A Running: List of Thoughts
A classical cliche of it's about running, and it's not about running.
Happy Friday,
I’m been off running until now. After coming back from Tokyo, I’ve been resting my knee and torturing myself on the elliptical machines and walking inclines. I’m told that doing this allows me to maintain at least 90% of my capability but we shall see.
In the time of rest, I’ve been able to cultivate a series of pieces that are based on running. This first began with [What I’m Remembering 2025 by], which was then succeeded with [I ran the 2026 Tokyo Marathon]. And now we find our selves at the end of this stint, at least for now.
I have prepared for you a series of my thoughts surrounding the question: Why do I run, and what does it mean to me. My thoughts on running are not meant to teach others how to run, or why they should, they are to offer a glimpse in to my current story.
Enjoy, and perhaps I’ll see you on the trails.
Allen
Thought 1
Why do I run? It’s an innocent, hard to answer, and often enduring question. Why do I run? I can tell you it wasn’t because it keeps me in shape, I’ve gained quite some weight since I started running. Maybe it has to do with anxiety, a way to distract myself from it and also work on those thoughts and give it space. I think that’s mostly true.
I’ve pondered the question more often lately, especially in my period of recovery where I can’t run. A bit of insight came about when I was running in a downpour of rain. There was a break in the patterns, leading to a temporary relief and a breath of crisp air. The path I was running on, one that I’ve ran perhaps over 1,000 times now, was vibrant. I think I would have much missed out on this beauty if I didn’t run in the rain.
Each time I’ve asked the question, I usually conclude that running is a means for me to live in the present and to experience life. It is how I stay present. It is a way to experience living. And for each minute I contribute to running, I seem to enjoy life more.
It’s a hobby. And hobbies are enriching.
A hobby, which can be over-justified by capitalistic hustle culture, is something that helps me fall in love with life again, and again. For me, that is the possibility of what life could be and meeting it there. It is quite important to find a hobby that you look forward to.
Thought 2
In my 20s, I found it easy to be consumed by work and live a life in service of work. If you don’t have have boundaries or willpower, work becomes your identity. As it turns out, that’s not something I could sustain healthily.
I’ve also found it easy to be caught up with all the global narratives, of which 2025 is a remarkable yet taxing year for global narratives, and 2026 isn’t fairing much better. This too isn’t a healthy daily impression to have on the psyche.
It’s also easy to retreat to energy-less comforts a screen can afford. Revenge procrastination, as it’s called, where you seemingly try to reclaim the day through scrolling on a screen into the twilight.
I have habits, as it turns out, that do not often leave me recharged and instead create a dull and null sensation. A sort of mental baggage, in a way, that feels like a cloud. Cracking a window open, closing my eyes, and breathing as if I relish life seems to stay that cloud and if I’m lucky, a short nap to clear the brain can move it.
Fresh air can do wonders. I can find a lot of fresh air outside. I can even find more of it if I ran, so perhaps I should make that a habit too.
Thought 3
My confidence of my future, and about the future, are things that influence me more than I care to admit.
I can easily be surrounded with perhaps not the best outlooks of the world, and do that vague motion of saying “how terrible society is” or “look at the state of the world”, but I have found such mullings to be the least contributory and productive kind of thoughts. On the opposite end, I can find a confluence of some of the best energy and inspiration, of which a certainty of how the future could be, a future I am thriving in, could be.
I like to believe I am anchored on the best outcomes, but every now and the subconscious thinks differently.
While the world’s affairs can leave such a clouded impression on the next ten years of society, and it is definitely of a vice of mine to be consumed by various histories, geographic boundaries, and mythologies, I recognize the need to do other things that allow me to live life outside of my head.
And so here is running.
A means for me to be outside, without a screen, and paradoxically have nothing to do but to think. What’s fascinating to me is that I could have negative thoughts and positive thoughts in the same run and by the end of it, I’ll have reach an equilibrium on how I feel about those thoughts, and go about my day stronger. One can ascribe this as meditation, and holding space, and to me it’s all the same.
