What is it that motivates us to lace up our shoes and hit the pavement? Where does this inspiration come from to compete in long distance running? To be honest, we spend months training for a single event logging hundreds of hours to run a few as strong as possible. Are we all insane?

Some would call running crazy, pointless, and other choice words, but hundreds of thousands would like to disagree. At some point in our running history we decided to run and most of us haven’t stopped since. For me, the distance was a marathon and it was with the National Aids Training Program in San Francisco. That was over 2 years ago and right after I finished my first 26.2 miles, my mind was already considering what the next event would be. In total, my running history includes 3 fulls, 5 halves, and a single 10k, not impressive, but my calendar year is planned around which events I choose to participate in and where I plan on traveling.

So again, I pose the question, what motivates us? I raised over $4,000 in my first and only training program and that is what motivated me for the first 6 months of my running life, but a couple years later I’m still out there logging miles and loving it motivated by something else. Unfortunately I’m not going to go into what motivates me as a runner today… I want to know what motivates you.

So this is my little experiment: I want to know what motivates other runners around the world. Let’s hear it, is it an addiction? Do you run for fitness, charity, acclaim, to travel or shear insanity? In the comments below, let the world know what drives you.