Why I Run

Finding purpose in worldly endeavors often leads to anxiety and heartache. Although I knew this in my heart, I still let athletic accolades define me even after I quit basketball (see blog post #8). You’d think the pain I endured during the last few years of my basketball years would have dissuaded me from focusing too much on sports at least for a little while, but almost immediately I tried to f...

Although running provides many short-term physical and mental benefits, it also provides lasting friendships (See post #2) as well as multiple long-term life lessons. One of these important lessons that I will touch on today is that running teaches young men and women is the value of hard work.      Hard work beats talent   Most sports require hard work to get better, but I would argue that running is ...

Oftentimes, when I tell people I run Cross Country I am met with an incredulous look and some form of the inevitable question: “Why do you do that to yourself?” Running is too often used as a punishment in other sports and the enjoyment (yes, ENJOYMENT) of running is taken out of the equation. So, to all the people who have ever asked me this open-ended question (the list is a long one), inste...

As I touched on earlier, one of the major benefits of running is not just physical but also mental. By releasing endorphins in your body, running helps calm stress and anxiety while also giving runners a sense of accomplishment after finishing a hard workout. Similarly, running also positively impacts mental health in a different way: by helping people form deeper relationships. Reason Why I Run #2: Running brings people toget...

No one can expect to become extremely fast after only a week of training. Running requires perseverance (see post #4) through obstacles, but perseverance also requires a runner to “trust the process.”  To be a successful runner, you must continue to work hard even if you don’t always see the results right away. That leads us to my final point of Why I Run:   Running teaches patience and goal-set...

As I have previously alluded to, running teaches young men and women the value of hard work (See blog post #3). Going hand–in–hand with working hard is having to fight through difficult circumstances where sometimes you might feel like giving up. That brings us to my fourth point about Why I Run:   Running made a man out of me by teaching me the power of perseverance    ...

Over the last few weeks, I have covered five reasons over Why I Run (and why you should too). If you go back through these posts, you will notice that I never mention that running gives me purpose. It can do a lot of things for the  human body and mind, but I have learned, over a long period of time, that finding a purpose in a sport is a fleeting endeavour. Over the next few weeks, I am going to b...

Why are we here? What is our purpose on this Earth? Today’s culture begs us to try to find fulfillment in the things of this world, but as I alluded to in last week's blog, no matter how successful people are, no worldly pleasure ever seems like enough. For me, my “thing” was sports – it became my identity and it is my reason for existence. Needless to say, this mindset led to a hard, fast dow...

I have always had trouble focusing too much on sports, going so far as defining myself as Colin Ring, the athlete. My competitive edge that has oftentimes pushed me to work harder has also made sports an all-consuming black hole, sucking away the other aspects of my personhood. Last week, I recapped how finding purpose in basketball began to affect how I played the game (see Finding Purpose In Basketb...

Turning a sport into an idol is a recipe for disappointment. Humans at their core fail to find lasting joy in arbitrary things of this world because they were created to find their purpose in glorifying God – not themselves. Even though I managed to find success during my sophomore year of cross country (see blog post 9), I wasn’t necessarily happy. I spent most waking moments evaluating my pe...