The idea that you like what you’re good at is true most of the time. I love learning foreign languages, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that I have a good ear for them. However, it is not true in all cases. Sometimes it is harder to admit, almost embarrassing to concede, that you really love something that you have absolutely no talent for. Maybe it’s singing or cooking or dancing; for me it is running.

I think it would be surprising to many if I told them that running is my favorite sport. I’m 5’10’’ and 160 pounds— I could look nothing farther from the super petite women who whip around the track on TV. But to me, running is about more than build or competition. Running is about knowing yourself, pushing boundaries and the spiritual experience.

Running is a process of discovery. I love waking up to dark mornings and putting on a pair of running shoes. Towns are never as still as they are at five or six in the morning; everyone is in the peaceful place between sleeping and waking. The sound of my feet on the pavement and the light of a couple street lamps make me feel serene and confident.

Maybe it’s the fact that I am actually, physically moving forward that makes believe that I can move forward with personal problems, as well. Whatever the reason, running at the point in the morning makes my own little evils seem smaller and more surmountable. When I’m running alone, I can really think alone, outside obligation and presentation. I never feel more truly myself.

It took me a long time to view running this way. For a while I could only see numbers on a stop watch, and I always hated what they told me. When I joined cross country running in high school, I was the slowest runner on the team. Ah! I even cringe as I write that— it still embarrasses me. But, as my mom told me, “Someone’s gotta be last,” and it was me.

The years between my freshman and senior in high school were a lot of hard work. I timed various different distances on tracks over and over. Hill repeats were my new best friend. And honestly, all that hard work led to a team captain who still didn’t make varsity. “We’re not all cut out to be runners,” my father told me as he would go out to run a 40 minute 10k.

This sort of defeat makes running for the non-elite difficult. My sister, a runner of about my talent, refuses to run if there is even the chance that some random person might witness her in the act. I, too, have decided from time to time that running was not worth it. But I always come back around.

I love the adrenaline of running. Running a course and knowing that you are owning it, that you are leaving your old time behind, breaking your own best, has to be one of the best feelings in the world. Running is independence. The sense of accomplishment following a good run is unrivaled. Running is about you and the watch, you and your surroundings, you  and your goals—running is something that was only really ever about you. You did it, in whatever capacity.

I mentioned that running is a spiritual experience. To some, spiritual may mean God or some sort of meditation or Chi. Whoever or whatever is involved in your spirituality, I find the commonality in the definition to be centered around  beauty and a heightened sense of awareness and connectedness.

Let me put it to you this way. I had the privilege of being in Rome with my father last Christmas. Christmas day in Rome is about going to mass and various other parts of Catholic practices that I do not fully comprehend, being ill-acquainted with the tradition myself. But on Christmas morning, my dad and I went running through the town. No one was in the street. It seemed as if the city was deserted .. except for the sound. Our run was followed by hundreds of singing voices coming out of the churches. Running through empty streets, past famous statues and ancient Roman monuments to the sounds of prayerful and celebratory voices made me feel beauty and connection— moved in a way that I can only define as spiritual.

Once I ran a marathon next to water. I am from Alaska, and I ran on a trail in Anchorage next to the Pacific Ocean. The pain of the last six miles was excruciating. Running next to the ocean, looking out and seeing the gulls and smelling the salt, aside from making me a little ill at that point, was one of the loveliest things I have ever seen. The sense of accomplishment, beauty and awe that I felt at the end of that day is unparalleled.

I am a terrible runner. I might even use the word “lumbering” if I described myself in action. But, I really love it. It is a sport that is based solely around the individual; it only takes one person and pair of shoes to get out of the door. Running makes me feel the most alive, at peace, inspired and content at any given point in my life.