So why do I run?
Well, at first it was for my anxiety, then it was for my mental wellness, and now it’s because it’s a way for me to experience and appreciate life.
Thought 4
Running is the only thing I do where I can’t also be doing something else. I can’t infinitely scroll on a run. I tried and I dropped my phone, and if you are very sweaty, the screen doesn’t work correctly. I can’t half-watch something. I can’t be “capitalistically productive” in the way a screen rewards you for the feeling of busy.
It’s just me, the road, and whatever my mind decides to do with the next hour.
That’s the whole point. I found running to be a mental sport. I started running to alleviate the burden of my own thoughts (aka anxiety), and what I found was I was able to become more present with myself through running.
Running doesn’t quiet my mind, it gives my mind somewhere to go. It’s as if I’ve given my thoughts a formal hour to just be thoughts, with the loudest megaphone. I like to believe the hour spent with my thoughts is a culling act, honing down and refining idea.
But that’s not really true. If anything, running exhausts my brain so that whatever needs to be said, is said, and whatever needs to be carried forward, is carried with a succinctness and acceptance of itself.
An hour on the road and I come back having processed things I didn’t know I needed to process. I’m a more aware version of myself after a run. I like this aspect.
Thought 5
Have I suffered on a run? I recently finished a book by Haruki Murakami “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” and in his memoir, he states that pain is mandatory, suffering is optional.
I think back to some of the longer runs I did. I can be at mile 18, legs asking increasingly impolite questions, having pissed my shorts, and still have a big stupid grin on my face. It can be mile 11 and it just pouring for a good mile there, and I’m not livid, I’m exhilarated.
I rejoice the fact that there’s something about knowing you’re doing something that not many other have willfully chosen to do, and what you’re doing is in itself a hard, but not impossible, challenge.
Perhaps I like running because it’s clearly an activity that each accumulated mile makes you a more capable runner, and that if you commit yourself to a string of what will be unremarkable runs, you’ll find yourself crossing a finish line and savoring every memory you made.
Thought 6
What does running support? In the hardest days, I ensure that I have incorporated at somepoint in the day a run. For me, it helps me break the cortisol wall and allows me to access higher tier thoughts more sustainably.
In my life, it would seem running gives me mental clarity for me to handle the affairs of the day. It also gives me physical energy, which could sound counter intuitive but when the body overcomes its inertia to not move, it gets used to moving and produces energy accordingly.
I think it’s very important to know what running does for me, because it itself is not an end goal. Running is in service of something, but of what - well I’d like to think its in service to my life. I can show up better and take on the hardest challenges as a consequence of running.
I hope I don’t forget that.
Thought 7
What I like about running is that is not gated to high gear costs or special memberships, or genetic lottery, or even teams. Perhaps its the simplicity of it, and that it’s just myself that I can rely on to get started. As simple as this will sound: I put one foot in front of the other and found myself at the end.
To me, running is a mindset activity, as running is a challenge of my will over wants, until my wants are exactly the same as my will. I do like the confidence I get from running, but it’s important to know what your basis of confidence is when running. My confidence in running has never been about speed. I would consider myself a slow runner. On average, I’m a 10-minute pacer.
What my confidence lies in is endurance, the ability to keep going for a quite long time. I trust myself to go the distance, and that was something I accumulated over many runs. Of course, it wasn’t always like this in the start. I first had to overcome the establishment of running by reaching a habit of daily 5k’s.
My experience with running has been a commitment to myself. It’s ofen a repetitive series of unremarkable moments every week that when examined individually, don’t stick out in the slightest, but when collectively examined, tell a story of my progression. It is expressed by my individual contributions into the process, and my choices and expansion into different challenges that come with the territory of running longer distances, that culminate into a miles spent looking at trees and buildings and birds and my feet.
What running means to me is this: A series of many unremarkable moments and it is through those unremarkable moments I enjoy life.
