“The first mile always sucks” is what I tell myself on every run. It tends to hold true. By the end of the second or the third – or at worst on the long runs, the fifth – things start falling into place. The right song comes on. The aggressive winds die down or start to blow at your back. You quit worrying about whether your shoes will come untied. You decide it doesn’t matter if you unplugged the coffee pot. You start to find your groove and you get things done.

I’m pretty sure the same holds true for a new blog. You show up at the dashboard and spend some time staring at the screen. The cursor blinks. “I need another cup of coffee first.” “I should change the music.” “Should I be charging my phone? Wait, where is my phone?” A few months pass and you realize the “coming soon” page is another lie you’ve been telling yourself.

So you think a bit more about what you want to say. What kind of tone should your posts have? What’s your goal?

With running, those goals change often. Sometimes you meet them, sometimes you don’t. It may be about training or it may be that you stopped to help someone else make their way through the course. Running is a solitary sport for most of us; the only races that matter are the ones we race against ourselves. I suspect that’s why finish lines are emotional (it can’t all be about the free beer ticket, right?).

And there are the more general ups and downs along the way. I’m not trying to focus on the hills. I live in Florida now; the hills I face are better called overpasses. But there are training highs and lows. There are moments in both training and the races that we can’t prepare for no matter how much we plan. Traveling for a race? What happens when a weather front comes through and your plane can’t leave the ground? What happens when lightning storms pass through and the organizers cancel the race?

There are disappointments, but running takes me to a place where I can move beyond them. Running lets me focus on bigger pictures rather than small details. Some people talk about running away from their problems, but I use it to find solutions. Running lets me breathe a bit easier, lets me feel the joy or pain, and helps me move on.

In other words, running takes me to a place where I’m a better version of myself. The training, the races, the places I go: Those are all benefits that seem more than worth sharing.