A Runner's High

Have you ever witnessed something amazing and felt so inspired to want to go out and do something? Last October, my very close friend and co-worker Adrian completed his very first full marathon. I supported him through his training days, helped him fight his temptation to smoke, and cheered him on all the way to the day of his race; I waited for him at the finish line. As I was waiting for Adrian to cross the finish line in the pouring rain, I saw thousands of runners struggling to finish and others were ecstatic to see the big banner that read “FINISH”. I started to feel overwhelming joy as I stood there with others all around me cheering loudly, watching these people run to the finish, and I thought to myself, “This is so exciting and I cannot imagine how it feels to complete a race, but I am going to do a marathon.” I was never really much of a runner, except when I did track in middle school, ran with some friends at Lake Merced, and on the treadmill at the gym. I always thought running was really boring and rough on my body, until one day my manager at Nike asked me if I wanted to volunteer to run during our Run Club. That is how I got into running but then it slowly turned into a love/hate relationship. There were days I loved to run because it made me feel strong and it gave me a lot of time to reflect while I go on for a long time, and on other days, I just did not feel like doing it at all because I felt lazy and then I completely fell off. When I stopped running, Adrian wanted to try it out and took my place in Run Club prior to his marathon. He got more into running than I was and always encouraged me to do it again. It was really tough to start running again, because Adrian and I shared the same horrible habit of smoking cigarettes, so my lung capacity was not up to par of a healthy runner. He wanted to have a healthier lifestyle so that is why he signed up for the marathon to reach his goal. After seeing Adrian complete his marathon, I