growth always happens at the edge of our comfort, at the place where the next choice still feels difficult.

Perhaps this is one of the deepest lessons of Pesach. The story of leaving Egypt is not only about what happened to our ancestors thousands of years ago. It is about our own ability to break free from the limits that hold us back, our personal Mitzrayim, the narrow places, the Metzarim, that confine us.

When we stood at the edge of the sea, the situation seemed impossible. Behind us was Pharaoh’s army. Before us stretched the water. There was nowhere to go. At first they were told to stand still and witness the salvation of Hashem. But then, Hashem commanded them to “go forward,” urging a leap of faith.  The miracle did not begin with the splitting of the sea. It began with the courage to take the next step.

Leaving Egypt reminds us that we are capable of breaking free from the limitations we once accepted and moving into a space where we can truly grow, act, and thrive.  Just like VO₂ max training, growth does not happen by standing still. It happens in the uncomfortable moments when we push beyond what we thought was possible.

Pesach reminds us that freedom begins the moment we take the step we were afraid to take. All of us must remember that capacity is not fixed, potential is not automatic, and greatness is not reserved for the few. It is built in the small moments when we choose to push forward when it would be easier to stay where we are. Over time, the pace that once left us breathless becomes the pace we can sustain. On the road. And in life.

And perhaps that is part of what Pesach asks of us each year. Not just to remember that our ancestors left Egypt, but to ask ourselves: What is the next step that will take me out of my own Mitzrayim?