Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Why do we run? It's a question all runners ask.
I ask myself this every time my alarm goes off at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning for yet another long run through Jakarta's humid streets. I asked it a hundred times while struggling to finish my first marathon with pain radiating from my left knee; and again through weeks of rehabilitation that followed, just so I could sign up for yet another race.
The 2024 Olympic gold medalist Sifan Hassan inadvertently created a meme when, right after winning the race, she told an interviewer she woke up the day of the marathon thinking: "I'm so stupid […] Why did I say I'm going to run a marathon? What is wrong with me?"
We ask because we need to know why.
The answer to that question is what forces us to lace up and head out the door day after day, even when we don’t feel like running, or when Jakarta’s heat and humidity are determined to slow-cook us. And, yes, even when we're supposed to be relaxing on a vacation somewhere.
That why is what allows us to take one more exhausted step after another, when our legs are burning and our lungs are on fire, when our minds are screaming at us to stop and rest. That why is our motivation. Our mantra.
So, why do we run?
The question hit me yet again while I was voluntarily suffering and sweating along Central Jakarta’s Sudirman at 6 am on a Sunday morning, thinking of how to answer it for this essay. Answering it for myself, I realize, is not as difficult as getting you to understand it and believe that we are not, in Sifan's words, stupid.
So, let me take you back to how many of us get hooked in the first place.
When I was young, running a marathon was one of those bucket list items that people typically added to their New Year's resolutions lists, along with learning a new language or a musical instrument. It was just one of those self-improvement things I felt would make me feel more actualized.
I never seriously gave it any effort, though, until the pandemic running boom reached me by way of a friend who said he'd managed to train for a marathon despite working full-time, on top of performing in a band twice a week, and raising two kids. Well, I never ticked off that "learn an instrument" item on my list, so I had no evening gigs to worry about, and I'm only raising two dogs at home. Does that mean I can do it too?
Start with a shorter distance first, he said. A low barrier to entry.
The longest I'd ever run at that point was 5 kilometers for a charity race, and that was more than a decade ago. My middle-aged body with arthritic genes had opinions about this. The only running my body knew by then were 30-minute cardio runs, once a week, on a good week.
But another friend agreed to try with me, and that was enough. If it was terrible, at least we'd suffer together.
We signed up for a 10 km race and trained for about six weeks, trying to run just a bit longer each week than the week before. At the start, getting past the first 3 km was a struggle that took almost half an hour. But my runner friend explained that the first couple of kilometers are always the hardest, because the body is still adapting to the stress you’re putting it through. After about 2 to 3 km, your muscles finally warm up, your brain accepts its fate and stops fighting it, and your breathing steadies.
Slowly, we leveled up, hitting new milestones of 6 km, then 7.5 km, and finally, the week before the race, we hit 8.5 km. Each one already felt like a mini-achievement, though we still didn't know if we could run another 1.5 km after that. But even if we had to walk the last kilometer, we told ourselves we'd finish all 10.
The actual race through the streets of Sudirman felt tough. Somewhere around the 6 or 7 km mark I found myself doing the military chant: "left, left, left, right, left", willing my exhausted self to just keep putting one heavy foot in front of the other. And, by some miracle, we ended up completing the race more than 10 minutes faster than expected.
My first thought was: We survived. That wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
My second was: Wow. I'm now someone who can run 10 full kilometers. Impossible just six weeks ago. What else can I do?
That was my first taste of a running reward. I would soon discover more.
Running the Nagoya Women's Marathon in Japan, March 2025. (Courtesy of Jet Damazo-Santos)
Anyone familiar with gamification knows how the brain's reward system works: it motivates users to keep going through constant rewards that release dopamine hits.
That, to me, is how many of us got addicted to running post-pandemic.
At a broad level, each race distance is a new level to conquer. After 10 km, the next challenge is to complete a half-marathon. After that, the full marathon, my childhood bucket list goal. And after that, who knows, maybe an ultramarathon?
But conquering new distances is only half the game. Within each level, you can also constantly upgrade your stats: run the same distance again and again, aiming to finish faster each time, chasing a new personal best.
The genius of the whole system is that those rewards aren’t reserved for race day. Every training block offers its own steady stream of wins – turning the journey between races into a series of milestones that keep you hooked. As though the rewards themselves weren’t enough, our training apps are designed to make sure we never miss a single win: You hit a new personal best! You crushed this training run, running faster than your average pace this month! That was your fastest 1km split this year!
