What Keeps You Running?

Some people are multi talented. Bob Martin is one of them. He can write like a dream, make great woodwork and run.
He has been having a hard time with running of late. This is from his latest post Jekyll and Hyde

I can’t think of a better metaphor for my year in running than the title suggests. The first half of my year was filled with the nefarious Mr. Hyde. For the first 5 months of this year, any time I even had a positive thought about running, he would jump from the shadows and beat me down. Indeed, we even experienced a damp, soggy, Londonesque spring in which even if I had felt good, I couldn’t have run anyway. I actually wondered at one point if my running career would end up as the book did, with Jekyll (me) slowly succumbing to the fact that he would soon turn into Mr. Hyde for good (the lazy, whining, couch potato I used to be).

But luckily for me, so far anyway, the second half of the year has me re-writing the ending (apologies to Stephenson) of this book with Dr. Jekyll finding the missing ingredient and making more of the potion that keeps him from turning into Mr. Hyde. And what was that ingredient?

Patience.

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I think that it’s more than patience. Patience implies passivity and keeping on running with Mr Hyde in your face would need a little more than patience..
I would say that it would take dedication and a whole lot of it to keep going.
Dedication is something a lot of runners have in common. All you have to do is read what other runners are writing to see that Mr Hyde has found himself a great hunting ground in the running community.

He sits on the runners shoulders pointing out the aches and pains, the steepness of the up coming hill and the distance to come….. But runners, in their dedication and stubbornness, kick him in the you know what and send him packing over and over again.
Long Live Dr Jekyll.