The Cult of Running: A Story of Love and Endurance

I've fallen in love with the person I've become thanks to you, "running."

I've sweated for you, I've cried for you, you've hurt me. Still, I won't leave you. But I won't do it just out of loyalty, but because you've helped me become a new person.

Running is a ritual of destruction that builds character. It forces you to understand who you are and to confront your humanity. It's becoming a child again, allowing the unconscious to surface and remembering those laughs shared with friends while playing tag.

 

Running is feeling like a personal hero, a deity, and at the same time, a vulnerable and mortal being.

I started running as a celebration of life, dedicating my first races to someone who left too soon, who didn't get to live as they wished. Today, what I do is a tribute to her and to all the people who cannot do it.

It's a personal challenge. It's feeling alive. It's a self-imposed penance that purifies the mind, cleanses the innermost particles of being, and makes you powerful. It's a worship of the deities of athleticism, of the everyday legends who go out and give it their all. But, above all, it's the best gift I can give myself.

 

Because running is learning to love inner silence. It's reconciling with who you are and who you are not.

As Haruki Murakami rightly said:

"When I run, I just run. I don't think about anything. What it leaves me with is a kind of emptiness. And in that emptiness, perhaps I find myself."

And there, in that emptiness, without judgments, without masks, without titles, there is only you, facing your limits, your shadows, and your lights. Every kilometer is a confession. Every stride, a renewed promise that you will keep going, even when there are no applause, even when only your ragged breath and the echo of your footsteps accompany you.

 

Running is an intimate conversation with yourself. It's looking at yourself in the mirror in motion.

As Christopher McDougall wrote in Born to Run:

"Running is not about winning or losing, it's about loving the movement."

And that love is deep. It's not just physical, it's spiritual. It's an act of gratitude towards the body, towards life itself.

It teaches you that true strength is not in the goal, but in getting up every day, tying your shoelaces and going out, even if it hurts, even if you don't feel like it, even if you feel like you can't go on.

Scott Jurek, ultramarathoner, said it best:

"Running long distances is a metaphor for life: you have to do things not because they are easy, but because they are important."

Because running is choosing yourself. It's resisting. It's healing.

It helps you let go of the weight of what you cannot control, to break free from the fears that accumulate like knots in your back.

 

Running is crying without anyone noticing. It's releasing everything you've kept silent. It's remembering that you are alive, that you can move, that there is still something inside you that wants to keep going.

Sometimes you run out of anger, other times out of sadness, still others out of hope. And in each of those emotions, a new self-love is woven, more solid, more honest. It's not the superficial love of social media or the perfect mirror. It's the raw love of seeing yourself sweaty, tired, exhausted... but proud. It's the love that is born after pain, after having broken and rebuilt yourself.

Running is a way to pray with your feet. It's an I love you repeated with every ragged breath. It's a thank you written with sweat on the hot asphalt. It's the most intimate act of self-care I've found.

That's why I identify with this cult. Because while others seek love in someone else, I found it in myself, through you, running.

Author: Luca
Instagram: @luca__diavolo