Everyone runs for different reasons. And the reasons I run change every day.
By David Moseley

Never was a sport that so many could do with such ease. That’s why I run. Never was an event that could inspire quite like a half, full or ultra marathon.

Watch the thousands stream over the line at the finish of Two Oceans or the Comrades Marathon and in an instant – your flesh still goosed from the emotion, courage and achievement you’ve just witnessed – you can be on the road, taking your first steps towards something great, something magical. A life-affirming moment after 21km, 42km or 56km. That’s why I run.

But it’s not all about the crowds, the cheering, and the mass adulation from supportive strangers.

When a dry branch cracks under your feet, when the loose sand pah-oofs and whoops up and over your shoe, settling slowly around your trail-blazing steps, when the trail is so barren of human life that these intimate, cartoonish sounds come to life and bore straight into your sole, when you stop to catch your breath on a solo run high above the city, and you find your mind wandering further than your feet have taken you. When you run to appreciate your surroundings. When you run for a moment’s respite from life’s insistent din. When you run to be alone. That’s why I run.

Or perhaps it’s sharing a golden moment, crossing the line in an event with a grin, no matter the time on the clock.

Every finish is a positive result. Every kilometre is a reason to smile, a reason to pick up the phone an immediately share your power, the good vibrations coursing through your veins, your enthusiasm for life that’s surged uncontrollably moments after you thought it couldn’t sink any deeper. That’s why I run.

It’s that day you finish a training run with an extra spring in your step. It’s that bubbling piece of joy you can’t keep to yourself, even if no one else in your life is a runner. It’s that sense of a minor achievement in a majorly over-bearing world that makes it all worthwhile. That’s why I run.