Given my own puny training regimen, I don’t really know what to say about such an inexplicable, almost intoxicating need to keep pushing oneself. But I think I know what the Greeks would call it: hybris. In ancient Greek hybris was an idea with serious moral implications. It might be translated as “excessiveness,” an arrogant attitude toward nature

According to sources, Arrichion died by strangulation while obstructing his opponent’s feet and forcing him to call the fight. Whatever really happened, we know that the victory laurels were placed on the dead man’s head. A statue of him was erected in the market of Phigalia, his hometown, to remind future generations of his feat.

Duty and honor came from the courage to fill the gap between our limitations with remarkable feats and the laurels of glory. In short, an athlete who stretched his body ultra its limits was not greeted by the sound of cheers in the stadium but by the sound of the Titans’ broken nails as they crawled to the heavens and were immediately driven back d

In short, to run, and continue running, one needs a reason tougher than any tendon, an unshakeable will to give it your all, without reservation or limits, to the bitter end—the same kind of will that led the first marathon runner in history to run to his death and beyond.

In short, after a lifetime of agonizing about what time is, thanks to running I was liberated from this inescapable, crudely Proustian obsession and quickly turned to another obsession. I wanted to know what’s inside time.

I realized that my efforts are related to my terror of aging. I finally understood, I think, that I keep running because it is the most concrete and effective way for me to feel alive, or at least the one way I know. In other words, I run because I’m afraid of dying.

For years I asked every runner I know, from the most diehard to the least disciplined, why they run, but none was able to give me a clear answer. They all offered a generic response: “well-being,” of course, physical or mental. But one’s reason for running can’t be defined by that fleeting fistful of endorphins, since there are many human activitie

In the end, running has also taught me that intensity, high or low, is worth nothing if you don’t practice restraint. That, on the road or in life, giving too little of yourself is as great a risk as giving too much.

When I run, I’m alive, physically and biologically, doing what I was programmed to do: pushing my body to its maximum physical potential. It’s objective and observable, and it can easily be measured by the tools of science.