The smartwatches we use to track our runs, like Garmin or Coros, monitor dozens of performance metrics that not only guide our training but show us how we're improving. Over time, I've watched my resting heart rate and fitness age decline, while my VO2 max, the measure of how much oxygen your body can use during intense exercise, increases.
Strava, the biggest social media app for runners and cyclists, creates mini-competitions among strangers who run the same routes, tracking how often and how fast runners move through specific road segments. You can become the local legend of the 1.66 km stretch between the Dukuh Atas and Benhil MRT stations, for example. I once held the course record for a 150-meter hill near my house, a badge I happily bragged about, even though I held it for just three days and was probably competing with five of my neighbors.
The explosion in the popularity of races globally since the pandemic is proof of how addictive running can be. It's why millions of people, most of them juggling full-time jobs and family obligations, carve out hours from their days to run and train. Why tickets to organized races can sell out as fast as concert tickets. Why popular marathons increasingly resorted to lotteries to allocate limited slots.
Two years ago, over half a million people joined the lottery for the London Marathon's 20,000 ballot places. Last year, that number exceeded 800,000. This year, it reached 1.33 million. The demand is so high the race will be held over two days next year, the first time in history.
Progress isn't always linear, of course. We suffer setbacks, miss targets, get injured. But setbacks are easier to swallow once we’ve experienced what lies on the other side of persistence. Having already tasted the rush of crossing a finish line and the dopamine hit of leveling up, we simply try again.
So we run, again and again, rewarded each time. And somewhere between the finish lines and the Strava notifications, your why stops being just another dopamine hit and shifts into something apps can’t track.
Toward the end of a mentally taxing workday, I now find myself looking forward to switching off and heading out the door for 30 to 60 minutes to find out what happens in the next chapter of my current audiobook, listen to the latest episode of my favorite podcast or gossip with my sister who lives in another country. That's now one of my everyday whys (yes, with an s).
At kilometer 15 of my first half-marathon abroad, after turning a corner in the charming streets of Cardiff in Wales, I was greeted by cheers from hundreds of residents who had lined the streets to support some 30,000 runners who came to their town. My eyes welled up. How lucky I was, I thought, to be healthy enough to run this race, to see this town, to experience this incredible moment. It might have been the endorphins coursing through my system, but that was the first time I truly felt the so-called runner's high. It gave me a reason to keep coming back.
Oddly enough, my most valuable lesson came from my first full marathon, where sudden knee pain meant I wouldn’t meet the goal I’d spent 16 weeks training for. I crossed the finish line disappointed, yet almost immediately I knew I wanted to try again.
The grueling training had molded me not just physically into someone who could cover 42 kilometers on foot, but mentally as well. Six days a week, despite the demands of work and life, I had kept showing up. The training had provided me with enough grit and discipline to continue pushing through pain to reach a goal, to trust the process and endure discomfort even when my mind wanted to quit. I may not have hit my target, but I still leveled up.
More than another marathon, I wanted to keep becoming that person, to find out how far she could go.
During my latest two-hour Sunday run through Sudirman, I looked at the runners around me, some fit and fast and likely training for a race, some huffing and puffing but still showing up, and I wondered about their whys. Many will say they enjoy the challenge. Some will call the long, monotonous kilometers a form of meditation. Others will point to self-improvement or other personal goals.
But underlying all those answers, I believe, is a simple truth: running gives back more than it takes. It makes you fitter, yes, but also more confident, more resilient, more certain of what you're capable of — and that compounds in ways that have nothing to do with running. Sure, there are plenty of other challenging activities that are equally rewarding, but few are as accessible as running.
It's a common joke among runners now that everyone starts out thinking you only need a good pair of shoes and the willingness to take the first step; but then soon find yourself with half a dozen pairs of shoes, plus a smartwatch, bone-conduction headphones, athletic sunglasses, and drawers full of running gels, electrolytes, creatine and protein powder. The joke, though, still contains a truth: if you can walk and you have running shoes, you can run.
If you've read this far and still don't understand why millions of us run, maybe the only way to find out is to try it yourself. Sign up for a 5 km fun run. Chances are, somewhere around kilometer 3, when your breathing finally steadies and your brain stops fighting it, you'll discover your own why.
