November 2026 "The Marathon" by Bryce Cornett

  If you need motivation in your life, just go watch the finish line of a marathon. People of all shapes and sizes, from different backgrounds, all hoping to do the same thing: cross the finish line. It's a symbol of triumph over resilience, and it shows the determination of runners who overcame the physical and mental challenges in order to reach it. Running is objectively an uncomfortable activity, and the farther you run, the more you can find out about yourself. It's easily accessible and relatively cheap. If you have some shoes and a safe enough neighborhood or treadmill, you are good to go.

The only achievement, however, does not just come from crossing the finish line; it comes from hitting all your training runs week by week like clockwork. A typical training plan for a novice runner equals about sixteen to twenty weeks. It takes much more than motivation in order to complete a marathon. You will be tested on those days when you didn’t get enough sleep, and the days when you are mentally exhausted or stressed out from other life factors. Discipline is what gets someone to the finish line. Doing it even when it's uncomfortable, and when you don’t want to continue any further, believing in a goal that seems impossible or that others say is pointless. And this is why running is so influential in so many people's lives. It teaches you to discipline yourself and shows you that you are so much more capable than the little voice in your head. It creates resilience and reinforces the idea that you can do whatever you put your mind to.

Running a marathon is hard; heck, running is hard, any distance, any day. My hardest races were whichever ones I was presently doing. When I ran my first 10k, it was one of the hardest things ever for me. I went out too fast, threw up at mile two, and then was passed by like thirty people as I trotted along, just trying to finish. In my first half-marathon, I was in pain, and I felt as if the race was going to last forever. The point is, what is hard to someone else is different than what is hard to you. Especially in this digital age, don't get discouraged scrolling through social media and seeing these people running these crazy fast times or doing these insane races and then acting like it was easy. One of my favorite quotes that I always have on rerun through my head is that there is always a bigger fish. Running is about you, not anyone else.

Running to me was never about beating other people or winning the actual race. It has always been about being the best version of yourself and finding out your character when things get hard. When I twisted my ankle and fell flat on my face nine miles into a thirty-one-mile race (which I later completed), I came closer to understanding what type of person I was. Running is an exploration of the self and is a relatively cheap way to do it. Even if you never want to run, I insist that you go experience a finish line and see the triumph written across those people’s faces, the ones who blocked out the voice in their heads telling them to quit and that it was too hard. We are all so much more than that voice in our heads telling us we can’t do something. Thank you for reading!