Why I run fifty miles a week

'Why do you do it?' my friends ask me day after day. 'Why do you get out there and run every day? Don't you think you might be a bit of a masochist?'

Little do they realise that in this one statement, they have touched upon exactly the reason why I run fifty miles a week through all fifty two weeks a year. I do it because it hurts.


There are some very simple reasons why the pain that running causes can become a pleasurable feeling, in fact for many people the hurt is the very reason why they go out running in the first place.

'I want to get fit,' they say. 'I want to lose weight, I want to challenge myself.'

They know that running is going to hurt, and in the back of their minds they want it to. In hurting running validates itself, it attains a purpose.
As the steps get harder and the sweat begins to build, a constant reminder in your head says:

'I am getting stronger, I am getting fitter. I am losing the pounds off my arse.'

Then as you start to push through the pain and the reminder becomes self-congratulatory:

'I have hurt, other people don't like hurting. I am better than other people.'

And finally when you run again the next day, this escalates into:

'I am hurting again, I am getting even fitter and I am losing more weight. I am an exceptional person.'

And that is when the fun begins. You get a bit fitter, and because of this it takes that bit longer to find the pain, to find the sense of improvement and to gain that feeling of achievement, and as a result you start to yearn for the pain.

This is when things start to get a bit complicated.

As you run further and train harder, pain starts to take different forms. You are fit now - you have the flat stomach and the tight arse - so you all you need to do to meet your goals is maintain this. You don’t need to hurt anymore. However, the hurt has touched something in you, it has given you an insight into something different, another world, and you want more of that. You don't just want to leave it here.

That is when pain becomes something else, not just a mean to a physical end, but an exploration of your inner self. You want to see how much further you can go and see just who you can be in this new, fit body of yours. You have found a new side to yourself and you want to test it further, run that extra mile, see how far you can go until you quit. Running is now a quest for completeness, to work out exactly how far your boundaries can go.
Then, after that third ten mile run in a row, you start to realise your limits. You hate it. You sit all day dreading the experience of running. You run into pain now, but no more, it's just tiredness, aches, twinges - endless, endless fatigue. You want to quit.

'That's it,' you say. 'That's all I can take.'

But then one day, for some reason, you don't quit. In fact not only do you not quit, you run further than you ever have before. You are out there, striding, feeling like dying, feeling like you can do more, then somehow you carry on and keep going, and going, and going! And then the whole world around you begins to change. You cross onto a new plain. Nothing hurts anymore! Nothing can stop you now! You're not tired, you don't hurt, you can keep going forever, and you never have to stop!

It doesn't last forever, but the memories of the feeling do, and from there experience of running has changed forever. From the physical, to the mental, running has now entered into the realm of the spiritual - it has taken you from somewhere plain and dull into something trascendental, a place where very few get to go.

This is why I run as I do. I know that in this in that first step, when my breath begins to falter and my foot starts to ache in my foot, there lies somewhere in me a feeling more alive, more fantastic than anything else I have felt before, and the more the pain increases the greater it is going to be when I run through it. On the other side is something amazing.

That is the reason why I run. That is where running can take me.