Note: In italicized blocks are my favorite bits from the first chapter of Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. His beautiful prose reaches much deeper than what I’m able to express here.
I was up before the others, before the birds, before the sun.
I stretched my legs, my hamstrings, my lower back, and groaned as I took the first few balky steps down the cool road, into the fog. Why is it always so hard to get started?
For the longest time, the spirit of sports eluded me. I believed everything we needed to know about life could be found in books, art, nature, and deep conversations. Sports, I thought, were surely just for the try-hards. But since the beginning of this year, consistent physical training has opened me to understand that every mental breakthrough has its physical embodiment, and the eureka moment strikes sparkingly in both. During the Olympics summer, I stayed up watching live-streamed events. When I chanced upon Kipchoge's 2019 sub-2-hour marathon race tape on YouTube, I found myself properly sobbing towards the end.
After beginning regular physical training, I confronted the uncomfortable truth about my lifestyle. My habits had been sluggish and unstructured, marked by late nights, unjustified priorities, and not taking my health seriously (maybe those who know me think I’m a responsible person but I know I’ve got a lot to improve). I am hard on myself mentally while neglecting my well-being physically.
What sits between who I am and what I have the potential of becoming are the principles that touch everything I do –– over time, they become second nature. These principles are the foundation of rule-breaking, where our most creative and innovative leaps have come from. We need discipline to be free; we need to remember our purpose to enjoy the journey; and yes, we need to follow the rules to break them. Because it is only then breaking rules can actually mean something –– or else it’s just delinquency. But rules can only be broken after we’ve built ourselves the credibility that comes from following through. Every. Single. Time. That's where I want to be. The only standard that matters is the standard worthy of our self-respect.
I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know, short as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And important. Above all… different.
I wanted to leave a mark on this world.
I wanted to win.
No, that’s not right. I simply didn’t want to lose.
Back in secondary and high school, on the track team, I wasn't open to the lessons running could teach me then. I wasn't ready to understand what it meant to push my limits and "do it for yourself." So when foot and leg injuries gave me seemingly unrecoverable pain, I happily bid farewell to running after the final track season.
This time around, it was swimming that helped me return to running. Earlier this year, I began swimming regularly as an initial escape from grief and heartbreak. Life felt like an endless transitional phase, during which I felt completely lost and didn’t know what I was good at anymore. The water was the only place where I could drown my thoughts. After establishing a routine of one-kilometer swims and bicycle commutes, I thought: Why not attempt a triathlon? I was hungry for something difficult. Something really challenging.
The funny thing is, a few months in, running has completely eclipsed both swimming and cycling –– I love it more than I ever did! When my friend Eugenia invited me to join her running club and helped me register for my first half-marathon, I discovered something even more precious –– the inspiration that comes from running alongside friends who are stronger and more committed.
The path to mental toughness looks different for everyone. Since rediscovering endurance running, it has felt right in a way no other sport ever has. As I write this letter, I’ve signed up for my first full marathon in 2025.
And then it happened. As my young heart began to thump, as my pink lungs expanded like the wings of a bird, as the trees turned to greenish blurs, I saw it all before me, exactly what I wanted my life to be. Play.
The world was so overrun with war and pain and misery, the daily grind was so exhausting and often unjust –– maybe the only answer, I thought, was to find some prodigious, improbable dream that seemed worthy, that seemed fun, that seemed a good fit, and chase it with an athlete’s single-minded dedication and purpose. Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets left on the sidelines, and I didn’t want that.
Which led, as always, to my Crazy Idea. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, I need to take one more look at my Crazy Idea. Maybe my Crazy Idea just might… work?
Maybe.
There’s a beauty in the uneventful nature of running. It’s not a sport of constant excitement. The stunning views and electric atmosphere of a race (once in a long while) are fleeting moments. What endures is the passing state, the almost painful awareness of your own body in unstoppable motion. I remember when I began my journey in the 34-degree Shanghai heat –– blood boiling, muscle straining, heart drumming. Such fundamental sensations brought me closer to my physical self. The strength of my heartbeat surprised me; how rarely I noticed it in daily life.
At night, there’s a magic to running in the city, even when pausing at red lights. As long as I am running, I can get through anything… Perhaps it’s the playful parkour –– leaping over stairs, flowerbeds, and fire hydrants, always one step ahead of the crowd. I become wind-like. Not because I am fast or anything, but because nothing about me matters. Anything could just come and go as these legs bring me forward. I’m in a liminal space, more so than swimming, which feels almost unearthly in its weightlessness. There’s something very light about happening. Each second streams onward. On the road, I feel like I could go so far, letting go of so much while never looking back.
No, no, I thought, running faster, faster, running as if I were chasing someone and being chased all at the same time. It will work. By God I’ll make it work. No maybes about it.
In the scorching Shanghai summer, running was once my self-inflicted crucible. If you can’t conquer these kilometers, how will you run a startup? I’d scream at myself internally, hoping the physical pain would steel me for all the setbacks of entrepreneurship. It worked, but as my friends had rightly pointed out, it was extremely toxic.
Now, my reasons for running have changed entirely. I truly believe, with my whole heart, that a running world is a better world –– echoing the legendary Kipchoge. Each time I lace up, I feel it: a heightened self-awareness through highs and lows and a connection to my surroundings. I become a part of the environment –– is the air clean? Are there trees? Do pedestrians look healthy and happy? Places where nature has been swallowed by industry are agonizing to run in. In a running world, we’d feel more motivated to fix things that are wrong about our home.
While some say they run to create a void, to completely clear their minds, I’ve found running to be a powerful filter that leaves me with only the most pertinent things in life. Sometimes it’s a vision for my work. Sometimes it’s play. More often, it’s the people I love and how lucky I feel to be alive.
At twenty-four I did have a Crazy Idea, and somehow, despite being dizzy with existential angst, and fears about the future, and doubts about myself, as all young men and women in their midtwenties are, I did decide that the world is made up of crazy ideas. History is one long processional of crazy ideas. The things I loved most –– books, sports, democracy, free enterprise –– started as crazy ideas.
For that matter, few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track, or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least, none that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line.
Every runner knows this. You run and run, mile after mile, and you never quite know why. You tell yourself that you’re running toward some goal, chasing some rush, but really you run because the alternative, stopping, scares you to death.
During the Jeju half-marathon, I couldn’t stop smiling. Pain and fatigue are nonexistent. I am a person who feels things deeply, but as runners surge forward and crowds dance and high-five us, I am struck by an incredible hope. No, not hope, it is a reality to be more in touch with: if we can run together like this, embracing our commonalities and differences, strangers or friends, each giving our best; and by coming together, we become better than when we are left on our own –– then what challenge can’t humanity overcome? Ocean waves crumble at the shore, the breeze brings a refreshing salty scent. I look up and see the aquamarine sky. Everything seems too perfect. I keep running to take it all in.
A big hug,
Erica
I also have started running this year, your stories give me a thouthful messages. So what is your first full marathon to be?