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I start a lot of posts about running, but I almost never publish them. It’s difficult to find something useful to say about a subject that has been covered exhaustively by other runners and that non-runners find self-indulgent and tedious.

Which isn’t a wrong take, to be honest. Who wants to read about running, really? Stories about chafing in private places, dull details of training plans, that time you pooped in a public park: writing about running skirts an unfortunate line between the banal and the gross.

But that said, here I am starting another post because I’m a couple of days away from the 2025 Publix Atlanta Marathon, easily the most consistently miserable race I’ve ever been a part of. I run this one every spring because it’s in my town, and because I’d probably spend race Sunday sulking if people were marathoning on my streets without me. It’s a grim race, though, by any stretch — it’s hilly, there are long stretches that are just city blocks, and there often aren’t many spectators over the miles.

There’s no getting around the fact that training for a marathon is a slog. Long Saturday runs that can reach upwards of four hours, early mornings either in the cold of December and January or the sweltering heat of July and August. Learning what to eat, how much to drink, covering the same miles over and over again. Being tired, like, all the time.

I am absolutely not a morning person by biological inclination, but the thing that running has taught me most is that I do love experiencing a morning.

There’s something about the discipline and the structure of the training cycle that I have come to find really addictive. Getting an 8-mile run in before work honestly feels pretty amazing. Smelling the world before it’s full of people. Sometimes seeing a skunk or getting scared half to death by the occasional stray dog. Cats are out and often so is the moon. The best part: so many sunrises.

I’m addicted to them.

So, this weekend I’ll join a thousand or so folks to run 26.2 miles around Atlanta. It’s my 27th marathon and definitely won’t be my fastest or my slowest. It’ll be fine. I’ll enjoy it for a while, I’ll be tired, I’ll wish I could quit, but I’ll keep going. I’ll run down the finish line chute, where a few hundred incredibly kind people will show up to make you feel like an absolute hero. I’ll chug some Publix chocolate milk and an improbably delicious beer. I’ll go home, eat, shower, nap, and check the results to imagine where I could have done better or trained a little harder.

There is a moment, though, in every race I’ve ever done, usually around mile 22, when it’s genuinely awful. Everything hurts, you can’t stomach another sugary gel or swallow of Gatorade, you might have to pee or maybe you already did. The streets are full of annoyed motorists whose day you’re obviously inconveniencing.

But sometimes you’ll make a new friend, if only for the length of a hill. Sometimes you’ll pass someone that you’ve been trailing for the past three hours or someone will pass you and give you a kind word of encouragement. A person at a water stop reads your name off of your bib and yells for you. It’s absolutely fantastic.

It boils down to the joy of being alive, doing a thing you’ve worked very, very hard for, seeing another sunrise and getting to run because you can. That’s the part that’s always a letdown when it’s over.

So that’s the recipe: you run, then you finish, and then you rise again.