For almost three years now, I have been practically running daily, 70 km every week, no excuses other than: illness, external circumstances (e.g. competitions, travel). This is an attempt to put into words, why it matters to me.

When I started out three years ago (at age 14), I was in poor shape and wanted to become fit and healthy. I started out with types of exercise that seemed more moderate to me and so I kept biking for a while. Yet, what I enjoyed about a workout was going full power, blasting the music, feeling the sweat and the pain for that peaceful state afterwards. So the obvious exercise to do was running, because all you need is a decent pair of shoes and an hour of time (which everyone has). Immediately, and I mean from the first day, it was the perfect supplement for days of studying. After hours at the desk with my head feeling like its about to start glowing, making a hop over the doorstep and dashing down the dirt road felt amazing. And since starting out always puts a lot of strain on our bodies, my sleep quality was incredible. And to this day it is simply great and I indeed have a hard time understanding the complaints many friends make about falling asleep or being woken up easily. 

Once you start out, progress is fast. While it was impossible for me to do 5k without having to stop and catch up with my breath, only within a few weeks I could handle that easily. So I kept cranking up the pace and the distance. After about half a year I could handle 9 km every day with a pace of about 5:30 min/km. That left me wondering: Could I compress 4.5 days of exercise into 1 and handle a marathon? I couldn't resist trying and so on the day before, I bought the start number of someone who was sick, in fact my name was only changed after the race :) So the day came and the first half went really flawlessly, only after about 22k the real struggle started. Indeed I can confidently say that pushing through from 25k - 35k was among the hardest things I ever did. My leg muscle capacity was simply depleted and so even though there was little strain on my circulation, it felt like pure suffering. Despite that I moved closer to the finish line and eventually crossing it after 4:20 h and laying down in the grass for the first time felt like an incredible achievement. To make it a little bit more comprehensible how I felt: Climbing stairs for two to three days after was almost impossible. 

This was an incredible experience and so I wanted to recover and give it another shot 4 months later. In the meantime I dashed the half marathon in Graz with a pace of 4:22 min/km with barely any rest needed after. My performance at the next Marathon in Linz afterwards improved drastically with a time of slightly above 3:30 h, finishing first in U20. Half a year later I took on the Vienna City Marathon again, and while I both objectively and subjectively made significant progress, this "only" shaved about 10 minutes of the clock, finishing in around 3:20 h. Again, I finished first in U20 and got an overall rank of 180.

Indeed, this was my last full marathon since today. I started out with running as a way of letting of steam, making my head feel clear, being able to concentrate and becoming more resilient towards stress. Moving closer towards the three hours mark would require me to go beyond my simple but simply working "10k everyday" motto. While I definitely want to go big or go bust on the 3 hour sound barrier at some point, I didn't want to digress from the initial reason of "why I run".

So to finally answer that question, why do I run?

It adds a lot of value to my studying life consisting mostly of screens and sitting. Here's an interesting metric. Of all the photos that I take, that I would consider as "good" photos, about half of them are somewhat related to running. Do I spend half of my awake time running? Definitely not, so this adds disproportionally much value to my life. Running can be done anytime and everywhere, it lets you explore cool places in a haptic and fast but not too fast way, it lets you meditate on thoughts you carry deep inside, it cleans up your mind, it lets you focus. These benefits are noticeable when you run, but perhaps most importantly when you don't.

Finally, here are some pictures of where you will inherently end up if you run persistently :D